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| JACKIE ROBINSON: HISTORIANS
APRIL 15, 1997TRANSCRIPT |
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Two historians discuss the meaning of the Jackie Robinson story. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a NewsHour regular, as a kid watched Robinson play ball in Brooklyn. Roger Wilkins wrote the forward to Jackie Robinson's widow's book, "Jackie Robinson, An Intimate Portrait."
JIM LEHRER: Some closing thoughts now from two historians about the meaning of the Jackie Robinson story. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a NewsHour regular, as a kid watched Robinson play ball in Brooklyn. Roger Wilkins wrote the forward to Jackie Robinson's widow's book, "Jackie Robinson, An Intimate Portrait." He's a professor of American history at George Mason University, among other things. Doris, in the world outside of baseball, how important an event was that event 50 years ago today when Jackie Robinson went out on that infield in Brooklyn?
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
April 15, 1997:
A backgrounder on the great achievements of Jackie Robinson.
April 24, 1997:
Join our Online Forum with author Roger Kahn on Jackie Robinson and other baseball legends.
April 11, 1997:
David Gergen engages author Roger Kahn on Jackie Robinson and other baseball legends.
April 14, 1997:
Tiger Woods wins the Masters Golf Tournament.
Browse the Sports Index.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
Major League Baseball has created a special Jackie Robinson section of their site entitled, "Jackie Robinson: Breaking Barriers."
The National Archives has established a Web page documenting Jackie Robinson's behind-the-scenes work for civil rights.
The LA Dodgers, Robinson's old team, has gathered together facts and videos of the former player.
Jackie Robinson Society
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Historian: Well, I think it's almost impossible to overestimate it. Look what had happened. You had the war coming right before Jackie Robinson, and during the war blacks had fought to save the country. They had worked in the factories to help build the tanks, the ships, and the weapons, and the planes, and then the end of the war came, and so much of that a possibility that it opened, and the war got crushed. The Fair Employment Practice Commission set up to allow equal opportunity during the war, the appropriations was cut off, blacks came home from soldiers, and they hit segregation in the South and discrimination in the North. So what Jackie represented was somehow he carried that hope, that militancy, that vitality that had started in the civil rights movement during the war, forward, until it could come full blast again in the 1950's. Baseball was the sport right then, so when he became an integrated force, blacks and whites had to look at themselves differently, had to look at their relationships differently, and he then carried those hopes like a bridge up to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and all the great progress into a place in the 50's. Without him, that would have been a really sterile period. And I think it's absolutely critical.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Do you agree with that, Roger?
ROGER WILKINS, Historian: Yeah. I really do. And I love the way Doris puts it, but I want to talk for a minute not as an historian, but as a person who was a 15-year-old kid in 1947, living in a baseball fantasy. You know, little boys threw a ball against the wall, and fantasized that they were pitching in the World Series. And for a black man to go into baseball was like having Christmas for five straight months, and Jackie got a hit one day, two hits, he stole a base. He had a good day that day. If he went 0 for 4, he felt terrible that day. But you road on his back. But it wasn't just 15-year-old black kids. It was black people all over our country because at the time Doris was describing the country was really segregated, the way Leonard Koppett said. And so we blacks lived inside a big lie that said we were ugly and dumb, and bad athletes, and slow, and irresponsible. And none of us had a big enough voice to challenge that lie in a massive way, not large enough to get the attention of the overall culture. And along comes Jack, and he's standing in the middle of the culture. Everybody paid attention to baseball. He's beautiful. He's intelligent. He's disciplined, and he's a spectacular ball player. So that he--he's not only telling it's a lie about baseball players; he's saying to the whole culture black people are a whole lot larger and a whole lot better.
JIM LEHRER: And he's you.
ROGER WILKINS: And he's me, right.
JIM LEHRER: When you saw Jack Robinson, you saw you.
ROGER WILKINS: Absolutely. He was carrying me right on his shoulders.
JIM LEHRER: Both of you explain--Doris begin--for those who were not around in 1947, when baseball really was the--this was before the days of pro-basketball and pro-football today--give us a--just give us a taste of how important baseball was, why Jackie Robinson in baseball could have the huge effect that it had.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Yeah. That's so important to real life, but except for boxing, there was really no other sport that captured the hearts and the imaginations of the American people. You could walk down any block and you could hear what was going on from inning to inning because every radio would be turned on to baseball. You could argue on your street corners in local bars about who was the better centerfielder among--Mickey Mantle or Duke Snyder--et cetera, et cetera. It was a part of the fabric of your life. And so when Jackie Robinson broke through, it wasn't just breaking through in one of any number of sports. It was "the" national sport. I mean, we lived it. I went to bed dreaming about the Dodgers. I mean, Jackie Robinson was in my heart as a player long before I understood in my mind what he meant to civil rights because I loved him.
JIM LEHRER: And it wasn't, Roger, it wasn't just in New York, cities that had Major League baseball. It was out where I come from too. Kids were listening to the radio in Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma and following those same games that you all had the privilege to go see.
ROGER WILKINS: And it was not just--well, I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was--Michigan was a Tiger state, American League state, so you really had to scour the--for the box scores, but you found it. And it wasn't just baseball fans. It's like Sunday Tiger Woods turned people don't know a putter from a driver into golf fans. The same was true with baseball. My mother-in-law did not know anything about baseball, not a thing. All of a sudden Jack comes up and she lived in Cleveland, and Larry Doby comes up in the middle of the season.
JIM LEHRER: Larry Doby was the first black in the American League.
ROGER WILKINS: That's right.
JIM LEHRER: He played for the Cleveland Indians. He followed Robinson.
ROGER WILKINS: She'd dream about him. She never knew a thing about baseball. I mean, that's--and a lot of white people all over the country, like in Beaumont, Texas--I had a buddy from Shreveport, Louisiana--they all--white people who didn't like the racial order that we had then were also drawn to this drama just the way blacks were.
JIM LEHRER: Why do you think, Doris, that baseball was the institution that first did this, or could permit this, or got it done?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think in part because there was the leadership there. I mean, always these movements need somebody who's a leader, and Branch Rickey deserves enormous credit for understanding that there was this enormous talent out there in the Negro Leagues, as Buck had said earlier, and that it was nuts to not have those great players part of baseball. But he thought it through it so carefully. He knew Jackie Robinson was "the" person who could carry that enormous burden of being the first person. And then once it happened then someone it opened the doors not only to other blacks. You just hope that blacks today understand the shoulders on which they stood, and Jackie, and in Branch Rickey making this possible, it was a black and white team that made this possible.
JIM LEHRER: Do they understand--
ROGER WILKINS: Black and white team because you can't leave out Rachel.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Absolutely.
ROGER WILKINS: You know, Cal Ripken, who is about as great and careful a baseball craftsman as--
JIM LEHRER: Plays for the Baltimore Orioles now, right?
ROGER WILKINS: --said the other day he wanted to settle his contract before the season started because several years ago the negotiations went through the season, and he had his worst season. And he said baseball is so hard that you really can't be thinking about something else while you're trying to play baseball. Well, just think, Jack is thinking about carrying the whole race on his back; he's thinking about death threats; and--
JIM LEHRER: And Rickey told him don't react, don't do anything.
ROGER WILKINS: He can't fight back. He's got one person that he can talk to--Rachel. If she caves, if she cries, if she says, I can't stand it, the guy probably can't do it. Still, he comes to her. She's wise; she's strong; she goes through the death threats and all the rest, and she just helps send him back out there with strength. Rickey, as Doris said, was brilliant. He was--and he was a decent, god-fearing man. He also went, I might say, to the University of Michigan Law School. (laughter) You just know where people get character, that's all. But he was also very sharp because he knew there was this huge pool of talent out there, and he got there first. He would get the best. And, of course, one of the reasons that the Dodgers did so well in those years was they had Jack gave the energy to that team but they also had--
JIM LEHRER: Roy Campanella.
ROGER WILKINS: --Campanella and Newcomb and Junior Gilliam, Sandy Ameros, all those people. And--and they were doing that teams like Tigers, Red Sox, Yankees, nobody--
JIM LEHRER: Look, the three of us can go ahead and talk, but we're going to have to end this for the audience, which I hate. But thank you both very much.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, you're welcome.
ROGER WILKINS: Thank you.
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