Jackie Robinson

Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Division,

[LC-DIG-ppmsc-00048]

Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)

Hailed as one of the best baseball players of all time and an American civil rights hero, Jackie Robinson holds a special place in American historical memory. Too often, though, the details of his struggle are lost in the shadow of his Hall-of-Fame career. For many Americans, knowledge of his place in the Civil Rights Movement is limited to “he was the first black major league baseball player.”

In truth, Jackie Robinson’s civil rights activism went much deeper than just breaking professional baseball’s color barrier. Before baseball, the US Army court-martialed Robinson for challenging segregation, and, following his athletic career, he bravely petitioned presidents of both parties to challenge and change the social status-quo. He joined Martin Luther King, Jr. and the NAACP in the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, raised money for various aspects of the movement, and spoke in public against racial inequalities and social injustice.

Robinson’s place in Georgia history has been argued by some as negligible, for soon after his 1919 birth in Grady County his mother moved him and his siblings to California. The Georgia Historical Society, however, chooses to honor him for much more than simply being born in Georgia. Jackie would return to Georgia to play in an exhibition game against the Atlanta Crackers, visited his birth town Cairo with teammates while on their way to spring training in Florida, and Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Robinson to lead a fundraiser to rebuild African-American churches in Georgia. Along the way, he encountered Georgians abroad such as Truman Gibson of FDR’s Black Cabinet, Representative John S. Wood, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackie Robinson’s life encourages another look at Georgia history through his point of view.

Robinson’s courage and role in such an important part of US history also speaks to the manner of his upbringing by Georgians who lived and loved in a much harsher environment than we can ever understand. His grandparents were born in slavery and his parents were sharecroppers in rural Georgia. Despite the hardships, family ties and values prevailed, especially those from Jackie’s mother’s side, and they influenced Robinson throughout his life.

The curriculum also looks at how and why we memorialize historically significant individuals. The recent efforts by Dr. Linda Walden, Jackie’s third cousin, to remember Robinson in his birth county have brought many issues to light including history and memory in Georgia, who can claim historical “rights” to an individual or event, and contemporary race relations in a small southern county.

The curriculum provides teaching tips, vocabulary, and lists significant names to provide Georgia educators another tool to fulfill the Board of Education’s Professional Standards. The information here, it is hoped, will offer another view of race relations, not only in the South, but also across the nation, and a look at an individual often minimized in his role in the fight for US civil rights.