Short description:

First published in 1998, Jackie Robinson includes presentations from Long Island University's three-day celebration, especially chosen for their fresh perspectives and illuminating insights. A mix of journalism, scholarship, and memory offers a presentation that transcends the retelling of just another sports story.

Long description:

There are defining moments in the life of a nation when a single individual can shape events for generations to come. For America, the spring of 1947 was such a moment, and Jackie Robinson was the man who made the difference." With these words, President Clinton contributed to Long Island University's three-day celebration of that momentous event in American history when Robinson became the first African American to play major league baseball.

First published in 1998, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream includes presentations from that celebration, especially chosen for their fresh perspectives and illuminating insights. A heady mix of journalism, scholarship, and memory offers a presentation that far transcends the retelling of just another sports story. Readers get a true sense of the social conditions prior to Robinson's arrival in the major leagues and the ripple effect his breakthrough had on the nation. Anecdotes enliven the story and offer more than the usual "larger than life" portrait of Robinson.

A mélange of contributors from the sports world, academia, and journalism, some of Robinson's contemporaries, Dodger fans, and historians of the era, all sharing a passion for baseball, reflect on issues of sports, race, and the dramatic transformation of the American social and political scene in the last fifty years. This book is a must read for anyone interested in American Sports history and sports in general.

Table of Contents:

Foreword Senator Charles E. Schumer Preface Acknowledgments Jackie, Do They Know? An Ode to Jackie Robinson Tom (Tommy) Hawkins Introduction Part I. Historical Perspectives 1. In the Eye of the Storm: 1947 in World Perspective 2. Men of Conscience 3. Moses Fleetwood Walker: Jackie Robinson's Accidental Predecessor 4. Monte Irvin: Up from Sharecropping Part II. Fans' Remembrances 5. It Happened in Brooklyn: Reminiscences of a Fan 6. The Interborough Iliad 7. Father and Son at Ebbets Field 8. A Ten-Year-Old Dodger Fan Welcomes Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn Ivan W. Hametz 9. Mah Nishtanah Part III. The Radical Press/ Agenda 10. Baseball on the Radical Agenda: The Daily Worker and Sunday Worker Journalistic Campaign to Desegregate Major League Baseball, 1933-1947 11. White Dodgers, Black Dodgers 12. Robinson-Robeson Part IV. On the [Level?] Playing Field 13. Hank Greenberg, Joe DiMaggio, and Jackie Robinson: Race, Identity, and Ethnic Power 14. Burt Shotton: The Crucible of 1947 15. Jackie Robinson on Opening Day, 1947-1956 Part V. Measuring the Impact on Baseball 16. Jackie Robinson and the Third Age of Modern Baseball 17. Jackie Robinson and the Emancipation of Latin American Baseball Players 18. The Two Titans and the Mystery Man: Branch Rickey, Walter O'Malley, and John L. Smith as Brooklyn Dodgers Partners, 1944-1950 Part VI. Measuring the Impact on Society 19. Robinson in 1947: Measuring an Uncertain Impact 20. "Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night": Race, the Baseball Establishment, and the Retirements of Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson 21. Kareem's Omission? Jackie Robinson, Black Profile in Courage 22. Should We Rely on the Marketplace to End Discrimination? What the Integration of Baseball Tells Us Part VII. Thank You, Jackie Robinson 23. Greetings 24. Keynote Address About the Contributors Index