Cracking a racist wall

Jackie Robinson's historic impact

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the so-called color barrier by becoming the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. On April 15, 2007, the 60th anniversary of this significant event, over 200 MLB players and some managers of all nationalities wore Robinson’s retired number 42 on their uniforms to honor him. The following are excerpts from an April 10, 1997, article written by Mike Gimbel on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robinson joining the then Brooklyn Dodgers. Go to www.workers.org/ww/robinson.html to read the article in its entirety.

Jackie Robinson

Robinson’s entry into Major League Baseball had a momentous impact on the anti-racist struggle in the U.S. It even had an important effect on U.S. imperialism’s political status on the world stage.

Jackie Robinson, perhaps the most exciting baseball player of his time, was more than a “mere” athlete who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Robinson grew up in Pasadena, Calif., a town so racist that it took until 1997 to officially acknowledge his accomplishments.

Jackie Robinson went into the segregated U.S. Army, where he became an officer. But he was court-martialed for failing to sit in the back of the bus at a Texas army base. The case became a national political incident and the army was forced to dismiss the charges against him.

Just as Robinson was no accidental figure, neither were those who chose him to break the color barrier. Nor was it accidental that Major League baseball was the arena for this historical event.

In order to understand the event in its proper context, one has to understand the period in which it happened.

The USSR had defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, and in doing so had liberated much of Eastern Europe from capitalist slavery. A huge liberation movement, led primarily by communist parties, was sweeping Asia. The Western powers, led by the U.S., were trying to break the workers’ movements in France, Italy and Greece, where armed resistance to fascism had been led by the communists.

The imperialist powers would have loved to present this as a struggle between communism and “democracy,” but they had a big problem: They were seen as racist oppressors on the world stage.

The Europeans still claimed most of the world as their colonies, and the U.S. was propping them up.

The U.S. had its own colonial holdings in Puerto Rico and the Pacific. In addition, the South was ruled by the Ku Klux Klan, an organization no better than Germany’s Nazi Party. The South was solidly held by the Democratic Party, and no Democrat could get elected president without the support of racist “Dixiecrats.”

In 1947, the civil rights movement had not yet begun. The U.S. military was still segregated and it would be seven more years before the “Brown vs. Board of Education” Supreme Court decision declared “separate but equal” schools to be unconstitutional.

But many Black soldiers were returning home after having risked their lives abroad. They came back to racism, in the North as well as the South.

Yet there was a completely different political current. The U.S. left and progressive movement was still very powerful. Communist Party membership hit its zenith in 1947. Mass May Day marches were held all over the country replete with red flags. The labor movement was involved in militant strikes and the left had a huge influence in it.

The U.S. ruling class could not credibly portray itself as “leader of the free world” while being perceived as the open oppressor of a large portion of its own population. Something had to be done.

Truman and the Dixiecrats

President Harry S. Truman, however, dared not act without support from the Dixiecrats. The U.S. ruling class seemed trapped by this quandary. The politicians couldn’t find an answer to this problem, which was so vital to U.S. imperialism. Another way had to be found.

Baseball became the arena where this struggle took center stage. Major League baseball is a sport unlike any other.

For much of [the past] century baseball could almost be considered a national religion. It is no accident that “tradition” is so highly prized by the “Lords of Baseball.” Nor that the singing of the national anthem has become such a prominent part of starting a game. Baseball is, after all, the “national pastime.” U.S. presidents traditionally throw out the first ball.

Had Jackie Robinson integrated professional football or basketball, he’d be a forgotten figure today. But breaking the color barrier in baseball would present a new image of the U.S. to the world.

However, the more far-seeing leaders of U.S. imperialism found that most of their class was so racist they had no inclination to support integration at any level.

Major League owners wouldn’t budge

The owners of the 16 Major League franchises were no different. These owners were, if anything, more right-wing than most of their fellow businessmen. They treated their teams as private plantations where they amused themselves with their “toys.” They got some notoriety by getting their names in the newspapers and/or used the teams to advertise their “real” businesses.

There was no way these reactionary owners, as a group, would voluntarily allow a Black player into the Major Leagues.

A few team owners might have been willing to integrate the Major Leagues, but the overwhelming majority were not for it.

The Brooklyn Dodgers were the original “America’s Team.” The “Beloved Bums” were second only to the New York Yankees as the richest sports franchise in the world.

The team performed in New York City—the very capital of high finance and home to the United Nations. The Dodger’s general manager was none other than Branch Rickey, the most renowned front-office baseball figure of the century.

He was considered the most far-sighted baseball leader. For the ruling class, he offered the added bonus of being very religious and anti-communist, as well as parsimonious when it came to paying the players.

The Dodgers were in the National League, considered a traditionally weaker league. It was only natural that a far-sighted, practical general manager would see the acquisition of Black players as a means of redressing this weakness and making the team more profitable.

Rickey, together with Baseball Commissioner A.B. “Happy” Chandler, planned the coup that got Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues.

Rickey and Chandler used this power to get Robinson into the Major Leagues, over the objections of almost all the other owners. For this “treachery,” Chandler was bounced out as commissioner at the end of his term.

---