One, we were born on the same day. More importantly, he wasn't just an athlete, he was also a college graduate and an officer in the army, which qualified him in the eyes of my father as a man worthy of admiration.
Today, every February a million or so American kids, black and white alike, dutifully choose Jackie Robinson as the subject of their "Black History Month" project.
One of my sons asked me what was special about Jackie Robinson and if he should do a report on him. I told him "Jackie broke the color barrier in baseball. You know. He was the first black player allowed to play in the Major Leagues." My son stared back at me blankly ... like ... "and"?
I laughed and tried to relate why the fact that this great baseball player was "allowed" to play in the Major Leagues was a big deal.
My son asked me why did the Brooklyn Dodgers choose Jackie Robinson and how did they know he was a good player if he wasn't allowed to play. I explained that Jackie had become a star in what was called "The Negro Leagues".
My son asked me "What's a Negro League?".
I told him that in the early days of baseball there were several leagues. The American, The National and The Negro leagues were the dominant leagues. After a number of years the American League and the National Leagues merged but they would only allow white players on the teams.
"Did the Negro Leagues have stadiums and stuff?"
Oh yeah man. They had stadiums that were owned and operated by black people. The teams were owned by black men. They had radio broadcasts with black commentators, black agents, black managers, sponsors, the concessions were owned and operated by blacks and they had hundreds of thousands of fans. Even white fans attended the games because it was the best baseball in the world."What happened to the Negro League?"
Well, after Jackie Robinson was "allowed" to play in the Major Leagues other black stars followed him and the fans stopped supporting the Negro Leagues and followed their stars to the Major Leagues. Soon the Negro Leagues just faded away.
My son looked at me for a long moment.
"Daddy, I think I'm going to do my report on Kwame Ture."
JH said...
Good one...kinda hurt me up....but good one nonetheless. Damn, what if we followed the Garvey model in ATHLETICS...oh, shit, we'd have killed 'em!
But don't be afraid to still love Jackie.
Still another narrative places Jackie in the same context as MLK, Ali and Barak Obama. Cool ass brothas, god's sons, who exemplified all the characteristics that white people thought THEY had
masterd (being a
christian, carrying one's self calmly without submission to primal
urges, manipulating the media, and becoming president of the mf'en USA,
respectively)...and in turn, having the swarms of white people on their
nutz to this present day, wishing they had it like we do. These guys
proved out "black supremacy", as I see you like to talk about. "Envy of
the World", to borrow a book title that I liked.
6 comments:
Ah, yes, Jackie Robinson. One of like, THREE Black people they taught us about in my lily white suburban school. Every year we would go see the Jackie Robinson story performed by a local theater group. A few months later, of course, we would take a trip to the local "restoration village" where women dressed in bonnets portrayed the "romanticism" of the colonial era.
Good one...kinda hurt me up....but good one nonetheless. Damn, what if we followed the Garvey model in ATHLETICS...oh, shit, we'd have killed 'em!
But don't be afraid to still love Jackie.
Still another narrative places Jackie in the same context as MLK, Ali and Barak Obama. Cool ass brothas, god's sons, who exemplified all the characteristics that white people thought THEY had masterd (being a christian, carrying one's self calmly without submission to primal urges, manipulating the media, and becoming president of the mf'en USA, respectively)...and in turn, having the swarms of white people on their nutz to this present day, wishing they had it like we do. These guys proved out "black supremacy", as I see you like to talk about. "Envy of the World", to borrow a book title that I liked.
Brother DV:
Let me start out with my the foundational statement that covers everything that I am about to type:
IN A TRANSACTION - IF YOU CAN'T DEFINE WHAT YOU ARE GIVING THAT IS OF EQUAL WORTH TO THAT WHICH YOU ARE RECEIVING THEN YOU HAVE NOT ENGAGED IN AN EXCHANGE THAT IS IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS.
As applied to the Negro Leagues. The transaction of the players with the most talent into the "Major Leagues" was at the time THOUGHT to be worthy receipt of "recognition" and "equality.
Where as the NFL and the AFL had a MERGER and now each team is worth somewhere around $750 million (and can get the tax payers to build a stadium for them) the Negro Leagues merely went insolvent as their best players were cherry picked.
DV - I do not blame the "Civil Rights Movement" for what you illustrate. The movement DID ITS JOB in its TIME.
The blame has to be placed on the Sold Out Negroes who took over our community leadership after the great leaders had passed on. They made the "Black Community Development Activism" process into a STRICTLY POLITICAL ONE. They spat in Malcolm X's face as they took to the field in the FOOTBALL GAME that he warned us about. THIS is a more destructive sport to our consciousness than was the collapse of the Negro Leagues.
When Ted Kennedy and Negro Leaders can refer to us as "The Least Of These" and it is accepted as evidence that they CARE instead of proof that they believe that we are INFERIOR and damaged goods - this was the vacation of all hope that we would one day achieve equality by first constructing a CONSCIOUSNESS OF EQUALITY.
Well just goes to show that Blacks want to "climb up" and assimilate to Whites - and not vice-versa. Which shows who got the real juice.
Otherwise, White players would have been dying to join the Negro League and this story would have been about the first White player to do so..
"Still another narrative places Jackie in the same context as MLK, Ali and Barak Obama. Cool ass brothas, god's sons, who exemplified all the characteristics that white people thought THEY had masterd (being a christian, carrying one's self calmly without submission to primal urges, manipulating the media, and becoming president of the mf'en USA, respectively)" JH
Beautiful
Should have had him do a report on Negro League owners or promoters like Octavius Catto or something about Eddie Klepp breaking the color barrier.
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