SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jackie robinson
Don't Believe the Sanitized History of Jackie Robinson--He Was a Radical
It was Robinson's strong patriotism that led him to challenge America to live up to its ideals. He felt an obligation to use his fame to challenge the society's racial injustice.
Apr 16, 2022
In our new book, "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America," Rob Elias and I profile the many iconoclasts, dissenters and mavericks who defied baseball's and society's establishment.
In the past decade, athletes have become more outspoken on issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, American militarism, immigrant rights and other issues. They all stand on Robinson's shoulders.
But none took as many risks--and had as big an impact--as Jackie Robinson. Though Robinson was a fierce competitor, an outstanding athlete and a deeply religious man, the aspect of his legacy that often gets glossed over is that he was also a radical.
The sanitized version of the Jackie Robinson story goes something like this: He was a remarkable athlete who, with his unusual level of self-control, was the perfect person to break baseball's color line. In the face of jeers and taunts, he was able to put his head down and let his play do the talking, becoming a symbol of the promise of a racially integrated society.
With this April 15 marking the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking baseball's color line, Major League Baseball will celebrate the occasion with great fanfare--with tributes, movies, TV specials, museum exhibits and symposia.
I wonder, however, about the extent to which these celebrations will downplay his activism during and after his playing career. Will they delve into the forces arrayed against Robinson--the players, fans, reporters, politicians and baseball executives who scorned his outspoken views on race? Will any Jackie Robinson Day events mention that, toward the end of his life, he wrote that he had become so disillusioned with the country's racial progress that he couldn't stand for the flag and sing the national anthem?
Laying the groundwork
Robinson was a rebel before he broke baseball's color line.
When he was a soldier during World War II, his superiors sought to keep him out of officer candidate school. He persevered and became a second lieutenant. But in 1944, while assigned to a training camp at Fort Hood in Texas, he refused to move to the back of an army bus when the white driver ordered him to do so.
Robinson faced trumped-up charges of insubordination, disturbing the peace, drunkenness, conduct unbecoming an officer and refusing to obey the orders of a superior officer. Voting by secret ballot, the nine military judges--only one of them Black--found Robinson not guilty. In November, he was honorably discharged from the Army.
Describing the ordeal, Robinson later wrote, "It was a small victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home."
Three years later, Robinson would suit up for the Dodgers.
His arrival didn't occur in a vacuum. It marked the culmination of more than a decade of protests to desegregate the national pastime. It was a political victory brought about by a persistent and progressive movement that confronted powerful business interests that were reluctant--even opposed--to bring about change.
Beginning in the 1930s, the movement mobilized a broad coalition of organizations--the Black press, civil rights groups, the Communist Party, progressive white activists, left-wing unions and radical politicians--that waged a sustained campaign to integrate baseball.
Biting his tongue, biding his time
This protest movement set the stage for Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey to sign Robinson to a contract in 1945. Robinson spent the 1946 season with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' top farm club, where he led the team to the minor league championship. The following season, he was brought up to the big leagues.
Robinson promised Rickey that--at least during his rookie year--he wouldn't respond to the verbal barbs from fans, managers and other players he would face on a daily basis.
His first test took place a week after he joined the Dodgers, during a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Phillies manager Ben Chapman called Robinson the n-word and shouted, "Go back to the cotton field where you belong."
Though Robinson seethed with anger, he kept his promise to Rickey, enduring the abuse without retaliating.
But after that first year, he increasingly spoke out against racial injustice in speeches, interviews and his regular newspaper columns for The Pittsburgh Courier, New York Post and the New York Amsterdam News.
Many sportswriters and most other players--including some of his fellow Black players--balked at the way Robinson talked about race. They thought he was too angry, too vocal.
Syndicated sports columnist Dick Young of the New York Daily News griped that when he talked to Robinson's Black teammate Roy Campanella, they stuck to baseball. But when he spoke with Robinson, "sooner or later we get around to social issues."
A 1953 article in Sport magazine titled "Why They Boo Jackie Robinson" described the second baseman as "combative," "emotional" and "calculating," as well as a "pop-off," a "whiner," a "showboat" and a "troublemaker." A Cleveland paper called Robinson a "rabble-rouser" who was on a "soapbox." The Sporting News headlined one story "Robinson Should Be a Player, Not a Crusader." Other writers and players called him a "loudmouth," a "sorehead" and worse.
Nonetheless, Robinson's relentless advocacy got the attention of the country's civil rights leaders.
In 1956, the NAACP gave him its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. He was the first athlete to receive that award. In his acceptance speech, he explained that although many people had warned him "not to speak up every time I thought there was an injustice," he would continue to do so.
'A freedom rider before the Freedom Rides'
After Robinson hung up his cleats in 1957, he stayed true to his word, becoming a constant presence on picket lines and at civil rights rallies.
That same year, he publicly urged President Dwight Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students seeking to desegregate its public schools. In 1960, impressed with the resilience and courage of the college students engaging in sit-ins at Southern lunch counters, he agreed to raise bail money for the students stuck in jail cells.
Robinson initially supported the 1960 presidential campaign of Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat and staunch ally of the civil rights movement. But when John F. Kennedy won the party's nomination, Robinson--worried that JFK would be beholden to Southern Democrats who opposed integration--he endorsed Republican Richard Nixon. He quickly regretted that decision after Nixon refused to campaign in Harlem or speak out against the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. in rural Georgia. Three weeks before Election Day, Robinson said that "Nixon doesn't deserve to win."
In February 1962, Robinson traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to speak at a rally organized by NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Later that year, at King's request, Robinson traveled to Albany, Georgia, to draw media attention to three Black churches that had been burned to the ground by segregationists. He then led a fundraising campaign that collected $50,000 to rebuild the churches.
In 1963 he devoted considerable time and travel to support King's voter registration efforts in the South. He also traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, as part of King's campaign to dismantle segregation in that city.
"His presence in the South was very important to us," recalled Wyatt Tee Walker, chief of staff of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King called Robinson "a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides."
Robinson also consistently criticized police brutality. In August 1968, three Black Panthers in New York City were arrested and charged with assaulting a white police officer. At their hearing two weeks later, about 150 white men, including off-duty police officers, stormed the courthouse and attacked 10 Panthers and two white supporters. When he learned that the police had made no arrests of the white rioters, Robinson was outraged.
"The Black Panthers seek self-determination, protection of the Black community, decent housing and employment and express opposition to police abuse," Robinson said during a press conference at the Black Panthers' headquarters.
He challenged banks for discriminating against Black neighborhoods and condemned slumlords who preyed on Black families.
And Robinson wasn't done holding Major League Baseball to account, either. He refused to participate in a 1969 Old Timers game because he didn't see "genuine interest in breaking the barriers that deny access to managerial and front office positions." At his final public appearance, throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the 1972 World Series, Robinson observed, "I'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball."
No major league team had a Black manager until Frank Robinson was hired by the Cleveland Indians in 1975, three years after Jackie Robinson's death. The absence of Black managers and front-office executives is an issue that MLB still grapples with today.
Athlete activism, then and now
Athletes still face backlash for speaking out. When NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested racism by refusing to stand during the national anthem, then-President Donald Trump said that athletes who followed Kaepernick's example "shouldn't be in the country."
In 2018, after NBA star LeBron James spoke about a racial slur that had been graffitied on his home and criticized Trump, Fox News' Laura Ingraham suggested that he "shut up and dribble."
Even so, in the past decade, athletes have become more outspoken on issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, American militarism, immigrant rights and other issues. They all stand on Robinson's shoulders.
It was Robinson's strong patriotism that led him to challenge America to live up to its ideals. He felt an obligation to use his fame to challenge the society's racial injustice. However, during his last few years--before he died of a heart attack in 1972 at age 53--he grew increasingly disillusioned with the pace of racial progress.
In his 1972 memoir, "I Never Had It Made," he wrote: "I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rachel Robinson, First Lady of Baseball, Turns 99
Rachel Robinson was not only Jackie's partner, she is also a feminist and civil rights crusader.
Jul 21, 2021
Much of what Americans know about Rachel Robinson--who turned 99 on July 19--is what they've seen in the two major Hollywood films about Jackie. She was portrayed by Ruby Dee in the 1950 film, The Jackie Robinson Story, and by Nicole Beharie in the 2013 hit movie, 42. Both films depict Rachel as Jackie's supporter, cheerleader, and helpmate, the person who comforted him when he faced abuse, and encouraged him when he was feeling discouraged.
Within and outside the baseball world, Rachel has been, in her own right, a pioneer for social justice, using her celebrity as a platform to fight for a more equal society.
This is all true, but it is an incomplete picture of this remarkable woman. Rachel Robinson was not only Jackie's partner, she is also a feminist and civil rights crusader. Within and outside the baseball world, Rachel has been, in her own right, a pioneer for social justice, using her celebrity as a platform to fight for a more equal society.
There's a wonderful scene in Ken Burns' 2016 documentary, Jackie Robinson, where Barack and Michelle Obama explain the important role that Rachel played in her husband's success on and off the baseball field.
"I think anytime you're involved in an endeavor that involves enormous stress, finding yourself questioned in terms of whether you should be where you are, to be able to go back and have refuge with someone who you know loves you and you know has your back, that's priceless," the then-President says. Michelle Obama adds: "There's nothing more important than family--than a real partnership. Which is probably what made him such a great man."
One-upped, the president nods in agreement, with a knowing smile on his face. Michelle completes her thought: "It's a sign of his character that he chose a woman who was his equal. I don't think you would've had Jackie Robinson without Rachel."
Only 50 when Jackie died in 1972 she has kept alive her husband's legacy as both an athlete and activist, including his commitment to pushing Major League Baseball to hire more people of color as managers and as executives.
In 1997, the 50th anniversary of Jackie's triumph in breaking baseball's color line, Major League Baseball announced that every team would retire Jackie's number (42) and then celebrated April 15 (the day in 1947 when Jackie played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers) by having every player wear that number.
But while the country was celebrating Jackie's accomplishments, Rachel made sure that the celebration did not divert attention from ongoing problems. "Racism is still with us and the struggle is still on," she said at the time.
When a Los Angeles Times reporter asked her if Jackie would be pleased with the status of race relations, Rachel didn't pull her punches. She said:
"No, I think he'd be very disturbed about it. We're seeing a great deal of divisiveness, a lot of hatred, a lot of tension between ethnic groups, and I think he'd be disappointed."
Thanks in part to her efforts, most of today's Major League players, managers, and executives know that they stand on the shoulders of those, like Jackie, who came before and opened doors for them. But, as Rachel observed, the progress has been limited.
In 2016, when she was 94, Rachel participated in the publicity efforts for Burns' four-hour documentary, which looks at Jackie's life through her eyes. She didn't shy away from criticizing baseball.
"There is a lot more that needs to be done, and that can be done, in terms of the hiring, the promotion," she said at one event. "We're talking about very few [black] coaches, very few managers."
In fact, the number of Black major league players athletes on major league rosters has declined precipitously--from 18.7 percent in 1981 to 7.8 percent last season. Only two of MLB's 30 managers are Black--the Astros' Dusty Baker and the Dodgers' Dave Roberts. Ken Williams, the Chicago White Sox's Executive Vice President, is the lone Black person in charge of baseball operations for any major league club. In February, MLB hired Michael Hill--a Black former minor league player and most recently the general manager for the Miami Marlins--as senior vice president of on-field operations.
In 2014, the Baseball Reliquary inducted Rachel into its Shrine of the Eternals, an alternative Hall of Fame that celebrates baseball's rebels and renegades. By doing so, the group (which is coincidentally based in Pasadena, Jackie's hometown) was acknowledging that although she didn't own a team, cover the game as a reporter, or play the game herself, she was one of the most important woman in baseball history.
Three years later, in 2017, the Baseball Hall of Fame selected her as the fourth recipient of the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, created to honor individuals who have enhanced baseball's positive impact on society. That makes her and Jackie, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962, the only husband-and-wife couple enshrined in the Cooperstown memorial.
In April, the Dodgers unveiled the first phase of a new multi-million dollar baseball complex at Gonzales Park in inner-city Compton, including a baseball field named for Rachel Robinson.
Rachel has received honorary degrees from 12 universities and received numerous awards, including the Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Equitable Life Black Achiever's Award and the Associated Black Charities Black History Makers Award. She has been invited to the White House by five presidents.
Rachel Isum was born in 1922, when African Americans comprised only four percent of Los Angeles' population. At the time, Los Angeles still had restrictive covenants, prohibiting the sale of houses to African Americans in certain neighborhoods. To get around that obstacle, Rachel's parents--Charles and Zellee--arranged for a light-skinned black man to buy a house on 36th Place on LA's predominantly white west side and then re-sell it to them. This was a risky and courageous thing to do at a time when the Ku Klux Klan had a significant presence in LA.
Rachel faced bigotry on a regular basis. For example, when she and her friends went to the movies, they were regularly directed to the balcony in the movie theater.
Rachel's father had served in World War One. On his last day of active service, he was gassed, leaving him permanently disabled and with a chronic heart condition. By the time Rachel was in high school, her father had to quit his job as a bookbinder for the Los Angeles Times, where he'd worked for 25 years.
As a result, Rachel's mother had to support the family. She took classes in baking and cake decorating and had her own business catering luncheons and dinner parties for wealthy families in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Hollywood.
Rachel worked, too. She helped her mother with her catering business, worked on Saturdays at the concession stand in the public library, and sewed baby clothes for the National Youth Administration, part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program.
Rachel graduated from Manual Arts High School in June 1940. That fall, she entered UCLA's highly selective and competitive five-year nursing program. In 1940, only five percent of all women--and less than two percent of black women--earned a college degree. But Rachel didn't let those odds get in her way.
She met Jackie in 1941 when they were both students at UCLA. They were introduced by Ray Bartlett, one of Jackie's friends from Pasadena who also went to UCLA.
Jackie was already a multi-sport campus hero by the time he met Rachel. For their first date, Jackie took Rachel to a Bruin football dinner at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA.
"I thought he'd be arrogant," Rachel later recalled. But she was mistaken. "When I met Jack, he was so humble, so thoughtful--and handsome," she said. "I thought, 'I'm glad I was wrong!'"
Much of their courtship took place at Kerckhoff Hall, the student union, where the small number of UCLA's African American students gathered in-between classes. Rachel and Jackie got engaged later that year.
While at UCLA, Rachel lived at home and commuted to the campus each day.
She also worked at night. This was during World War Two, and local industries were hiring women to do what had previously been considered "men's" jobs.
Rachel was hired as a riveter at the Lockheed Aircraft factory in LA, where they made airplanes for the war effort. She worked the night shift, drove to UCLA at dawn, changed clothes in the parking lot, and then went to class.
Rachel and Jackie promised their parents that they wouldn't get married until Rachel had completed her degree. She earned her nursing degree in June 1945. They were married the following February.
By then, Jackie had already served in the military (where he was court-martialed, and acquitted, for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus near a military base in Texas), played in the Negro Leagues, and signed a contract to play with the Dodgers' minor league team in Montreal.
Two weeks after their marriage, Rachel and Jackie left for spring training in Daytona, Florida with the Montreal Royals. Burns' documentary portrays, through Rachel's voice, the ordeal they faced dealing with the Southern Jim Crow system, including the segregated trains, buses, restaurants, and stadiums, and the hostility of many white Southerners.
To get to Daytona, they flew from LA to New Orleans. At the New Orleans airport, they were told they were being "bumped" from the plane to Florida. Jackie protested this obvious racist act to the airline attendant behind the counter.
For the next 11 years--until Jackie retired from Major League Baseball in 1957--Rachel and Jackie together endured the humiliations and bigotry, and celebrated the triumphs and accolades, of being civil rights pioneers.
Meanwhile, Rachel escaped to the Ladies Room. But there were two Ladies Rooms in the airport, right next to each other. One said "Colored Women." The other said "White Women." Rachel went into the one that said "White Women." People stared at her, but nobody stopped her.
Nine years before Rosa Parks triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rachel Robinson had performed her first act of civil disobedience.
For the next 11 years--until Jackie retired from Major League Baseball in 1957--Rachel and Jackie together endured the humiliations and bigotry, and celebrated the triumphs and accolades, of being civil rights pioneers.
Roger Wilkins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote this about Rachel:
"She was not simply the dutiful little wife. She was Jack's co-pioneer. She had to live through the death threats, endure the vile screams of the fans and watch her husband get knocked down by pitch after pitch. And because he was under the strictest discipline not to fight, spike, curse or spit back, she was the one who had to absorb everything he brought home. She was beautiful and wise and replenished his strength and courage."
In addition, she was primarily responsible for raising their three children--Jackie Junior, Sharon, and David.
While Jackie played for the Dodgers, they first lived in Brooklyn, and then in Long Island. Then they tried to buy a home in suburban Purchase, New York. After Rachel offered the asking price, the house was taken off the market, and she knew why.
In 1955, they found a plot of land they liked in Stamford, Connecticut and built a new home in that suburban community. When the news had spread that the Robinsons had bought the property, several families on the block sold their homes.
The Robinsons settled in, made friends, became active in the community. But they couldn't escape the racism.
When a white friend attempted to sponsor Jackie at the local country club, he was rejected by a majority vote. Jackie was already a bona fide national celebrity who had won the MVP award, but the white country clubbers didn't think he was good enough to play golf with them.
After Jackie retired from baseball in 1957, he began a new career in business, and expanded his involvement with the NAACP, SNCC, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other civil rights groups, participating in protest rallies, going to the South to support the student-led sit-ins, including raising money for their bail.
Meanwhile, Rachel decided to resume her professional career. This was five years before Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, ignited the women's movement. Rachel was an early feminist.
Jackie was upset by Rachel's decision to go back to school and back to work, but Rachel insisted that it was something she needed to do. Eventually, Jackie came around.
In 1959--at age 37--Rachel was admitted to the graduate program in psychiatric nursing at New York University.
After earning her master's degree, Rachel worked as a nurse-therapist and researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Rachel has continued to be an outspoken activist for social justice.
In 1965, she was hired as a professor at Yale's School of Nursing and as the nursing director at the Connecticut Mental Health Center.
When Rachel was teaching at Yale, the university asked her to join its board of trustees. Rachel said no. She told Yale: "Not unless you put another black or another woman on the board. You won't get a two-fer from me."
While working full-time, Rachel remained deeply involved in her children's education and in community activities. Beginning in 1963, Jackie and Rachel hosted their legendary jazz concerts at their home as fundraisers for jailed civil rights activists. The performers included some of the most iconic names in music, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Gerry Mulligan, and Dizzy Gillespie.
Rachel taught at Yale and ran the state mental health center for seven years, until 1972, the year that Jackie died at age 53 of diabetes and heart disease.
After Jackie's death, she took charge of running the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation. During her ten years as its president, it built more than 1,300 units of affordable housing.
In 1973, she created the Jackie Robinson Foundation. The foundation has provided scholarships to 1,450 college students. Each one gets $6,000 a year for four years, plus mentoring, summer jobs and internships. Most of these students are the first in their families to attend college. Most are students of color. They have a remarkable graduation rate of 97 percent. They've gone to Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, UCLA, and many other colleges.
Next year, the foundation will open the Jackie Robinson Museum in New York, one of Rachel's long-time dreams.
Like Jackie, she has enormous physical courage and moral integrity.
In 1997, for her 75th birthday, Rachel and a dozen family members climbed to 10,000 feet on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.
Often called the First Lady of baseball because of her resilience, courage, and remarkable achievements during Jackie's lifetime and in the 49 years since his passing. Rachel has continued to be an outspoken activist for social justice.
Keep ReadingShow Less
America's Greatest Athletes Are Standing Up, Calling This Country To Change
Despite unprecedented, multiracial demonstrations across the country protesting police violence against African Americans, the horrors keep on coming.
Sep 01, 2020
The greatest athletes in America are standing up for justice at a critical time.
Despite unprecedented, multiracial demonstrations across the country protesting police violence against African Americans, the horrors keep on coming.
Last week, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a policeman in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As the anger has grown, some of the protests have been marred by vandalism and looting. Now armed right-wing militia groups are escalating the tensions. In Kenosha, two demonstrators were murdered and one wounded by a 17-year-old Trump supporter illegally wielding an assault weapon.
It is into this cauldron that the professional basketball players of the NBA stood up, forcing a suspension of the playoffs, to support the call for justice. Their example was picked up by others--the WNBA, baseball players, tennis champions like Naomi Osaka and more.
This takes courage. Great athletes are taught to focus on their sport and to ignore their power in the culture. Owners, agents, managers and fans see them as entertainment, not as citizens or leaders.
Yet the very God-given gifts, discipline and skills that make a great athlete contribute to their capacity for leadership. In the Old Testament, little David honed his skill with a sling. When an oppressive horde led by a giant named Goliath threatened the Hebrew people, David stepped up, hurling the stone that slew the giant and saved his people.
Now America's greatest athletes are standing up, calling this country to change. They know that they will face criticism and abuse. They know that they could be risking their careers and livelihood.
When LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and the Miami Heat players stood up in response to the death of Trayvon Martin, Americans across the country took notice. The same is true now as the current athletes focus on Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake and the others they name.
They know the risks, but they also know that when they leave the court or playing field and return to their families, they are just another Black person to the police, and must worry about how to protect their sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, or even themselves. Both Sterling Brown of the Milwaukee Bucks and Thabo Sefolosha of the Houston Rockets were victims of police lawlessness.
Here the example and leadership of LeBron James has been critical. Athletes across the world look up to him. When LeBron uses his platform to speak out--even in the face of insults from the president and others--he sets a tone and an example for others. In my opinion, he uses his gifts and platform so responsibly because it is his way of thanking God by serving others.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used his gifts and platform to change the culture. Today, athletes are using their commitment to call this country to its senses.
Great athletes have often been pacesetters. When Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson stood up to racially biased and arbitrary social mores, he impacted the culture. When Joe Lewis defeated Max Schmeling, he pummeled the entire Nazi theory and racist ideology. When Jesse Owens became the world's fastest man at the Berlin Olympics, Adolf Hitler wouldn't shake his hand, but when Owens came home, he told me President Roosevelt wouldn't shake his hand either. Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier in baseball and bore the physical and psychological scars from doing it.
At the height of his career, Muhammad Ali, became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and paid the price of years stolen from his career. Every athlete should be grateful to Curt Flood for ending the reserve clause and gaining athletes the right to free agency to negotiate the best deal they could. Colin Kaepernick launched his nonviolent campaign against police killing of Black people four years ago that has cost him his career.
The athletes had to stop business as usual to gain attention. They have been in intense meetings figuring out how they can most be effective. They understand that the murders can't go on; the system must change. They are calling on others to join them. They are putting their time and their resources on the line. They've now convinced NBA owners to turn their arenas into polling places where people might vote safely.
Their actions have already had effect. It is too easy for cynical politicians and entrenched interests to turn attention from the injustice to the excesses that mar those protesting it. The players have forced our attention back to the injustice and to the core demand that Black Lives Matter. For that, they deserve our respect and our support.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular