Film: Baseball legend Jackie Robinson

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 2013 “42,” written and directed by Brian Hel­ geland, starring Chadwick Bosemen, Har­ rison Ford, and Nicole Beharie.

“42” is a fictionalized film biography that covers the years 1945 to 1947 in the life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, when he rose from the Kansas City Mon­ archs, a Negro League team, to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Chadwick Bose­ man, whom Helgeland cast as Robinson, bears an uncanny resemblance to the young athlete. Bosemen studied archival news clips and read countless sports ar­ ticles about Robinson. He spent endless hours playing baseball, capturing Robin­ son’s unique style.

After a successful career with the Mon­ archs, Robinson was signed by Branch Rickey (portrayed by Harrison Ford), a Bible-quoting Methodist, to play on the Montreal Royals, the first Black on the team. Later, Rickey moved him up to the major leagues’ Brooklyn Dodgers, which he owned.

Segregation and prejudice were rife at the time of Jackie Robinson’s rise in ma­ jor-league baseball, issues that are still present, despite decades-old laws and the election of a Black president. Rickey knew that signing Robinson would cre­ ate controversy—which meant publicity as well as bucks.

At one point in the film, Robinson and his wife, Rachael (Nicole Beharie), want to fly from Daytona Beach, Fla., to Pasa­ dena, Calif., where they live. In the air­ port to buy tickets, Rachael says: “That’s the first time I’ve seen that,” pointing to a “Whites Only” sign on the bathroom door. Then they’re told the flight is full as they see a white couple allowed on, so they end up taking Greyhound.

Though Robinson has experienced rac­ ism before, in the majors it is relentless. Jibes, jeers, racial slurs come not only from baseball fans and players on other teams—pitchers who bean him, infield­ ers who purposely cleat him when he reaches the bag—but from some mem­ bers of his own team, who openly ex­ press their hatred.

Robinson is neither weak nor submis­ sive. He uses logic, tact, and smarts to assert himself when refused anything he feels he has a right to as a human being.

Alan Tudyk, from the TV series, “Firefly,” plays Ben Chapman, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. When Robinson’s up at bat, Chapman throws a continuous verbal barrage of racial epithets at him. Robinson seethes, but does not react un­ til Chapman slings one so egregious that he heads for the dressing room, where out of sight he falls apart.

Robinson’s presence on the field be­ came polarizing not only in baseball but also in American society. The threat of violence was palpable for him and his fam­ ily; threatening letters were sent.

Sportswriter Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) covers his career in the Black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier.

Smith travels with and suffers the same igno­ minies as Robinson.

Smith is banned from the press box, where white reporters clack away on their typewriters, while Smith sits in the stands with his portable on his knees. Except for Ebony, established in 1945, print media was almost com­ pletely segregated; only a handful of Afri­ can Americans were journalists at major white newspapers.

Jackie Robinson advocated openly for civil rights, often alongside the Rev. Mar­ tin Luther King Jr. and became a leader in the NAACP. (King described Robinson as “a freedom rider before freedom rides.”) As important a figure as Robinson was in the movement, however, he testified against actor Paul Robeson at the Com­ mittee for Un-American Activities, fear­ ing that not complying would jeopardize his career.

He told the Committee, in part, “Every single Negro who is worth his salt is go­ ing to resent slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he’s going to use every bit of intelligence he has to stop it. This has got absolutely nothing to do with what Communists may or may not do. Blacks were stirred up long before there was a CP and will be stirred up after un­ less Jim Crow has disappeared. I haven’t any comment to make except that the statement [about Blacks refusing to fight the USSR]—if Mr. Robeson actually made it—sounds very silly to me. Negroes have too much invested in America to throw it away for a siren song sung in bass.”

In a 1963 letter to Malcolm X, Robinson wrote, “America is not perfect by a long shot, but I happen to like it here and will do all I can to help make it the kind of place where my children and theirs can live in dignity.” Yet he wrote in a 1972 biography published shortly before his death: “I cannot stand and sing the [na­ tional] anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white man’s world.”

So how far have we come since the 1940s? In 2009, Democrat Barack Obama became the first African American to run for president and win, yet he has done little to better the lives of Blacks. Today, the economic gap between Black people and whites is steadily widening. Blacks remain the last hired and the first fired. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.

Yes, Jackie Robinson became the first African American Major League base­ ball player, but the idea that he improved himself for the benefit of whites puts the burden of change on people of color rath­ er than on the institutions that, histori­ cally, have made racism and discrimina­ tion law in white America.

“42” ends on a feel-good note as Rob­ inson is celebrated wherever he goes, and kids—Black and white—imitate him on the sand lots. The film is designed to make everyone happy (except racist bigots): All is right with the world, and the sun is shining in America! But many would question whether this is the real picture of America today. n

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