Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (31 January 1919 – 24 October 1972) was a baseball player who became the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era in 1947.
Sourced
- I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.
- Statement to teammates on the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, as quoted in The Impact and Legacy Years, 1941, 1947, 1968 (2000) by Fred Pulis, p. 100
- A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
- I Never Had It Made : An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson (1972) by Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett, Epilogue
- 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.
- On his 1944 acquittal from a court-martial for refusing to go the back of a military bus upon boarding it near Fort Hood, TX on July 6, 1944. Quoted in "The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson" by Jules Tygiel in American Heritage magazine Vol. 35, Issue 5 ( August/September 1984)
Quotes about Robinson
- This is a particularly good year to campaign against the evils of bigotry, prejudice, and race hatred because we have witnessed the defeat of enemies who tried to found a mastery of the world upon such cruel and fallacious policy.
- On the coming arrival of Jackie Robinson into the minor leagues, in "Brotherhood Week" in The New York Times (17 February 1946)
- I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.
- Leo Durocher, as quoted in Out of the Shadows : African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson (2005) by Bill Kirwin
- When things look dark, void, and altogether hopeless to the colored youth of America..., when they need an inspiring thought that should urge them onward to the road of achievement despite forbidding obstacles, they will only need to read of and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson.
- From the Kansas City Call, quoted in Ken Burn's 1994 documentary Baseball