![]() ![]() ![]() The girl’s mother called her husband back into the house.ġ0. An 8-year-old Robinson got into a rock fight with an adult neighbor who was angry that Robinson called his daughter “a cracker” after she repeatedly shouted the N-word at him. The Robinsons endured a cross burning on their lawn, a petition from white residents demanding they leave and neighbors who tried to buy them out.ĩ. In other words, for every racist, there is a Branch Rickey.īack in the late 194os, given his accomplishment and.8. In America, for every exclusionary bigot there is a man who is fair and humane, a man who will judge Jackie solely on his performance between the foul lines. ![]() And here he is, playing major-league baseball. If you believe otherwise, just look at Jackie Robinson. But the scenario stresses that, in due course, fairness will prevail. ![]() (6) As it highlights Robinson's struggle, the film acknowledges the reality of racism in America. All the film's makers are Caucasian, and the individual most responsible for its content is Branch Rickey, the Dodgers general manager and powerbroker who signed Jackie and brought him to Brooklyn. This same value system exists in The Jackie Robinson Story. They are baited by racist white villains and supported/rescued by fair-minded white heroes. Even though they are more three-dimensional than the stereotypical Stepin Fetchit, and are as complex and tormented as Caucasian characters, they are portrayed through the sensibilities of white screenwriters and directors-and, as in Body and Soul, they are portrayed in relation to Caucasian characters. (4) But the era's other progressive, well-intentioned films-for example, Intruder in the Dust, Home of the Brave, and Lost Boundaries, all released in 1949-feature sympathetic, victimized black characters who exist entirely in Caucasian worlds. When Ben talks of what it felt like to strut down Harlem's Lenox Avenue after winning a fight, there at least is the acknowledgement that he thrived within a community of his own. (3) Body and Soul (1947), a classic boxing film, features an African American supporting character-an ex-champion named Ben Chaplin (Canada Lee) who is articulate, soulful, and respected by the main character, Charlie Davis (John Garfield). (2)Īnd Hollywood-after years of marginalizing African American characters as mammies, housemaids, janitors, and Pullman porters, who comically wrecked the English language-finally began acknowledging that racism was intrinsic to the American experience. No one could foretell the scope of the demand by black Americans to share equal rights with white Americans. Board of Education and the signing of the Voting Rights Act into law were respectively four and fifteen years in the future. had recently received his BA from Morehouse College and was a first-year student at Crozer Theological Seminary. When it was released in 1950, 21-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. The Jackie Robinson Story is very much a product of its era: the dawn of the civil rights movement. Three years after debuting with the Dodgers, Jackie himself starred in The Jackie Robinson Story, a Hollywood life story that deals with issues which transcend singles, doubles, and dingers, making the team and winning the big game. Lee's film would not have been the first Robinson biopic. In the mid-199os, Spike Lee attempted to mount a celluloid biography of the Brooklyn Dodgers legend who, as a twenty-eight-year-old rookie in 1947, integrated Major League Baseball (MLB). The "Jackie" in question is Jackie Robinson. ![]()
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