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HONORABLE CHARLES B. RANGEL
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007

RECOGNIZING JACKIE ROBINSON DAY

Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate Jackie Robinson, a sports trailblazer, civil rights activist, veteran, and great American and to enter into the record an article from the New York Daily News by Lisa Olson entitled ``Barriers Still Need Breaking--Up to us to complete Robinson's great work.''

Long before Jackie Robinson stood up to racism and smashed through the barriers of segregation in Major League Baseball on April 15, 1947, he was fighting for equality. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant. In July of 1944, he refused to sit in the back of a segregated military bus and although a court martial was issued for insubordination, he was found not guilty and honorably discharged in November of that same year. The courage displayed during this incident, as well as his commitment to the Army, helped prepare him for the battlefield of discrimination he would encounter on the baseball diamond.

Despite the hostility of opponents and even teammates, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson had the courage to join the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first Black man to play in baseball's major leagues. He knew that excellence was the calling and he proved his skill and talent on the baseball field. With tremendous pressure and opposition from fans and even some teammates, he handled himself with grace on and off the field. Because of his commitment and determination to be the best in the face of prejudice, African American and other minority athletes have been afforded the opportunity to compete in professional sports today.

Jackie Robinson received numerous awards and honors during his extraordinary career, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His legacy and outstanding contribution to Major League Baseball and America is representative of what America is all about. This country is about opportunity, diversity, and humility. I applaud Jackie Robinson for leaving a legacy of excellence, breaking down segregation, and inspiring people to strive for the best.

[From the Daily News]

They don't have to dress in the broom closet. They can drink from the same water fountains, eat at the same buffet, stay in the same ritzy hotels, swim in the same pools.

It's almost incomprehensible to imagine the America that greeted and jeered Jackie Robinson 60 years ago yesterday, when he bounded out of the dugout at Ebbets Field and became the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modem era.

There were racial slurs and despicable letters, flying cleats and death threats, opponents who turned their back on him and Brooklyn Dodger teammates who wouldn't sit near him. We blithely toss around the words ``courage'' and ``hero'' far too often these days, but they can't be used enough to describe Jackie Robinson. MLB retired his No. 42 on April 15, 1997, the 50th anniversary of Robinson's major league debut, and temporarily suspended it yesterday, a serendipitous gesture that coincided with yet another hit to the American conscience.

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Ken Griffey Jr. was the first contemporary player to push for the movement, to ask commissioner Bud Selig for permission to honor Robinson by wearing No. 42. Griffey, who donned six different jerseys in the Reds' game against the Cubs, told reporters, ``I think a lot of people wouldn't be in this locker room if it wasn't for what he did.''

More than 200 players and managers joined the tribute, and there was No. 42 on the back of every Dodger last night, and on the Cardinals' Albert Pujols as he tipped his cap, Robinson-style, while crossing the plate after belting a home run, and on Arizona's Tony Clark as he swatted two of his own, and on Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia as he struck out 10 White Sox and then talked about how he wanted to make sure he represented Robinson's legacy with grace and class.

There was Dontrelle Willis, an All-Star, a 20-game winner, saying wearing No. 42 was ``the highest honor I've ever received in my life.'' There was Chris Young, Padre starter and Princeton graduate, recalling how he wrote his senior thesis on Robinson while sitting in the back of the bus as his Class A team, the Hickory Crawdads, traveled the South Atlantic League roads.

Young took America's pulse by analyzing newspaper reports, both before Robinson broke the color barrier and after. ``I observed there was significant improvement in the attitude of the media toward African-Americans. Not from negative to positive so much as negative to neutral,'' Young told ESPN The Magazine. ``I excluded sports, but prior to Robinson breaking the color line, you'd see reporters frequently using expressions like `a Negro hoodlum' in their stories. I noticed coverage that was much more neutral after the integration of baseball.''

And there was the Twins' Torii Hunter, pulling his black socks high and dropping into a curling slide as he safely nailed home on the same day his op-ed piece appeared in the Pioneer Press. ``You don't have to be African-American to know what (Robinson) went through. You've just got to be a smart person or a person who knows what pain is like,'' Hunter wrote. ``For the past 10 years, I've been called the N-word, like, 20 times. Not in Minnesota. In Kansas City. In Boston.''

Clearly we haven't yet demolished the racial barrier, or wiped out negative language. Sixty years after Robinson authored the most seminal moment in American sports history, Hunter is still called the N-word, and the Rutgers women's basketball team gets bombarded with hateful E-mails simply because it had the misfortune of being caught in the maelstrom created by Don Imus' nasty mouth.

In August 1945, in a conversation now cemented in American lore, Dodger president Branch Rickey told Robinson, ``I know you're a good ballplayer. What I don't know is whether you have the guts.''

``Mr. Rickey,'' Robinson asked, ``are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?''

``Robinson, I'm looking for a ballplayer with enough guts not to fight back,'' Rickey said, and thus an unspoken pact was sealed.

Robinson altered the complexion of our pastime and forced Americans to understand blacks could be equal with whites. How shocking, how depressing, that 60 years later, not everyone seems to get it.

``The course of history probably would have changed had he quit because he was the smartest of the Negro League players,'' Hunter wrote. ``This was a guy who went to UCLA and played four sports in college. He had an education. If he had quit--the guy who was supposed to be the strongest of the Negro League and the smartest of the Negro League--why go get the others? They wouldn't be able to handle it if he couldn't handle it.''

They took No. 42 out of retirement and put it on their backs yesterday, black and white and Latino and Asian players proudly wearing the digits. In clubhouses and stadium seats all across the land, stories were repeated about how Pee Wee Reese, a white shortstop from Louisville, once draped an arm over Robinson's shoulder in a silent show of support. It ought to be Jackie Robinson Day every day.