#42- the Cultural Figure story

This Saturday, in the run up to to Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, Jackie Robinson's daughter was interviewed on Weekend Edition Saturday. She told stories about her father, her father's legacy, baseball and civil rights. It was a fantastic interview.

Sharon Robinson on Weekend Edition Saturday.

My favorite part was the story she told about her father leaving the dinner table to take a call from the Little Rock 9, who had called him for inspiration on the day before they went to school. I also found it so inspirationally, humblingly wonderful that he was surprised those brave kids would call him for strength.

This is from the website: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1157/is_4_62/ai_76402508/pg_1

Nevertheless, segregationist sentiment remained strong, and in September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus barred entry of nine black students into Little
Rock's Central High School despite the existence of an agreed upon school board plan to integrate. On television, Faubus announced that he could not vouch for the safety of the nine if violence arose in protest of their arrival. Faubus told his amazed audience that he therefore planned to call out the Arkansas national guard to turn the students away to avert bloodshed.

The NAACP, the local school board, and federal courts worked to defuse the situation and force compliance, but in the short term, Faubus was successful in doing what he wanted. True to his word, he sent state guardsmen to the high school and posted them to block the entry of the black students. In addition, a large, menacing crowd of white onlookers gathered at the school to ensure that segregation was staunchly upheld. Reluctantly, after several fruitless weeks of negotiation, Eisenhower ordered federal troops into the city and federalized the Arkansas national guard.

The president did not want to take such an extreme measure, but as a former military officer, he knew that such bold resistance to federal authority could not be tolerated if the federal union was to endure. Ironically, this radical step was undertaken by a conservative president who at heart was "a state's righter" who saw only a limited role for the federal government in most racial matters. Initially reluctant to assert federal authority, Eisenhower now was caused by what he termed "extraordinary and compelling circumstances" to mobilize federal troops to defend the rights of black citizens in the South. This was the first time federal troops were used to support black Americans since the days of Reconstruction.

Jackie Robinson had urged the President to act vigorously in this crisis and commended Eisenhower for his ultimate decision to do so. Robinson considered Eisenhower's action an appropriate response to what he charged were massive and illegal efforts by white southerners to resist integration in that region. He and other prominent black Americans wanted strong advocacy from the White House for the civil rights movement and were apprehensive about what they regarded as Eisenhower's unnecessary temporizing. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's advisers urged him to meet with a group of constructive black leaders, which included Robinson, to discuss strategies and policies.

While Robinson applauded the administration's actions in Little Rock in September 1957 to intervene on behalf of the nine black students, the following year in a letter to the President, Robinson chastised Eisenhower for his inaction and calls for black patience. Neither as patient nor as reticent as he appeared to be in his early years in baseball, the ex-ballplayer and social activist was increasingly impatient with what he regarded as Eisenhower's lack of willingness to face up to the hard facts that massive racism still existed in the South. Robinson realized that white racists would do anything to maintain segregation. Segregationists would willfully break laws in a conscious effort to physically intimidate black Americans who insisted on obtaining rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Tomorrow, I'm finding some books to put on display for Jackie Robinson Day.