Branch Rickey | 1956
Jackie Robinson (1919-72) was the first African-American permitted to play Major League baseball, America’s game, after receiving a contract of $600 (about $8,230 in 2021 dollars) per month to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, February 18, 1947. The man who facilitated that momentous color barrier being broken was the team’s president and general manager, Branch Rickey. In January 1956, Rickey offered the world a full explanation of his reasoning, best known as the “One Hundred Percent Wrong Club."
Professor of History, East Stroudsburg University
Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Character is a great thing to have in an athlete, a team. It’s a great thing. And when I wonder if there is any condonation, any explanation, anything that can be done to make an extenuating circumstance out of something that violates the right of a part of our citizenship throughout the country when I know that the Man of 1900 years ago spent His life and died for the sake of freedom, — the right to come, to go, to see, to think, to believe, to act. It is to be understood, but it is too profoundly regretted.
Education is a slow process. It may solve it. It is inevitable that this thing comes to fruition. Too many forces are working fast. This so-called little Robinson, — we call it the “Robinson Experiment,” — tremendous as it will be for Jackie to have so placed himself in relation not only to his own people in this country, but to his whole generation and to all America that he will leave the mark of fine sportsmanship and fine character. That is something that he must guard carefully. He has a responsibility there.
. . .
I am completely color-blind. I know that America is, — it’s been proven Jackie, — is more interested in the grace of a man’s swing, in the dexterity of his cutting a base, and his speed afoot, in his scientific body control, in his excellence as a competitor on the field, — America, wide and broad, and in Atlanta, and in Georgia, will become instantly more interested in those marvelous, beautiful qualities than they are in the pigmentation of a man’s skin, or indeed in the last syllable of his name. Men are coming to be regarded of value based upon their merits, and God hasten the day when Governors of our States will become sufficiently educated that they will respond to those views.
