Review: First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson

Edited by Michael G. Long. Times Books, 2007.

By now, everyone — baseball fan or not — knows what a remarkable man Jackie Robinson was. In addition to his superior ability on the diamond and the responsibilities inherent in being the first African-American to break baseball’s notorious color line, he continued his work for civil rights long after retirement. The correspondence with politicians, religious and leaders, and just plain folks in this collection is evidence of the remarkable man who broke the stereotypes of the inarticulate dumb jock, regardless of race, as well.

Robinson was as unafraid to face down a letter-writer as he was a pitcher and he didn’t care if the views he expressed were popular or not. In response to a lengthy screed written by Malcolm X in a 1963 piece in The Amsterdam News, he unreservedly chastised the Black advocate as he defended his choices in his relationships with white businessmen such as Branch Rickey and the management of Chock Full O’Nuts, where Robinson was employed after leaving baseball.

One problem I have with books of this nature lies is the admittedly difficult editing process. Long, an associate professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvanua, acknowledges the shortcomings of the process. How far does one go to get the point across, how much of the original letter — with its grammatical mistakes and misspellings — to include? One can never truly get into the mind of the original writer, who one might assume often self-edited his work, if only in his mind.

Rickey chose Robinson as “The First” because he knew he would be a “good citizen.” First Class Citizenship is an admirable memorial to Robinson as a far-ahead thinker on the battlefield of sport as well as the larger battlefield of the struggle for civil rights.