Silent No Longer: The Outspoken Jackie Robinson

The eyes of Abraham Lincoln gazed down from a portrait on the paneled walls inside the executive offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club as Branch Rickey fire-hosed a torrent of racial slurs at Jackie Robinson. The president and general manager of the Dodgers had little doubt that the young ballplayer on the other side of his mahogany desk had the bat, glove and speed to make it in the big leagues, but temperament—not talent—was the point of this evaluation on August 28, 1945. Rickey needed to know whether this grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper could absorb the abuse that would await as the 20th century’s first African American major leaguer.

For three hours, Rickey role-played countless scenarios in which the Negro Leaguer might encounter racial hostility on and off the field to see how he would handle it. “They’ll taunt you and goad you,” Rickey warned. “They’ll do anything to make you react. They’ll try to provoke a race riot in the ballpark. This is the way to prove to the public that a Negro should not be allowed in the major leagues.”