In Our Lifetime...

We have been enjoying a set of cd’s on Broadway Shows—you guessed it, a gift from Mel. With the dismal summer TV schedule it has been a bright spot to view the history of Broadway theatre from the beginning to present. And when they get to the late forties, fifties and sixties, and when we see the wonderful plays that were written and performed in this period, plays that we saw and enjoyed, we both said “and to think these were created in our lifetime.” There have been many thousands of inventions, activities, changes in social, religious and social structures in the past 74 years.

The “in our lifetime” musings stayed with me and it made me think of another significant happening in our lifetime. It is related to baseball. When I was fourteen I was a big fan and knew the names of most of the players and listened to the games on the radio. (It wasn’t until the next year that television came to New Orleans). A lot of the following info comes from a column by George Will that I tore out of the paper a few weeks ago. I disagree with George Will 98% of the time, but every now and then he writes something nonpolitical that I enjoy. Actually, Will got most of the information for his column from a new book by Jonathan Eig, Opening Day, The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season.

Sixty years ago on April 15, 1947 there were 400 players in major league baseball. The next day there were 399 white players and one black. Branch Ricky, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers had the courage to hire Jackie Robinson, the first Negro in major league baseball. When Jackie was leaving to go to the stadium he told his wife, if you have trouble picking me out I’ll be wearing number 42. It turns out that number 42 is the only number that has been retired by every team in the majors.

Of course his entrance into the majors did not go without incidence. The famous announcer of the Dodgers, Red Barber, threatened to quit, but later changed his mind. Some of his own team shunned him not to mention the abuse he received from opposing teams. Although the worst abuse seemed to come from “southern boys” it was a southern boy and teammate Pee Wee Reese from Kentucky who had never shaken hands with a black person ran across the field on a day when the abuse from the Cincinnati Reds was particularly bad, and patted Jackie on the shoulder. This simple gesture started the thaw and of course Jackie’s great playing didn’t hurt. He played 12 years for the Dodgers. A great player, a great man. He had been a four sport letterman at UCLA , lieutenant in the army, and in 1944, 11 years before Rosa Parks, Lt. Robinson refused to move to the back of the bus at Fort Hood, Texas.

Reading the above reminds me of two other stories that also prove that racial prejudice was not limited to the south.

When I worked at Shell we had an African American co-worker who was as funny as any comic on TV. His stories about his family kept us laughing. Except one day he told a story that brought tears to his eyes. He was in the army, probably around 1950, and his outfit went to a camp in Virginia, close to DC, for artillery practice. After a week of firing the big guns they were finished and the Captain asked for volunteers to stay a few extra days to comb the entire area looking for shells that failed to go off. A very dangerous assignment. So Raymond and seven white guys spent several days cleaning up the area. When they finished they were heading back to their Post and stopped at a restaurant outside of DC to get some food with money the army had given them. They placed their order and after a while they brought out seven plates of food and gave a paper bag to Raymond and told him he had to eat outside since blacks were not allowed to eat in the restaurant. I’m sure you can appreciate how emotional it is to hear a story like this from the lips of the person who lived it. The one redeeming thing about this story is that his buddies walked out the restaurant with him.

I had a similar and personal experience when I was in the Army in 1956. I had finished the school I attended at Ft. Devens in the Boston area and was about to go to Asmara in Ethiopia. Everyone who was going overseas was sent to Fr. Dix in New Jersey to apply for their passport in New York, wait there until they received it and finally shipped-out to various destinations.

We had about twenty of us, including two blacks, who were going from Boston to New Jersey on an Army bus and for some unknown reason they put me in charge. About the only duty I had was to pay for the one meal we had along the way. They gave me a list of two restaurants to choose from and told me I had to choose between the two since some restaurants along the way didn’t serve blacks. This was 1956!

Dad