Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America

In Chapter 4, Sharon uses an extolling and humbling tone. Her list of Jackie’s athletic accomplishments reads like a glorious highlight reel:

By senior year, he was named the best all-around athlete on the West Coast. He twice led the Pacific Coast Conference in basketball scoring, won the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Golf Championship, and reached the National Negro Tennis Tournament semifinals. But, perhaps the most significant thing to happen to Dad that year was meeting Rachel Annetta Isum…my mom (18).

This passage highlights Jackie’s diverse skillset. He excelled in multiple sports, and Sharon doesn’t want to shortchange her father. However, the final sentence makes Jackie more relatable and reinforces Sharon’s stated goal in the book: What matters isn’t Jackie’s sports record but how he lived his life and impacted others. His relationship with Rachel was the “most significant thing” because it had meaning that sports statistics couldn’t measure.

Sharon continues to juxtapose Jackie’s life with historical events. While the US was at war with several countries led by racist and antisemitic Nazi Germany, Jackie was in Texas fighting racism. Sharon doesn’t explicate the dynamic, but proximity alludes to a tension that Black people like Jackie felt and voiced. In A People’s History of the United States (1980), Howard Zinn illuminates the dissonance of World War II, quoting Black soldiers who wondered why they had to fight lethal bigotry in Europe but tolerate it in the US.

Sharon presents Roosevelt and Truman as allies of racial progress but omits unsavory facts about them. Roosevelt made it difficult for Black people to receive government benefits, and he displaced Japanese people on the West Coast, putting them in concentration camps. Regarding Truman, Sharon doesn’t note that he dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan to formally end World War II. By omitting negative details, Sharon creates a positive portrait of the former presidents. Had she included their harmful policies, she would have brought additional nuance to the theme of The Different Methods to Combat Racism. Common criticisms of contemporary activists are that activism is overly concerned with purity and that too much emphasis is put on words rather than action. Truman’s and Roosevelt’s stories reveal that change happens by working with people who don’t have a perfect record of battling racism. Jackie didn’t reject MLB due to its racist past and present; instead, he joined it and worked to change it.

Sharon uses juxtaposition again when comparing MLB with the Negro Leagues: “Salaries were lower in the Negro Leagues, the schedules were less structured, and when the teams traveled south, they were forced to follow Jim Crow laws” (22). As the Bucknell University study on MLB contracts reveals, MLB players didn’t have exorbitant salaries in Jackie’s time. MLB players had grueling schedules—playing more than 150 games and wearing wool uniforms in the middle of summer. Moreover, when Jackie joined the Dodgers, he had to “follow” racist laws. Both leagues exploited their players, but MLB offered a much larger platform for Jackie, who used it to his advantage.

MLB’s integration thematically represents The Tension Between Activism and Capitalism. Rickey countered segregation and profited from the change. Sharon isn’t naive about Rickey’s goals. After noting Rickey’s belief in equality, Sharon adds, “[H]e wanted to build the strongest team that would win games and excite the fans. Rickey knew that the talent pool in the Negro Leagues was too tempting for a smart businessman to ignore” (27). The Dodgers were Rickey’s product, and rejecting the Black “talent pool” limited growth. Black players like Jackie captured fans’ interest, making Rickey’s team more intriguing and profitable. Winning, too, increased profits. Jackie helped lead the Dodgers to multiple World Series appearances. The championship games buttressed the Dodgers’ bottom line, and the additional games earned the players more money.

Sharon presents Jackie and Rickey as allies and antagonists: “Branch Rickey and my dad eyed each other cautiously during the warm-up discussion” (28). The wary atmosphere circles back to activism and capitalism. Rickey’s motives weren’t exclusively philanthropic, and Jackie saw the proposal as a mixture of business and activism. The antagonism continued with Rickey playing the role of racist fans and teammates to ensure that Jackie could control his emotions when confronting racism on the field. This thematically represents Change Through Persistence. Had Jackie screamed or fought back, he wouldn’t have created change. By not responding, he rose above racism and conveyed that racist people were unworthy of engagement.