Integrating America
Jackie Robinson, critical events and baseball black and white
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12218971 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Kelly (0000-0002-3616-1768), John D Kelly (0000-0002-7616-0321, Moscow State University of Technologies and Management named after K.G. Razumovskiy, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1011-1035 |
| Publication date | 2005-10-26 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of the History of Sport (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-3367 • E-ISSN: 1743-9035 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09523360500286742 |
| OpenAlex | W2029197755 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
Jackie Robinson, breaking baseball's colour barrier, gathered more attention than any other figure in the history of US civil rights struggles.The uncanny relationships between sports, society and politics are discoverable by pursuit of critical events, asking why specific sports events become centrally important when and where they do.As event theorists Tambiah, Das and Sahlins have emphasized, important events unfold as expressions and potential resolutions of crisis, the observed edge of change, at what Tambiah calls dialectical tension points.Events then embody much larger social relations and forces, and express, even test new resolutions.The integration of Organized Baseball was the proving ground for most US citizens for the prospect of black and white 'races' integrating into one nation.Enduring a carefully planned campaign of stoic suffering, Robinson became the first black closely observed by most white Americans, and known as one of 'us' rather than one of 'them'.Baseball took up the cudgel for Democracy, and an unassuming, but superlative Negro boy ascended the heights of excellence to prove the rightness of the experiment.And prove it in the only correct crucible for such an experiment -the crucible of white hot competition.(Joe Bostic, a leading black journalist) [1] Throughout its long history, Major League Baseball has operated under the premise that no single person is bigger than the game -no single person other than Jackie Robinson.(Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig) [2] Why is Jackie Robinson so important?In the United States, pressures favouring racial integration built massively in the 1940s.During the Second World War, the Roosevelt administration ordered non-discrimination in war-related industries.It was, in part, responding to pressure.In the spring of 1941, A
Dialectic · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Uncanny · White (mutation · American Sports and Literature · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2006 - 2021 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |