Strength for the Fight - The Life and Faith of Jackie Robinson
At a Glance
Section titled âAt a Glanceâ| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2023-07-01 |
| Journal | Journal of Sport History |
| Authors | Timothy Kelly |
| Institutions | Saint Vincent College |
Abstract
Section titled âAbstractâJackie Robinson may be the most famous baseball player in American history. Historians have written multiple academic papers, journal articles, and full-length biographies of him. Robinson himself found eager publishers for his four autobiographies. Sportswriters voted him into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball mandated that every major league team retire his number, an honor reserved only for Robinson. Hollywood produced at least two major movies about his life. Ken Burns made Robinson a central feature of a ten-volume video documentary history of baseball and then created a separate four-hour documentary focused on Robinson alone. Robinson has drawn this attention for his extraordinary baseball talent and accomplishments, his central role in integrating Major League Baseball, the work he did after retiring from baseball to advance civil rights throughout the United States, and the extraordinary personal integrity that he demonstrated throughout his adult life. His story is compelling and dramatic, and it is no wonder that historians seek to probe it from many angles.Gary Scott Smith has expanded the literature on Jackie Robinson with a new biography that explores Robinsonâs life in light of his religious faith. Smith is well poised to write this work as he has studied extensively the ways that religion has shaped the lives of many political and cultural leaders. The plethora of Robinson biographies allowed Smith to draw from a rich secondary literature, including three previous biographies that focused primarily on Robinsonâs religion and spirituality.It, therefore, may surprise readers expecting a deep exploration of Robinsonâs religious beliefs that few of the bookâs first 190 pages address Jackie Robinsonâs faith. Readers will have to make it to the conclusion to find Smithâs discussion of this subject. There is good reason for this, as Smith makes clear in those final pages. For though Robinson regularly noted that he prayed, was raised by a deeply religious mother, and affiliated formally with various congregations throughout his adulthood, he rarely went to church or discussed his personal beliefs. The subject remains elusive. Smith must extrapolate from proximate sources what Robinsonâs faith might have been. We learn, for example, about the theological beliefs and religious practices of people with whom Robinson interacted a great deal.Robinson collaborated on community building and social uplift programs with various religious leaders throughout his youth and adult life. Most important in Robinsonâs early years was his mother, Mallie, who worshipped in the African Methodist Episcopal Church for her entire life and raised Robinson in that tradition. Early on, Robinson benefited from the attention that Karl Downs gave to him when Downs was a youth minister in Pasadena, California. Downs later employed Robinson in Austin, Texas. We learn a great deal about Branch Rickeyâs faith and religiosity and that Rickey remained a significant part of Robinsonâs life until Rickeyâs 1965 death. Robinson also had a long relationship with Martin Luther King Jr., a relationship that frayed over Kingâs denunciation of the Vietnam War at a time when Robinsonâs son served in the military. Perhaps most important in Robinsonâs last years was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, with whom Robinson worked on the Chicago-based Operation Breadbasket and People United to Serve Humanity.Smith concludes from what he knows about the faith and religious orientations of these people that Robinson was not an evangelical Christian with a faith centered on his own personal salvation. He was more at home in the mainline Protestant tradition that dominated the American religious landscape through the middle of the twentieth century, and the social justice causes that these churches embraced. Robinson and his wife lived for years in the Connecticut suburb of Stamford and belonged to a Congregational and then United Church of Christ congregation there.If Robinson rarely discussed the contours of his faith and noted in one of his regular newspaper columns that he âcould not claim to be a deeply religious manâ (194), he did identify as Christian and cited his reliance on God regularly. He noted in particular that God afforded him the strength to endure and, at times, push back against the racial bigotry and discrimination that he encountered on the baseball diamond and in his life after he retired. Smith sees this as the core of Robinsonâs faith and thus titles the book Strength for the Fight.That Robinsonâs fight required strength is beyond dispute, as he battled consistently to secure a foothold in society for African Americans to thrive. Smith writes persuasively that Robinson himself saw his belief in God as a source of that strength, even as the nature of that belief remains elusive.