Gregory Freeman: Robinson Took More Heat So Others Would Take Less. P-D 5/181997

Headline: ROBINSON TOOK MORE HEAT SO OTHERS WOULD TAKE LESS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., May 18, 1997
Section: NEWS ANALYSIS, Page: 5B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

When Jackie Roosevelt Robinson first came to St. Louis in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform in 1947, this was a much different place than it is today.
   Segregation was commonplace. Blacks and whites didn't mingle. Discrimination was an everyday occurrence. Bennie G. Rodgers remembers those days well.
   Rodgers was the city editor of the St. Louis American. He remembers the slights at the old Sportsman's Park before Robinson broke the color line. Some were large. Others were small. All of them hurt.
   "The Cardinals ignored black women on Ladies' Day, " Rodgers recalled. "Ladies got in free on those days. Except for black women. They weren't allowed in at all."
   He remembers other indignities as well. Blacks couldn't get reserved seats for the games. They couldn't purchase box seats or sit in the grandstand. Black sportswriters weren't issued press passes for the games.

When Robinson came here to play his first game against the Cardinals, he was unable to stay at the Chase Hotel with his teammates. Hotel officials later told him he could stay there as long as he didn't go to the hotel's lounge or restaurant, Rodgers said.
Robinson instead chose to stay at the black-owned DeLuxe Hotel, at Olive Street and Pendleton Avenue, owned by Charles Abernathy and his wife, Rose. "That's where all the black athletes stayed then, " Rodgers said. "Joe Louis, Roy Campanella, Satchel Paige, all of them."
Rodgers remembers Robinson's first appearance here. "I thought it was a hell of a great thing, " he said. "Before that, people were saying that blacks couldn't hit or pitch. Jackie Robinson changed all that."

Robinson's appearance here gradually opened many doors here, Rodgers believes.
"Everything was strictly segregated in sports here before he came along, " Rodgers said. "He didn't just break the barrier in professional baseball, he also helped break a lot of other barriers that blacks faced when it came to sports."

Leroy Witherspoon doesn't necessarily agree. "Jackie Robinson didn't change things that much here, " he said. "When the games were over, we went back to our segregated neighborhoods and lived our segregated lives. Things didn't change."
   But Witherspoon, a retired cartographer, agrees that when Robinson played here, it was a big deal among black St. Louisans. "When Jackie Robinson played, it was like a picnic for a lot of folks, " he said. "People made picnic baskets and took them to the park."
   They cheered for neither the Cardinals nor the Dodgers. "Folks were cheering for Jackie Robinson, " he said.
   Robinson's appearances increased attendance at the games. "Folks used to come up here from Mississippi, Tennessee, Southern Illinois, Kentucky - all to see Jackie Robinson play. People were proud of him and excited to see him.
   "A game with Jackie Robinson was as popular as a Joe Louis fight."
   After the games, many blacks would return to their neighborhoods and have makeshift parades, complete with tin cans and washtubs, said Witherspoon, who attended "quite a few" games in which Robinson played. "It was an exciting thing."
   For blacks here, a Robinson visit to St. Louis was more than an appearance, it was a phenomenon. Robinson was treated as a hero, a king, bigger than any of today's baseball stars.
   Robinson's achievement was "a big break for all of us, " Witherspoon said.

Not everyone is enamored with Robinson today. Some suggest that he was an "Uncle Tom" because he took a great deal of taunting from white crowds and didn't respond to it.
Rodgers disagrees. "Somebody had to lead the way, and that was part of the price to pay for that, " he said. "He did what he had to do."

The Rev. John Doggett Jr. was Robinson's family pastor between 1949 and 1953, in Pasadena, Calif. Doggett, who now lives here, said Robinson was told by Dodgers manager Branch Rickey that it would be difficult but that he would have to be tough and take the taunting, that it was the only way the color line in baseball would be broken.
"He took it silently because he had to, " Doggett said. "And that wasn't easy. They called him `Tar Baby, ' they threw black cats on the field when he was playing, opposing teams would make all kinds of cat calls.
"But Jackie, like his family, had a deep religious commitment, and I think that's what allowed him to take it and keep moving, " Doggett said.

Robinson took it, and generations of black baseball players followed. Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee - all owe a debt of gratitude to Robinson.
Fifty years after Robinson played here, segregation is no longer the law of the land. Blacks and whites work in the same offices, often doing the same jobs. Black and white students attend the same schools. Racism still exists, but older people insist that times are better now than they were then.
Part of the thanks for that goes to Jackie Robinson - the man who broke the color line.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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