They say there are no stupid questions in journalism, and I tested that theory as a college newspaper reporter when I asked an MLB legend about the even more legendary Jackie Robinson. Was Robinson picked over more talented Negro League players to integrate baseball, I asked eight-time All-Star and former National League President Bill White, “because he was so nice?”
“Nice?!” he shot back. “Jackie wasn’t nice! Jackie was tough!”
White apparently hadn’t gotten the memo about there being no stupid questions. “Nice?!” he shot back. “Jackie wasn’t nice! Jackie was tough!”
I’d like to believe that my question was not only a function of my youth but also evidence of the way that civil rights history has been taught in the United States. From Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr. to John Lewis and Robinson, we’ve generally been fed a fairy-tale narrative that pits nice, perfectly pleasant and unoffending Black heroes against cartoonishly mean and ignorant white people. And, as in all fairy tales, the nice folks inevitably win.
On Tuesday, as it has since 2004, Major League Baseball is commemorating the day 78 years ago that Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But this Jackie Robinson Day lands in the middle of a conservative plot to eliminate talk of pioneering Black heroism and, more specifically, to eliminate mention of the villainy from white people that made Black heroism necessary.
The way that the history of American racism, and Black people’s response to it, has generally been taught is deeply flawed. It’s the equivalent of promoting PG-rated versions of R-rated historical events. But now the Trump administration is on a campaign to outright replace the truth of our history with deliberate distortions and lies, give a G rating to even the most disturbing American history, and essentially outlaw the telling of the truth.
Consider a recent edit the National Park Service made to a webpage that niceifies Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad had been described as promoting “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight” but was edited to suggest that it was a part of the “American civil rights movement” that bridged “the divides of race.”
The hell it did.
The previous language was restored — it was deleted by mistake, the park service stated — but a descendant of Tubman was right to ask, “Why do they want to erase our Black history? Why are we such a threat to certain Americans?” It wasn’t hard to answer her own question: “The answer is racism.” On one page managed by the National Park Service, according to The Washington Post, the phrase “enslaved African Americans” was changed to “enslaved workers.”
As mentioned in a previous column, somebody at the Defense Department, reportedly responding to President Donald Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI fixation, briefly removed a webpage that described Robinson’s time in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant.
Years before Rosa Parks would do the same, Robinson had refused a bus driver’s order that he move to the back of a bus. Not only did he not accept the humiliation of being assigned to the rear, but in an argument that ensued, he told another soldier, “If you call me a n—– again, I’ll break you in two.”
Maybe if I’d heard more about that Robinson when I was a child, then I’d have known how foolish it was to describe him as “nice.”
When my family visited the Jackie Robinson Museum in Lower Manhattan last week, we saw a quote on display that reveals the discipline — or, as White put it, the toughness — that Robinson maintained. Not just for his sake, but for his people’s sake.
Maybe if I’d heard more about that Robinson, then I’d have known how foolish it was to describe him as “nice.”
Less than six months into his time in the majors, he told a writer for the New York Post, “Plenty of times, I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin…If I lost my chance, the Negro might lose his chance, too… The whole thing was bigger than me.”
The museum portrays him as a complicated figure who didn’t fit neatly into any of the boxes that we’ve placed Black civil rights activists into. He was too conservative for some Black people, too outspoken for some white people, and ultimately, it seems, it could be as hard to pin him down as it was to tag him out during a steal attempt. Malcolm X, who had been a fan, came to believe Robinson was too accommodating to white people, but Robinson would later stand with the Black Panthers in Brooklyn, New York, as they challenged police brutality.
In ballparks across the country today, we’ll see players wearing No. 42 and we’ll see glowing tributes about Robinson’s contributions to the game and to the country. There may be some mention of his legendary toughness in the game. If so, I hope it’s made clear how tough he was off the diamond, too — and how the evils of racism and segregation made his toughness necessary.
