"... I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag"

[bigtree]

ACLU? @ACLU 13h13 hours ago

"... I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world." - Jackie Robinson, 1972


...from his 1972 autobiography, 'I Never Had It Made.'

There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. Just wow... how appropriate in light of recent events.

[roscoeroscoe]

2. Truth

Hurts

[DK504]

3. Despite the struggles Mr. Robinson had

as the best baseball player in baseball in his time, he still was treated as 'the help'. While he was the ever gracious, well spoken man and had to stand at the back of the bus.

And still white people can't seem to figure it out. How sad is it we are still grunting cavemen.

[roamer65]

4. Whites are a distinct minority of the world's population.

We had better learn a little humility or the future will not be kind to us.

[mountain grammy]

5. Every American should watch the film 42.

Sometimes Hollywood tells the story very well.

[luvtheGWN]

6. Only when he was in the U.S.

He and his wife were treated as equals when he played in Montreal. According to her, it was an eye-opening experience.