Arnold Rampersad

Jackie Robinson has been a longtime hero of mine for his heroic pride and stoicism as he became the first black man in the major leagues (this century, at least. The 19th century had black players in the majors). But this book showed me in a moving and well-told fashion how much more there is to admire about the man, for his strength of character and pride, and his efforts to help his race after he left baseball. This author wrote another biography about another hero of mine, Arthur Ashe. show more Arthur Ashe strikes me as a warmer and more likeable man, but nothing he went through compares to what Jackie Robinson suffered to break the color barrier in baseball. show less

“Jackie Robinson, Negro outspoken.” That’s how the first black man allowed to play twentieth-century major league baseball identified himself. Ask me and I’ll say, modern American sport can’t pretend to have existed until the day he took his position on the field wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.

Robinson’s life became important beyond sport because his emergence in the white major leagues served as a symbol for the fight against policies supporting racial segregation. Arguments show more for those policies were weird. An example: Pasadena, the city where Robinson grew up in California, claimed that its municipal pool had to be segregated because “swimming offered the opportunity of certain intimacies like marriage and the races should be separated.” If one wished to support a claim that white folk are too witless to be equal, this would be a good start. After years in court Pasadena lost that fight. The city’s reaction was to close the pool and thereby prove that no court could prevent it from serving all its citizens badly.

Author Arnold Rampersad is good at backgrounding Robinson’s athletic history with the events and social currents of the time. He excels at describing Robinson’s life after baseball, especially when detailing Jack’s activity in Republican Party politics. Richard Nixon and Robinson got on well for many years although JR eventually turned against him, exasperated by the Nixon we all know about today. I would like to have learned Robinson’s opinions about the “Great Society” programs instituted during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, programs which changed the U.S. political landscape and became a source of some policies still spurring resentment among substantial numbers of white people, but this isn’t discussed.

Some of the book’s statements aren’t accurate, as when Luke Easter is called a young player (Easter was 34 as a rookie). That’s a minor error but here’s one that isn’t. When discussing one of Robinson’s teammates, Rampersad states that “In 1947, refusing to play with a black man, [Bobby] Bragan was traded…from the Dodgers.” No, he wasn’t. Bragan did request the trade for this reason but the Dodgers kept him. In getting this wrong, the author misses a nice chance to illustrate Robinson’s positive impact: Bobby’s attitudes changed because of Jackie, and years later the great Henry Aaron, in his autobiography, would speak warmly of Bragan’s tenure as manager of the Braves.

Quibbles aside, Jackie Robinson: A Biography is an essential book for fans keenly interested in baseball of the 1940s and 50s and it will profit readers wishing to learn more about how the politics of color changed during Robinson’s life. He was a man whose dynamism transformed events on the baseball diamond. Energetic in retirement despite deteriorating health, he endeavored as businessman, columnist, civil rights lobbyist/spokesman, family man, and faithful husband to transform others’ lives off it. show less

This is a masterful biography - probably the best I've read in recent years - of the author of Invisible Man, one of the unforgettable novels of the past century. It details Ellison’s eventful early life and educational experiences and pursuit of the craft of writing, but also provides a frank appraisal of his increasingly conservative attitudes and self-interested character later in life. Highly recommended as a uniquely American 20th-century biography.

Starting with Ellison's hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama, Rampersad documents his improbable, painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene with his epochal novel Invisible Man. With scorching honesty but also fairness and compassion, the author lays bare his subject's troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people around him. This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar example of show more literary biography. show less