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| Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey |
“42” is a fictional film biography written and directed by Brian Helgeland, starring Chadwick
Boseman, Harrison Ford, and Nicole
Beharie. It covers the years 1945
to 1947 in the life of baseball legend, Jackie Robinson, when he rose from the
Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League team, to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Chadwick
Boseman, whom Helgeland cast as Robinson, bears an uncanny resemblance to the young
athlete. Boseman studied archival news
clips, read countless sports articles about Robinson. He spent endless hours playing baseball, capturing
his unique style.
After a successful career with the Monarchs, Robinson was signed
by Branch Rickey, a Bible quoting Methodist (played by Harrison Ford, now in
his grumpy-old-man stage), to play on the
all white Canadian Montreal Royals, the first Black on the team. Later, Rickey moved him up to the Major League’s
Brooklyn Dodgers, which he owned.
Segregation
and prejudice were rife at the time of Robinson’s rise in major league
baseball, issues which are still present, despite decades-old laws and the
election of a Black president. Yet Rickey
knew that signing Robinson would create controversy, which meant publicity as well
as bucks. Christopher Meloni (Law and
Order) plays a convincing Leo Durocher, the team’s manager, who was at odds
with Rickey about Robinson, as was Rickey’s right-hand man, Harold (T.R. Night
of The Good Wife). At one point in the film, Robinson and his
wife, Rachael (Nicole Beharie), want to fly from Daytona Beach, Florida to
Pasadena, California, where they live.
In the airport to buy tickets, Rachael says: “That’s the first time I’ve
seen that,” pointing to a “Whites Only” sign on the bathroom door. Then they’re told the flight is full as they
see a white couple allowed on, so they end up taking Greyhound.
Though
Robinson has experienced racism, in the majors it is relentless. Jibes, jeers,
racial slurs come not only from baseball fans and players on other teams-
pitchers who bean him, basemen who purposely cleat him when he reaches the bag,
but from some members of his own team, who openly express their hatred.
Many team
members were from the South and thought nothing of their despicable treatment
of Blacks. It was how you were raised. Some
threaten to quit if Robinson stays, especially when denied entry into hotels
that once had welcomed the Dodgers. Durocher
tells them, "I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has
stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays.
What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the
money, I will see that you are all traded." Robinson is neither weak nor submissive. He uses logic, tact, and smarts to assert
himself when refused anything he feels he has a right to as a human being, and
rarely gets physical or emotional.
Alan Tudyk,
from the TV series, Firefly, plays Ben
Chapman the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. When Robinson’s up at bat, Chapman slings a
continuous verbal barrage of racial epithets at him. Robinson seethes, but does not react until
Chapman spews one so egregious, he heads for the tunnel leading to the
dressing room, where out of sight he falls apart. Rickey goes to talk to him. It is one of the most compelling moments in
the film. Another is a scene in the
grandstands of a white father and his young son who hears his father hurl
racial slurs at Robinson; at first the boy joins him, but by the end of the
game, you see that his conscience has been elevated. Soon, Jackie’s team-mates rally around him.
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| Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) demonstrates his support for Robinson |
Robinson’s
presence on the field became polarizing not only there but also in American
society. The threat of violence was palpable for him and his family,
threatening letters were sent. Branch Rickey can’t protect him, but only give
him pep talks and trust that Robinson will maintain his stoicism
Sportswriter
Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), covers his career in the Black newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. Smith travels
with and suffers the same ignominies as Robinson. Smith is banned from the Press Box where
white reporters clack away on their typewriters, while Smith sits in the stands
with his portable on his knees (an archaic version of a laptop). Except for Ebony, established in 1945, print
media was almost completely segregated; only a handful of African-Americans
were journalists at major white newspapers.
So, How far
have we really come since the 1940s, especially now, with a Black man in the
White House? Not very,
considering the dozens of Blacks who were killed in race riots in Detroit and Harlem
in 1943; killed in foreign countries defending their “freedom” during WWII in a
segregated military. There were laws to secure
voting rights and abolish segregation on interstate transport; still, doing
both in the South was risky. The sixties
saw lunch-counter sit-ins. The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama made the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded The
Black Panther Party, in Oakland, California (which ended badly).
Jackie
Robinson advocated openly for civil rights, often alongside King,and became a leader in the NAACP.
(King described Robinson as “a freedom rider before freedom rides.”) As important
a figure as Robinson was in the movement, he testified against actor Paul
Robeson at the Committee for Un-American Activities, fearing not complying
would jeopardize his career. He told the
Committee, in part, “Every single Negro who is worth his salt is going to
resent slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he’s going to use
every bit of intelligence he has to stop it. This has got absolutely nothing to
do with what Communists may or may not do. Blacks were stirred up long before
there was a CP and will be stirred up after unless Jim Crow has disappeared. I
haven’t any comment to make except that the statement [about Blacks refusing to
fight the USSR]—if Mr. Robeson actually made it—sounds very silly to me. Negroes
have too much invested in America to throw it away for a siren song sung in
bass.” Jamilah King, Colorlines, News for
Action, April 12, 2013.
Later in life, he founded the only Black
owned bank, and became a board member of a large white-owned corporation. He
served on the boards of the NAACP and the Congress for Racial Equality, led
rallies at the invitation of civil rights leaders, and accepted the first vice
presidency of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s PUSH Coalition. He once told a New York
Times reporter in 1969 that he “wouldn’t fly the flag on the Fourth of July or
any other day. When I see a car with a flag pasted on it, I figure the guy
behind the wheel isn’t my friend.” JK, Colorlines.
Schools were desegregated but not without cost. President
Eisenhower dispatched more than 1,000 paratroopers to enforce a court order in
Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Blacks
and their supporters were slaughtered indiscriminately. Horrific crimes continued,
with lynching the most egregious. All
across the former Confederacy, Blacks, who were suspected of crimes against
whites— or even what were considered "offenses," were tortured,
hanged and burned to death by the thousands.
Chicago-raised, fourteen year old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi,
for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
In the 1950
and sixties, outspoken NAACP leaders who championed voters rights, like Medgar
Evers, were assassinated. Then six years
after gaining public attention in a television documentary on the Nation of
Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. In a 1963 letter to Malcolm X,
Robinson wrote, “America is not perfect by a long shot, but I happen to like it
here and will do all I can to help make it the kind of place where my chlildren
and theirs can live in dignity.” Yet he
wrote in a 1972 biography published shortly before his death: “I cannot stand
and sing the [national] anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a
black man in a white man’s world.” Colorlines,
Jan. 2013.
Martin Luther
King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, causing riots resulting in many deaths
in major cities. Klansmen bombed a
church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young black girls. More people were killed in race riots in New
Jersey and Detroit.
Despite anti-lynching
laws, Blacks were still being hung, mostly in Southern States. In an essay Without
Sanctuary, historian Leon F. Litwack wrote that between 1882 and 1968, at
least 4,742 African Americans had been lynched.
In 1981 Michael Donald was murdered by two Ku Klux Klan members in
Alabama. It is sometimes referred to as the
last recorded lynching in the United States.
Yet, prominent
Black politicians and lawmen were being elected to the Senate, appointed to the
Supreme Court, and elected mayor in major cities, and have run for President,
including Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman.
However: Of the 535 voting members of the 113th
Congress, 359 are white men. In other words, white men— who comprised 34
percent of voters in the 2012 election— still occupy 67 percent of the seats in
Congress. (From Colorlines, by Sally Kohn.)
In 2009,
Democrat Barack Obama became the first African American to successfully run for
president and win, yet has done little to better the lives of Blacks compared
to white Texan, President Lyndon Johnson; Texas-born, former military general,
Dwight Eisenhower, a white Republican; and Harry Truman, a white Democrat from
Missouri. Obama being president doesn’t make the lives of all people of color
equal to those of so-called “Whites,” in education, health care, housing,
employment, and probably most important- justice.
African
Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. One in six
black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in
three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his
lifetime. One in 100 African American women are in prison. Yes, Jackie
Robinson became the first African-American Major League baseball player, but the
idea that he improved himself for the benefit of whites, puts the burden of
change on people of color rather than on the institutions that, historically, have
made racism and discrimination law in white America.
The film is
designed to make everyone happy (except white supremacists and racial bigots):
All is right with the world and the sun is shining in America.
Note: This review can be also read in an abridged format at www.socialistaction.org
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