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Book reveals
Jackie Robinson’s role in Civil Rights
Movement
Newswise — An Elizabethtown
College professor has collected and edited
the letters of Jackie Robinson in a new book
that reveals how the baseball legend sought
to use his fame to further the civil rights
cause. Major league baseball this summer
marked the 60th anniversary of Robinson’s
historic debut – which broke the sports
color barrier – as a member of the Brooklyn
Dodgers.
Michael Long’s “First Class
Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of
Jackie Robinson” (Times Books) is a
collection of previously unpublished letters
from the 1950s through the 1970s. It
includes Robinson’s correspondence with –
and personal replies from – Dwight
Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Malcolm
X, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller and
Barry Goldwater. The book’s foreword was
written by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“Writing eloquently and with
evident passion, Robinson charted his own
course, offering his support to Democrats
and to Republicans, questioning the tactics
of the civil rights movement, and
challenging the nation’s leaders when he
felt they were guilty of hypocrisy – or
worse,” writes publisher Times Books.
Long is an associate
professor of religious studies and peace and
conflict studies at Elizabethtown College
and is the author of several books on
religion and politics in mid-century
America, including “Against Us, but for Us:
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the State” and
“Billy Graham and the Beloved Community:
America’s Evangelist and the Dream of Martin
Luther King, Jr.”
Ranked as one of the best
colleges in the northern United States by
U.S. News and World Report, Elizabethtown
offers its 1900 students 53 academic
programs in the liberal arts, sciences and
professional studies. Driven by its motto to
“Educate for Service,” Elizabethtown centers
learning in strong relationships, links
classroom instruction with experiential
learning, emphasizes international and
cross-cultural perspectives and nurtures the
capacity for lives of purpose.
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