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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“First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson” (Times Books) is a collection of previously unpublished letters from the 1950s through the 1970s.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.