THE AL CAMPANIS INCIDENT : Robinson Would Say Baseball Has Still Not Learned

Roger Kahn tells the story of how upset Jackie Robinson was when Paul Robeson, opera singer, actor and advocate of the communistic way of life, made a statement that no blacks would fight in a war against the Soviet Union because they have nothing to win in fighting for a racist United States.

Shortly after that, Robinson went to Congress and made a speech in which he said that, although he wasn’t an expert on communism, or any other “ism” for that matter, he was an expert on “being a Negro in America for 30 years” and he thought Robeson was wrong.

“Much later, probably in the last year before he died, I asked him if, now that he had lived longer, if he’d make that speech again,” Kahn recalled.

“And he said, no, he wouldn’t. He said, ‘What I know now is that the one salient fact of both my life and Robeson’s is the same. That we are both black.’ ”