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69 Years Later, Philadelphia Apologizes to Jackie Robinson
New York Times ^ | April 14, 2016 | Marc Tracy

Posted on 04/15/2016 5:28:37 AM PDT by reaganaut1

Last summer, the Anderson Monarchs, the Philadelphia baseball team that became famous a year earlier when it made the Little League World Series behind pitcher Mo’ne Davis’s firepower, barnstormed through the South. They played baseball, and they also toured sites significant to the civil rights movement as a nod to the team’s heritage — it is named, after all, for the Kansas City Monarchs, the Negro leagues club for which Jackie Robinson once played.

“I stood where Martin Luther King and John Lewis stood,” wrote outfielder Myles Eaddy on a team blog after a visit to Selma, Ala., adding, “It is really cool to know how far we have come.”

Nearly a year later, the team’s trip has helped inspire an apology being extended by Philadelphia to Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier when he made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers at the start of the 1947 season.

The apology comes as Major League Baseball, on Friday, celebrates the 69th anniversary of Robinson’s first game with the Dodgers with its Jackie Robinson Day, initiated in 2004. Every major league player wears Robinson’s No. 42, an annual sight in baseball. What is different this year is the apology from the City of Philadelphia for the manner in which the Phillies treated Robinson when he began his career.

“Obviously, everyone learns about Jackie Robinson when they’re a schoolkid,” said Helen Gym, the council member who introduced the resolution to apologize to Robinson, which passed unanimously.

But Gym added that the Monarchs’ tour of the South and the 2013 movie about Robinson’s life, titled “42,” further piqued her interest and the City Council’s in remembering Robinson and owning up to the Phillies’ contribution to the hostility he initially encountered.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: apology; athletes; enoughalready; jackierobinson; jackierobinsonday; mlb
It was and is wrong to insult people with racial epithets, but I don't think apologizing for things that happened 69 years ago is a good use of time.

Every year there is much more black-on-white and black-on-Asian violent crime (rape, murder) than the reverse. Will blacks apologize for that?

1 posted on 04/15/2016 5:28:37 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

When is the Democratic Party going to get around to apologizing for 150+ years of fomenting racial hatred, lynching blacks, terrorizing blacks, and forming the KKK, and 200 years of gaining power by promoting racial strife?


2 posted on 04/15/2016 5:36:52 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: reaganaut1

But...

Our President is black-like-Jackie!
We must apologize for both Obama’s and Robinson’s blackness!

Ohhhh, wait...what?
Isn’t the progenitor of this forum named “Robinson”?
Cheese!


3 posted on 04/15/2016 5:37:09 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alterations: The acronym defines the science.)
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To: reaganaut1

Being a Braves fan watching the team start 0-9, I want an apology myself!


4 posted on 04/15/2016 5:40:43 AM PDT by armydawg505
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To: Opinionated Blowhard
Isn't honoring Jackie Robinson a blatant form of "cultural MIS-appropriation"? /S
5 posted on 04/15/2016 5:51:09 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen (Beat your plowshares into swords. Let the weak say I am strong)
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To: reaganaut1

So when do they apologize to Santa Claus?


6 posted on 04/15/2016 6:03:27 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: reaganaut1

Anything to keep the race issue on the front burner. This is disgusting.


7 posted on 04/15/2016 6:23:25 AM PDT by mulligan (I)
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Comment #8 Removed by Moderator

To: reaganaut1

I never heard an apology from Jackie Robinson to men like
Willie Mays and Jim Ray Hart for his criticism of them
for not acting and talking like they were “down for the
struggle” during their baseball careers.


9 posted on 04/15/2016 7:39:43 AM PDT by Sivad (FEEL THE BERN? ....try penicillin)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard
When is the Democratic Party going to get around to apologizing for 150+ years of fomenting racial hatred, lynching blacks, terrorizing blacks, and forming the KKK, and 200 years of gaining power by promoting racial strife?

Well said and worth repeating!

When is the Democratic Party going to get around to apologizing for 150+ years of fomenting racial hatred, lynching blacks, terrorizing blacks, and forming the KKK, and 200 years of gaining power by promoting racial strife?

10 posted on 04/15/2016 8:05:47 AM PDT by Prov1322 (Enjoy my wife's incredible artwork at www.watercolorARTwork.com! (This space no longer for rent))
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To: Sivad; reaganaut1

Jackie Robinson was a Republican, but in 1964 he turned Left and never looked back, declaring that, “Goldwaterism is Hitlerism.”

At that point, I said, “Screw you, Jackie Robinson.”


11 posted on 04/15/2016 9:43:50 AM PDT by EveningStar
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