Peter Dreier will talk about the life of Jackie Robinson at the Rotary Club this week. The meeting is open to the public (free by Zoom and $40 for lunch in-person).
The political science professor and author of two books on baseball will speak on April 12 at the University Club, 175 N. Oakland Ave.
Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College. He is also the founding chair of Oxy’s Urban & Environmental Policy Department.
Since moving to Pasadena in 1993, he has served on boards and task forces dealing with schools, housing, charter reform, and other issues.
His work has appeared in Pasadena Now, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times op-ed pages.
“Jackie Robinson is probably the most famous native of Pasadena in history, but many people don’t know more than the basic ingredients of his story,” Dreier told Pasadena Now on Monday.
“His athletic accomplishments at PJC and UCLA are well-known. He is famous for having broken baseball’s color line in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. His life and attitudes were shaped by growing up in a very segregated Pasadena.”
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
He moved to Pasadena with his family from Cairo, Ga. in
1920 and excelled in five sports at John Muir High School, and played baseball, basketball, and football at UCLA.
In his autobiography, Robinson talks about the challenges his family faced after arriving in Pasadena.
“Pasadena regarded us as intruders,” he wrote. “My brothers and I were in many a fight that started with a racial slur on the very street we lived on,” he wrote. “We saw movies from segregated balconies, swam in the municipal pool only on Tuesdays, and were permitted in the YMCA on only one night a week. Restaurant doors were slammed in our faces. In certain respects, Pasadenans were less understanding than Southerners and even more openly hostile.”
“A decade before Rosa Parks, he refused to move to the back of a military bus while he was in the Army in Texas in World War 2,” Dreier said. “The standard story of baseball’s integration in 1947 focuses on Branch Rickey [the Dodgers’ general manager who developed the strategy] and Robinson [the outstanding athletes who persevered despite outrageous racism].”
“But there’s a much more interesting story about the protest movement to end baseball’s Jim Crow system that began in the 1930s – when Robinson was in junior high school. Robinson recognized that he owed his opportunity to play major league baseball to both his own talent and the movement that opened the door for him and others. He repaid that debt many times through his activism on civil rights.”
The reception begins at noon.
Members of the public should RSVP to office@pasadenarotary.com or watch by Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86515101523?pwd=dHhNZnV5c2ZqbzNQbWthbDNhYTladz09; Meeting ID: 865 1510 1523; Passcode: 667356
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