On the GOP and Jackie Robinson

From the GOP.com website:

In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play major league baseball in the United States, as a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Not only was he a great athlete, Jackie Robinson was also a great Republican. He campaigned for Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1960 and then supported Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) for the Republican nomination in 1964. Robinson worked as a special assistant in Governor Rockefeller’s administration.

The general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, who hired Jackie Robinson, was also a Republican. The Missouri Republican Party later offered Rickey the nomination for Governor and Senator, but he preferred baseball to politics.

On Rockefeller from Jackie Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had It Made:

I was not as sold on the Republican party as I was on the governor. Every chance I got, while I was campaigning, I said plainly what I thought of the right-wing Republicans and the harm they were doing. I felt the GOP was a minority party in term of numbers of registered voters and could not win unless they updated their social philosophy and sponsored candidates and principles to attract the young, the black, and the independent voter. I said this often from public, and frequently Republican, platforms. By and large Republicans had ignored blacks and sometimes handpicked a few servile leaders in the black community to be their token “niggers.” How would I sound trying to go all out to sell Republicans to black people? They’re not buying. They know better.

I admit freely that I think, live, and breathe black first and foremost. That is one of the reasons I was so committed to the governor and so opposed to Senator Barry Goldwater. Early in 1964 I wrote a Speaking Out piece for The Saturday Evening Post. A Barry Goldwater victory would insure that the GOP would be completely the white man’s party. What happened at San Francisco when Senator Goldwater became the Republican standard-bearer confirmed my prediction.

Of his attendance at the 1964 GOP convention he wrote:

I wasn’t altogether caught off guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition. I was a special delegate to the convention through an arrangement made by the Rockefeller office. That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude toward black people.

In 1968 Jackie Robinson openly supported Hubert Humphrey. In his autobiography Robinson writes that he was never a Republican but was always an independent who merely supported a couple of Republicans. However, that may simply have been a late in life reaction to what he experienced in the Republican party.

Father Orthoduck suspects that Jackie Robinson was more Republican during that time period than he admitted later in life. The Republicans of New York, both Nelson Rockefeller and the Dodgers manager Branch Rickey embodied the legacy of Abraham Lincoln in very special ways in the area of relationships between the various peoples of the United States. In taking the stands they took to support African-Americans in sport, both Republicans brought to life Lincoln’s desire for equality and brought to life the Thirteenth through the Fifteenth Amendments to the Unites States Constitution. It would not be surprising that Jackie Robinson would be very open to the political views of people who had so obviously treated him as a full person with full rights.

Had that particular wing of the Republican Party won control in 1964, it is Father Orthoduck’s opinion that Jackie Robinson would simply have been the first of many African-Americans, and eventually Latinos and Asian-Pacific Americans, who would have entered the party. But, instead a wing of the party won that Jackie identified as racist. And, so, the Republican Party lost Jackie Robinson and many African-Americans of his generation. Under President Ronald Reagan non-whites and Latinos started coming in again, as they did during the first President George W. Bush term. But, during his second term, and particularly during the increasingly rancorous debates on affirmative action and immigration policy, the wing of the party that Jackie most disliked took control and history repeated itself.

Sadly enough, very similar events happen in too many churches. Someone is brought to the Lord by the example of an important person in their life. S/he comes into the local church full of the joy of the Lord and ready to get involved and serve the Lord in the church. And then s/he meets some of their “brothers and sisters” who promptly treat him/her in ways that even Gentiles would not treat others. The new Christian, disappointed, leaves the church and rejects even the Lord who touched him/her. Later in life that person looks back on those events and reinterprets history to claim that s/he was never truly a Christian. Father Orthoduck wonders why the people who drove the new Christian out think that when they stand before the Lord that the Lord will say to them, “welcome home.” Father Orthoduck suspects that some of them will have a terrifying surprise waiting for them.