Table Of Content“THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY
OF THE PIONEER WHO BROKE BASEBALL’S COLOR LINE.”
—Detroit Free Press
“Admiring but not worshipful … It avoids the temptation to rhapsodize over a
figure whose life reads almost like a religious allegory, so full is it of redemptive
power. Professor Rampersad unobtrusively lays out the facts, including the facts
of Robinson’s edgy and sometimes irritating combativeness, allowing us to
make out the meaning of the story on our own.”
—The New York Times
“Rampersad … peels away the gloss that years have added to Robinson’s
legend.… By focusing on Robinson the man, Rampersad makes him all the more
the hero.”
—USA Today
“Rampersad presents a portrait of a figure whose impact reached beyond sports
into the most crucial areas of American life.… Never, perhaps, has his life been
rendered with such depth and unsparing detail.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Riveting as a historic narrative, unflinching in its discussion of American
racism in Jackie Robinson’s time, this sympathetic biography of the first black
man to play major-league baseball is a model of its genre. Once again, Arnold
Rampersad is to be commended for the sensitivity and intelligence of his
writing.”
—J C O
OYCE AROL ATES
“One of the most compelling true-life epics of this American
century … Rampersad … is to the art of biography what Paul Warfield was to
the craft of catching footballs: smooth, graceful and effective, with no
unnecessary moves and an affinity for cool restraint. There is passion here,
though it is conveyed with streamlined subtlety and through a scrupulous
attention to detail.… A model of how to weave what seems like acres of source
material into flowing, absorbing narrative.”
—New York Newsday
“MASTERFUL …
Rampersad matches Robinson’s intensity in his chronicle of the great
ballplayer’s life.… Rampersad allows the reader to feel the humanity of both
[Dodger general manager Branch] Rickey and Robinson as the two men from
different origins forged a father-son relationship en route to a common goal.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Rampersad puts forward Robinson as a force in history, not its pawn, and his
portrayal rings true.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“In an era when much of the focus in major-league sports is on money, this book
reminds us of Jackie Robinson’s courage. It does an outstanding job of
describing his journey from a small town to a historic career in baseball and
beyond.”
—B B
ILL RADLEY
“Through exhaustive research and dozens of interviews with family members,
teammates, business associates, and friends, Rampersad vividly recreates the life
of a man who may have had history thrust upon him by circumstance but who
also understood the magnitude of his burden.… Rampersad is an evenhanded
biographer, and he brings an objectivity to his subject that only enhances
Robinson’s place in history. We close this remarkable book realizing again that
while any number of others, under different circumstances, might have been the
first African American to break baseball’s color line, few would have been able
to carry it off with Robinson’s integrity and courage.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“In capturing the life of trailblazing black major leaguer Jackie Robinson,
Rampersad has found a subject to match his considerable talents as a biographer.
Rampersad is the first biographer to be given complete access to Robinson’s
papers, and his book is a thoroughly researched, gracefully written and vividly
told story of one of the country’s most gifted, courageous athletes.”
—Publishers Weekly (boxed review)
“Gripping … This outstanding biography is in every way worthy of its esteemed
subject.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
ALSO BY ARNOLD RAMPERSAD
Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays, editor
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, editor
Days of Grace: A Memoir, with Arthur Ashe
Slavery and the Literary Imagination, coeditor
Richard Wright, Works, 2 vols., editor (The Library of America)
The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I, 1902–1941: I Too Sing America
The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World
The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois
Melville’s Israel Potter: A Pilgrimage and Progress
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1997 by Arnold Rampersad and Rachel Robinson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:
Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson by Carl T.
Rowan with Jackie Robinson, copyright © 1960 by Carl T. Rowan and Jack R. Robinson, copyright
renewed 1988 by Carl T. Rowan and Rachel Robinson. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
GRM Associates, Inc.: Excerpts from articles of 1947 and 1948 from The Pittsburgh Courier, copyright
1947, 1948 by The Pittsburgh Courier, copyright renewed 1975, 1976 by The New Pittsburgh Courier.
Reprinted by permission of GRM Associates, Inc., agents for The Pittsburgh Courier.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96149
eISBN: 978-0-307-78848-1
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3.1
for Luke Rampersad,
who loves baseball—and books
You opened the door for me and others who followed you and when you
opened it you threw it wide open.
—Brooks Lawrence (1957)
The word for Jackie Robinson is “unconquerable.” … He would not be
defeated. Not by the other team and not by life.
—Red Smith (1972)
He could beat you in a lot of ways.
—Yogi Berra (1972)
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue (1962)
1. In Pharaoh’s Land: Cairo, Georgia (1919–1920)
2. A Pasadena Boyhood (1920–1937)
3. Pasadena Junior College (1937–1939)
4. Blue and Gold at UCLA (1939–1941)
5. Jack in the World at War (1941–1944)
6. A Monarch in the Negro Leagues (1944–1946)
7. A Royal Entrance (1946)
8. A Brooklyn Dodger (1946–1947)
9. A Most Valuable Player (1947–1950)
10. Free at Last (1950–1952)
11. Dodging Blows, Fighting Back (1952–1955)
12. The Bottom of the Ninth (1955–1957)
13. Like Starting Over (1957–1960)
14. A New Frontier (1960–1964)
15. On the Killing Ground (1964–1968)
16. Rounding Third (1968–1971)
17. Heading Home (1971–1972)
Epilogue (1997)
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Description:The extraordinary life of Jackie Robinson is illuminated as never before in this full-scale biography by Arnold Rampersad, who was chosen by Jack's widow, Rachel, to tell her husband's story, and was given unprecedented access to his private papers. We are brought closer than we have ever been to th
