When Jackie Robinson took the field at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, he gave the Brooklyn Dodgers, Major League Baseball and most importantly, the nation, a civil rights moment like no other in professional sports history.

In a move orchestrated by Dodgers President and General Manager Branch Rickey, Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s long-established color barrier, becoming the first African American player to play in the game’s modern era.

It is little remembered that the Dodgers beat the Boston Braves 5-3 that opening day or even that Robinson went 0-for-3 and played first base.

What has been long remembered — and will be celebrated at ballparks throughout Major League Baseball on Saturday with every player wearing Robinson’s No. 42 — is the victory the debut achieved against discriminatory social norms that, at the time, permitted segregation of public schools and fueled the disenfranchisement of minority voters.

“I think one of the things essential about his contribution, because he was involved in such a popular sport and medium, it in some ways made the larger question of the civil rights movement accessible to the general population,” said Carmen Gillespie, English professor and director of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

“Watching his struggle and his success was both influential and persuasive,” Gillespie said.

Robinson’s career arc took him to the Hall of Fame, but more importantly placed him among iconic civil rights leaders in the United States. The color of Robinson’s skin made him a target of verbal abuse in the stands, on the field and on the road. Rickey signed the 28-year-old Robinson to a Major League contract five days before the start of the 1947 season, after signing him to a minor league deal in 1945. Robinson was talented — an all-around athlete, he also starred in football and basketball at UCLA — but Rickey’s decision was influenced as much by Robinson’s character.

Robinson’s was the only black family on the block when he was raised in Cairo, Georgia, and his career with the U.S. Army abruptly ended with a court martial when he challenged a bus driver who ordered him to the back of the bus. Having achieved the rank of second lieutenant, he later received an honorable discharge.

In the 2011 autobiography, “Branch Rickey,” the late Jimmy Breslin recounted the challenge Rickey set on Robinson leading to opening day. A scene recreated in the Hollywood biopic “42,” Rickey role-played a series of situations in which Robinson would face discrimination, insulting him with racial slurs in the same manner the black ballplayer would encounter daily.

“Mr. Rickey, do you want a baseball player who is afraid to fight back?” Robinson asked.

“I said I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back,” Rickey said. “You’ve got to win this thing with hitting and throwing and fielding and nothing else.”

Others more talented

Lou Hunsinger Jr., of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and its committee on the history of the Negro Leagues, said Robinson had good speed, fielded well, had decent power and was patient at the plate.

There were more talented players in the Negro League than Robinson when he was called up, Hunsinger said, but none with the combination of talent and stoicism.

“He was a shining example for everyone that came after him. He had a lonely road to haul. It may have shaved some years off his life. There was a lot of strain and stress in not being able to strike back,” he said.

Some of Robinson’s own teammates resisted integration, as did opponents who resented the change. Former Philadelphia Phillies Manager Ben Chapman holds a particularly vile footnote in the Robinson story, barraging the rookie with hateful and hurtful remarks that tested the African American as much as any one moment.

Robinson was the target of hard slides when he fielded first base and pitches intentionally set at his body. Tested daily, he kept cool when others understandably would’ve cracked.

The 1947 season ended with the Dodgers appearing in the World Series and Robinson winning Rookie of the Year honors. In 1949, Robinson was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. The Dodgers appeared in the World Series six times in 10 years with Robinson on the team, winning it once in 1955. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962.

Michael G. Long, a professor of religion and peace and conflict studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, has authored multiple books on civil rights including two on Robinson. His latest, “Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography: The Faith of a Boundary-Breaking Hero,” is newly released.

“Jackie Robinson’s resolve was fierce. It was fueled by his sense that God had created him black and destined him for freedom and that God had blessed him with extraordinary athletic gifts to achieve his freedom. With that faith guiding him, he decided that he had the right to plow ahead mercilessly,” Long said.

“It would have been remarkable even if Robinson had been an average ballplayer. Consider the vicious circumstances in which he played: players and managers harassing him, cleats digging at him, fastballs pitched at his head, all because of the color of his skin. The fact that he became a Hall of Fame athlete under those circumstances is simply amazing. It was remarkable in and of itself he even survived his baseball years,” he said. 

Working for civil rights

Robinson continued work in civil rights long after his playing days ended in 1957.

He used his celebrity to get the ears of politicians and raise funds for activist groups, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its president, Martin Luther King Jr. Along with his wife, Rachel, Robinson hosted SCLC members and that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for fundraisers at his home.

Robinson visited civil rights volunteers in the South during the 1960s, working to reinvigorate their own resolve. When King delivered his “Dream” speech at the March on Washington, Robinson stood nearby.

In a 1960 letter to President John F. Kennedy, he urged the president to become more proactive in the civil rights movement. Five years later, he wrote President Lyndon B. Johnson urging intervention on behalf of protesters who were beaten and accosted during the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Ala.

“He considered civil rights work to be more significant, more remarkable than all of his exploits on the baseball diamond,” Long said.

Gillespie, the Bucknell professor, said a major issue with the study of African American history is that time allows people to forget how hard the civil rights struggle really was. Robinson’s story is a reminder.

“Robinson wanted to play baseball. His inability to do that freely is something we can transfer to the next generation. There’s real struggle and personal sacrifice,” Gillespie said

What steeled Robinson most in the face of racial intolerance was his Christian faith. Long said Robinson’s mother instilled in him a belief in God. During his first years in baseball, Rachel Robinson would find her husband praying on bended knees.

A visit to Bucknell

Faith helped lure Robinson to the Susquehanna Valley for a visit Feb. 6, 1949, to Bucknell University. He was a paid speaker who appeared during a Student Church event in Hunt Hall. The Bucknellian estimated a crowd of 400 people visited. The Associated Press doubled that tally, saying more than 800 attended.

Robinson was more than two months out from Opening Day 1949, his MVP season. According to media accounts, he told the Bucknell crowd that “negro athletes” encountered greater acceptance than when he broke through the color barrier two years prior.

“It was a different story last year on our spring tour. There were very few instances of any discrimination even in the South,” Robinson said, according to The Associated Press.

“In his half-hour talk, Robinson told a number of stories about how the Dodgers soon forgot the color of his skin and thought of him merely as a star player on a pennant-winning team,” The Bucknellian wrote Feb. 10, 1949.

The Daily Item’s own coverage on Feb. 8, 1949, devoted the first 12 paragraphs to baseball before writing about Robinson’s feelings on discrimination.

“The Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan has led an attack against my playing with white ball players, but the majority of people in Atlanta are anxious to see me and Roy Campanella (a Dodger catcher) play ball,” Robinson said of appearing in the Georgia city during spring training.

Now 70 years after his Dodger career began — 70 years after he challenged America’s pastime to rid itself of its own racial inequity — Robinson’s legacy lives on.

Lavezz Middleton, an outfielder on the 2017 Bucknell Bison baseball team, views Robinson as the most important baseball player in history. Robinson was a social activist as much as he was an athlete, using sports and his resulting influence to get his message across.

“Being an African American male, without him, there wouldn’t be me playing baseball,” said Middleton, of Chicago, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in economics with a minor in political science.

Middleton’s teammate, 19-year-old JohnPaul Bell, of Downingtown, admires Robinson’s perseverance.

“If you think about it, it was just him. He didn’t have any backup. It was him, a bat and a glove — him against the world,” Bell said.

Robinson helped change baseball’s demographics dramatically. The number of black athletes on Major League Baseball rosters rose from 0.9 percent at the end of 1949 to more than 18 percent in the mid-1970s and again in the mid-1980s.

Something has changed, though. African Americans are increasingly disappearing from the game. The black demographic dipped below 13 percent at the turn of the 21st Century and fell below 7 percent in 2016, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.

“It is something to be a little concerned about,” Hunsinger, a society member, said.

There are multiple theories that attempt to answer the question. One is culture, in which black athletes gravitate more toward basketball. Another is opportunity. Major League Baseball acknowledged as much by initiating the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program in 1989. The study by SABR found an increased reliance on relief pitching altered big league rosters, leaving less space for position players, particularly outfielders where black players have the highest representation.

Middleton, Bell and teammate Chuckie Scales are three African Americans on the Bison baseball roster.

Bell said his father influenced him when it came to playing baseball, and he grew to love the game. Bell said he’s noticed fewer black players on TV, which has a negative impact on the game’s relevance among black youth.

“You don’t see a lot of black people playing baseball,” Bell said.

Special Collections/University Archives, Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report. Scicchitano writes for the Sunbury, Pennsylvania Daily Item.