THE AL CAMPANIS INCIDENT : Robinson Would Say Baseball Has Still Not Learned - Los Angeles Times
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THE AL CAMPANIS INCIDENT : Robinson Would Say Baseball Has Still Not Learned

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Roger Kahn tells the story of how upset Jackie Robinson was when Paul Robeson, opera singer, actor and advocate of the communistic way of life, made a statement that no blacks would fight in a war against the Soviet Union because they have nothing to win in fighting for a racist United States.

Shortly after that, Robinson went to Congress and made a speech in which he said that, although he wasn’t an expert on communism, or any other “ism” for that matter, he was an expert on “being a Negro in America for 30 years” and he thought Robeson was wrong.

“Much later, probably in the last year before he died, I asked him if, now that he had lived longer, if he’d make that speech again,” Kahn recalled.

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“And he said, no, he wouldn’t. He said, ‘What I know now is that the one salient fact of both my life and Robeson’s is the same. That we are both black.’ ”

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