Hip-hop

It was my father who schooled me on Jackie Robinson. Taught me how he was one of our patron saints of Blackness. And today, Major League Baseball celebrates* the day he broke the color line sixty years ago. There will be five teams who will wear his number, along with Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. Tributes and speeches will be numerous in number and considering what happened last week with the Imus/Rutgers scandal, maybe a bit hollow. Because what No.42 did was more than step out onto the baseball field as the first black man in a “white man’s game”…he stepped out as a proud black man unbowed by everything this country did to him.