The inspiring life of Jacki Robinson

What an inspiring life!!!

Jackie Robinson is a great American but sometimes a complicated man. Jackie Robinson was featured along with his sweeping documentary about his life that airs during Monday and Tuesday. This film shows echoes between Robinson’s life and events that happened in the present.

The story of Jackie Robinson is not just the story of a pioneering baseball player but it is also a story that states about race and America as well, as the complicated man at its center Ken Burns said. Robinson is the subject matter of Jackie Robinson which is a documentary film in celebration of the filmmaker life along with his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon.

The life of Robinson paralleled and sometimes intersected with events in the life of the country. He was born in the Jim Crow South and is the son of sharecroppers and a grandson of a slave. He used to grow up in California, which is the state in which many people would try hard in order to live in this wonderful state.

He served in the military and fought towards discrimination. He played in New York during 1950s when it was still the capital of baseball as well.  Robinson was a Republican who attended the 1964 GOP convention but then supported Democrats as the political parties’ makeup changed. He struggled with the social tumult of the 1960s which is a conflict poignantly reflected in his relationship with his son, who is a Vietnam War veteran who overcame a drug problem but only died in a car accident. Robinson had a rich and devoted marriage to his wife Rachel who is his partner and sounding board. There is a much bigger picture than the one you will find on a baseball card. In other words, Burns said this is a multi-generational portrait of an African-American family.

He also said that in some ways, knowing the full complex picture of Jackie gives you a greater perspective on what’s going on today from Trayvon Martin and Ferguson to the presidency and even the rollback of some of the essential liberties given to African-Americans in the mid-’60s that now seem to be in jeopardy.

There are any number of stories in Jackie Robinson that echo events of our time and the image of Robinson entering the major leagues is of a man who kept his temper in check, engaging in the Christ-like gesture of turning the other cheek is an example. H was surely encouraged to do so by the Dodgers executive Branch Rickey who signed him, and Robinson did largely channel his aggression into his play.

Robinson was told to go to the back of a desegregated Army bus in one instance as an officer stationed at Fort Hood, Texas during World War II. . Robinson refused then the driver called the MPs and Robinson was taken into custody. Robinson was later booked on some trumped-up charges though most were eventually dismissed and court-martialed. He was acquitted but the event left its mark on him. He was sometimes unfavorably compared with Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella who is an easygoing sort praised by the press as much as the fiery Robinson was criticized being a black ballplayer.