Jackie Robinson's Use Of Racial Discrimination In The Movie 42

American society in the 1940’s was racially segregated. Public facilities including buses, theaters, and railroad stations excluded black patrons. Among many other parts of American life, baseball, like most professional sports, was equally discriminatory against African Americans. The major leagues only signed white players and denied any black man the opportunity to play professionally. They were restricted to their own Negro Leauges. Until one day, in 1946, Branch Rickey chose a man named Jackie Robinson to became the first African American man to play professional baseball. He broke the “color barrier” in the world of sports and became the most historically significant baseball player ever.

The movie 42, released on April 12, 2013, depicts

Jackie Robinson plays with a Negro team called the Kansas City Monarchs. Around the same time, Branch Rickey who is a Major League Team executive for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was looking for a black player who could help him break the color barrier in the major leagues. With his strong determination and the help of , he successfully finds Jackie Robinson. He offers him a contract for his minor league team, the Montreal Royals, in which Robinson accepts. Rickey knew that this would be hard on Robinson and made him promise not to fight back when confronted with racism. Rickey also personally tested him with racial slurs to prepare him for what he was going to endure. Robinson spent the 1946 baseball season with the Montreal Royals. The team’s reaction was a mixture of enthusiasm, curiosity, and racism. Although Robinson’s presence tripled the game attendance, they still had to cancel a road trip game because people in the south refused to let blacks and whites play on the same field. The next year, Rickey signed Robinson to play second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies threatened to boycott games with the Dodgers. However, the problem was quickly solved by threatening to kick out any player who went on strike. During this year, Robinson endured constant threats from the stands, pitchers would purposely aim balls at him, and even the Philadelphia Phillies manager, Ben Chapman, shouted

In fact, there were several occasions where it showed Robinson having to sleep in a separate hotel or eat at different restaurants than the team. It is true that players started a petition against him and one team member, Pee Wee Reese, refused to sign it. Also many teams, specifically the Phillies manager, were extremely hard on him. They would taunt him during the game by screaming racial slurs at him. The movie shows one of the most intense situations where Ben Chapman, Phillies manager, started yelling racial slurs trying to distract Robinson. However, at the end of the game, it showed Chapman and Robinson posing together for a picture. Robinson revealed that posing with Chapman was “one of the hardest things he had to make himself do”. This scene was accurate in showing Branch Rickey’s comment years later that, “Chapman did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers. When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and unified thirty men” to be true. Jackie’s widow, Rachel Robinson, was very pleased with the movie. She wanted to make sure that the movie was not about the famous actors but about the person they were playing. She was glad that the producers took her advice, and selected two unknown actors to play herself and Jackie. The director also made sure that they had the look and feel of American baseball during that time period by detailing the