Public rejects hate after desecration of Jackie Robinson statue

It’s hard to imagine that the savage destruction of a statue symbolizing bravery and breaking racial barriers would offer any kernel of hope for humanity. But this is one of those times when it’s nice to be wrong.

I would not have expected that a hunk of molded bronze could get me so worked up. But as all Americans have seen these past few years, statues of historical figures have impact beyond surface aesthetics. They speak to our deepest values.

Which is surely why the theft and desecration of a Jackie Robinson likeness from a Little League playing field in Wichita, Kan., has touched a nerve in thousands of people.

For those who follow neither baseball iconography nor news out of Kansas, a bit of background: Last month, a statue of the sports and civil rights legend was sawed off at the ankles, carted away in the dark of night, dismantled and burned in a trash can. The racial symbolism is impossible to ignore. The crime happened a week before Black History Month and days before what would have been Robinson’s 105^th birthday.

To watch footage of children staring at the statue’s empty base, which now holds nothing but a forlorn pair of bronze sneakers, is truly disquieting.

“With most bad behavior there is at least some derived benefit, like if you robbed a store. With this, it’s just cruel,” observed sports historian Mark Armour, an expert on baseball integration and co-author of the 2022 book “Intentional Balk.”

Sometimes, however, an ugly incident can bring together people who don’t realize how much they hold in common. Within a day of the news, Black and white Kansans had raised the $75,000 needed for a replacement statue. A day after that, the GoFundMe account set up to receive donations had money pouring in from more than 3,300 people across the country, including $10,000 from an anonymous World Series winner, according to ESPN. By Feb. 1, after the fund had collected more than $150,000, Major League Baseball stepped in to say it would cover the cost. (The Little League plans to use the extra money for security, so nothing like this ever happens again.)

Robinson, who broke baseball’s notorious color line and integrated the major leagues, was reviled by racists for much of his career. His ability to withstand that abuse and keep playing was the deal-sealing criterion that persuaded Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey to sign him. Rickey had told Robinson that he wanted a Black player “with guts enough not to fight back.”

This was in 1945, long before Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests became a defining feature of the civil rights movement. And Robinson already had a history of reacting so angrily to discrimination that it prompted his discharge from the U.S. military.

Yet he came to be a symbol of proud perseverance in the face of injustice. That’s what his statue meant to the kids in Wichita, who are now learning a much uglier lesson.

As demonstrated every day, racism did not die with the Civil Rights Act in 1964, nor with the election of a Black president in 2008. And it continues to course through America, no matter what politicians like Nikki Haley may attempt to claim.

One of my first editors labeled America’s fundamental problems around race a permanent stain, “our original sin.” He was a small-town white guy who wrote about politics in a politically conservative county, and we saw eye-to-eye on very little. But around this issue, we could connect.

I was reminded of him while watching Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan, who is white, speaking to the still-unknown people who desecrated and destroyed the Robinson statue. The chief’s disgust was palpable. He urged the perpetrators to have guts enough to come forward.

“Admit your part in this,” he said, indicating that several people were likely to be arrested for what they’d “done to our community.”

The meaning of Robinson’s life story has special resonance for children. I saw it in my own son, who was obsessed with baseball as a kid, and particularly riveted by Robinson’s stand against injustice.            

It is my prayer that he learns this side of humanity, the good side, will always be stronger.