By Winstead on April 18, 2016
Ken Burns’ two-part documentary Jackie Robinson aired last week on PBS, reminding us of the reasons the Great Jackie remains atop the mountain among our greatest sports heroes. First, breaking the color barrier in big league baseball has been described by George Will as “the opening salvo of the American Civil Rights Movement.” Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and led his team to the National League pennant in his rookie season, totally electrifying the country. He landed on the cover of Time magazine and was named the country’s second-most-admired man of 1947, behind only Bing Crosby and ahead of Dwight Eisenhower. And it happened when the U.S. Army and every other major American employer maintained racial segregation, which made Jackie the pioneering champion of the integrated workplace.