Thursday, January 31, 2019

NEW YORK TIMES CELEBRATES ROBINSON'S 100th BIRTHDAY WITH 100 PHOTOS SECTION

Photo: NY Times
Bravo to The New York Times, which ran a special 24-page section today on the 100th birthday of Jackie Robinson. Along with short stories on the hall of famer, it included 100 historic photos.

The section included no advertising, just reflections on the man properly praised for breaking the baseball color barrier back in 1947.  Robinson, who died in 1972, was described in the section as a "ballplayer, a change agent, a human being and humanitarian — of America, in progress."

"When we began our 2019 editorial planning, Jackie Robinson's 100th birthday stood out as a really important moment," Veronica Chambers, the paper's editor of archival storytelling said in a statement. "He's the very definition of an iconic American who continues to be relevant and inspiring, decades after his death. 

Photo: NY Times
"As we digitize the six million photos in our archives, the Past Tense editorial team has been creating stories and editorial packages with the photos we're discovering," she added. "Since Jackie Robinson stepped into history in Brooklyn, here in New York, we knew that we'd have a strong collection of images from which to begin the ambitious project of assembling 100 photos for his 100th birthday."
 
The photos go beyond his years with the Brooklyn Dodgers, to his time as a UCLA football player, a World War II U.S. Army soldier (who faced a court martial for refusing to move to the back of an Army bus some 11 years before Rosa Parks), and an early civil rights advocate.

Photo: NY Times
"As these photos make clear, Robinson’s decade in major-league baseball was just one act in a remarkably rich and complex life — one of vision, fortitude, dignity and endurance," editors wrote. "Shaped by the currents and contours of American history even as it recast them."

See it all HERE.

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