Here's to You, Mr. Robinson
COMMENTARY
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By Carl M. Cannon - RCP Staff
On this date in 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment. The measure outlawing slavery in this country had been voted out of the Senate on April 8, 1864, and with the Civil War winding to its inexorable result, the House finally followed suit.
Ratification in the states, which Abraham Lincoln didn’t live to see, would take the better part of a year. But on December 6, 1865, it became part of the Constitution. The 13th Amendment did not outlaw prejudice, however, or discrimination. It didn’t change everyone’s heart, even in the North. The vote in the House on this date, for example, was far from unanimous. The tally was 119-56.
Much work remained to be done (and remains still). The ranks of these troops would be filled by everyday Americans from all classes and castes. The terrain of the civil rights movement would cover even more territory than the far-flung battlefields of the Civil War. It ranged, as Martin Luther King Jr. told the country, from “Stone Mountain, Georgia… [to] the curvaceous slopes of California.â€
One of the movement’s great protagonists, a man born 100 years ago today, made just that journey. Born in Cairo, Georgia, Jackie Robinson made his name on the athletic fields of Pasadena. A track and field prodigy, football star, and U.S. Army veteran, Robinson etched himself into America’s national consciousness with his passionate play and pioneering spirit on the baseball diamond. Upon his death in 1972, the New York Times would note matter-of-factly: “For sociological impact, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was perhaps America’s most significant athlete.â€
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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/01/31/heres_to_you_mr_robinson_139338.html
