Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America

Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America (2004) is a sports biography for young readers written by Sharon Robinson. As Jackie’s daughter and a Major League Baseball (MLB) employee, Sharon has a personal and professional connection to the first Black player in professional baseball. Sharon examines his story against the backdrop of US history, addressing themes relating to persistence, race, and activism. Though Promises to Keep wasn’t adapted for the screen, several movies document Jackie’s life, including The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Soul of the Game (1996), and 42 (2013).

This guide refers to the 2004 Scholastic edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, illness, and death.

Language Note: “Negro” is now considered an offensive term, but historically, people didn’t use the term as a pejorative, so “Negro Leagues” isn’t a racist designation. In addition, the book was published in 2004, before capitalizing the “b” in “Black” was in common practice; quotations from the book reflect this.

Summary

Sharon Robinson is Jackie Robinson’s daughter and authored this biography while serving as MLB’s vice president of educational programming. Through baseball and Jackie’s legacy, the book demonstrates the importance of selfless behavior. Sharon wasn’t born or was quite young when Jackie played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (which moved to Los Angeles and became the Los Angeles Dodgers before the 1958 season). To tell Jackie’s story, she relies on external sources like books and articles. Sharon highlights how Jackie’s experience with racism relates to the US’s history of prejudice. She includes various dates and events, and to make the information easier to process, she uses images and graphics, giving the book the look of an informative collage.

Jackie was born on January 31, 1919. His mother and father, Mallie and Jerry, were Georgia sharecroppers, so they farmed land owned by a white person. They had to buy their supplies from the white person and give them about half the yield from their crops. This exploitative dynamic kept Jackie’s family in a precarious situation. Unable to cope with the inequity, Jerry left his family, and Mallie moved Jackie and his siblings to Pasadena, California.

On the West Coast, the Robinsons experienced racism. Mallie bought a home in an all-white neighborhood, and people burned a cross on their lawn. Jackie got into a verbal fight with a white girl across the street, and her father threw rocks at Jackie. In school, Jackie was an average student, except in sports: He was an extraordinary athlete. Though he and his friends got into some trouble, Jackie, emulating his mother, avoided “serious trouble.” As a high school student, he excelled in tennis, baseball, track, and football. His athletic gifts continued into junior college, earning him a scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where people labeled him the best “all-around athlete” on the West Coast.

At UCLA, Jackie met Rachel Annetta Isum, Sharon’s mother. After World War II began in 1939, Jackie spent three years in the Army. Because of a football injury, he didn’t participate in combat, but he became a second lieutenant. He stood up to a racist bus driver and refused to play on the Army’s football team because its baseball team remained segregated.

Sharon pairs Jackie’s advances and setbacks with the US’s racial history. After the Civil War ended slavery, Black people gained new freedoms; however, racist Southern laws (Jim Crow laws) maintained harmful and deadly racism norms. Segregation manifested throughout the US: Black and white people used separate bathrooms, attended different schools, and lived in specific neighborhoods. Nevertheless, people like journalist Ida B. Wells and writer Langston Hughes remained determined to counter racism and create a just society.

Branch Rickey was the president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He didn’t own the Dodgers but was in charge of their roster and picked the players and coaches. The Dodgers played in the National League, one of the two professional baseball leagues in the US’s MLB organization, in which the other league is the American League. At the end of the season, the teams with the best record in each league play each other in the World Series. MLB didn’t want Black players, but Rickey wanted to change that. He thought that Black players would help the country move toward equality and improve MLB. Because of Jackie’s mix of self-control and skill, Rickey signed him in 1947. Before this, Jackie played for a year on a team in the Negro Leagues (a professional baseball organization that Black players formed because they were barred from MLB) and then played for the Dodgers’ minor league team, the Montreal Royals, for a year.

On April 15, 1947, Jackie played his first game for the Dodgers. White fans sent him death threats, but Black fans traveled great distances to see him play. Some of his teammates were wary, but most—including the captain Pee Wee Reese—became allies. Jackie became a star in baseball and beyond. He played himself in the film The Jackie Robinson Story, got a book deal, and, according to one poll, was the second most popular person in the US.

After retiring, Jackie used his fame to support various anti-racist causes. He continued to call out baseball’s shortcomings, using a speech during the 1972 World Series to highlight the absence of Black coaches and general managers. Jackie died on October 24, 1972. To continue Jackie’s legacy and promote his values, Rachel and friends created the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Sharon hopes that her book will inspire young people to embrace activism and community.