Yesterday marked the 6oth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers as major league baseball’s first Black ballplayer. I actually got to see Jackie Robinson play in his last major league season in 1956 when his Brooklyn Dodgers came to Philadelphia to play the Phillies. I remember my father trying to explain to me the significance of what Jackie Robinson meant to the game. But I was six and mostly in awe of the whole spectacle of seeing my first major league game, and it was until years later that I realized the importance of the breaking the color barrier in major league baseball.
One of the reasons that I think this anniversary is so significant is that Jackie Robinson’s legacy lives on in the diversity and inclusion efforts that are a priority in most organizations today. It is one thing for an organization to say that it welcomes diversity and quite another to help everyone truly feel included in the life of the organization. When Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers he had to endure the merciless taunting of fans, players, and managers wherever he went. One of the stories that the media retold yesterday was about the time when the Brooklyn Dodgers visited the Cincinnati Reds in Robinson’s first season. The fans were brutal to Robinson. During that game, Peewee Reese (one of Robinson’s white team mates who was from the south) put his arm around Jackie in full view of the fans as if to say “he’s one of us , and that act alone helped to quiet the crowd and was a major factor in helping Robinson feel accepted not only by his team mates but around the league as well.
So my question to you is what have you done to initiate inclusiveness in your own organization?