The Jackie Robinson Museum opened Tuesday in Manhattan with a gala ceremony attended by the 100-year-old widow of the iconic baseball player and two of his children.
Rachel Robinson, who just celebrated her 100th birthday on July 19, attended the half-hour outdoor celebration, sitting in a wheelchair in the 80-degree heat, then cut a ribbon to a project that had been planned more than a decade ago.
Jackie Robinson’s widow announced the museum on April 15, 2008, the 61st anniversary of Jackie breaking the big league color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He became NL Rookie of the Year, the 1949 NL batting champion and MVP, a seven-time All-Star and a World Series champion in 1955. He hit .313 with 141 homers and 200 stolen bases in 11 seasons and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962.
The ceremony was attended by her 72-year-old daughter, Sharon, (also from a wheelchair) and 70-year-old son David, who spoke to the crowd of about 200 in a closed-off section of Varick Street, a major thoroughfare in lower Manhattan where the 19,380-square-foot museum is located.
David Robinson remarked that, “The issues in baseball, the issues that Jackie Robinson challenged in 1947, they’re still with us…the signs of white only have been taken down, but the complexity of equal opportunity still exists.”
Robinson, who died in 1972, had an impact beyond baseball, galvanizing a significant slice of American public opinion and boosting the civil rights movement.
