VIEWPOINT No time to think The Michigan Daily - Monday, May 8, 2006 - 5 Branch Rickey: forgotten American hero JOHN STIGLICH STKIY SAYS On a) column 05/02/2 est to m America African the sam for this the med media for our things t Last Jewish egation college families Darfur" The fur, wh is wher tribes, w governm the des of Mush ers. Whi released million they are Havin Americ not cor single underst grounds produce ing of s Darfuri rally - York ju conside in Darf explain the city the villa If al to geno affected rated by magnitu from th attend before u Desp roundin stand w experie news me "The ag quently the wor a very BY ADAM SOCLOF title. Far too often, headlines are scoured over the web as people whole, Theresa Kennelly's race to generate the most current last week (Trying to care, and accurate quantitative account 006) was of great inter- of the day's events. In conversa- ie. The apparent dearth of tion, I've found that people are an empathy with respect to less conscious about the trauma conflicts is troubling. At incurred by an act of violence than e time, placing the blame they are about transmitting the cor- phenomenon squarely upon rect death toll - and occasionally, ia is incorrect because the gasping. Whether or not an event is not solely responsible is reported adequately is indepen- tendency to relate best to dent of our ability to process that hat affect us personally. information appropriately. Sunday, I was part of the How, then, can someone over- Community Council's del- come the two greatest barriers to of high school students, understanding genocide - prop- students and Detroit-area erly empathizing with a single who attended the "Save instance of brutality and better rally in Washington D.C. understanding the large scale on distressed region of Dar- which these brutalities occur? ich lies in western Sudan, Addressing the problem of quan- e local Arab and non-Arab tifying large numbers was docu- vith the aid of the Sudanese mented in the 2004 film "Paper nent have collaborated in Clips," in which a Tennessee mid- truction and displacement dIe school solicited contributions im and other ethnic villag- of millions of paper clips to truly ile the statistics have been understand the number of people - 3.5 million starving, 2.5 who perished in the Holocaust. displaced, 400,000 killed - But back to my initial problem: At still unfathomable to me. what point should I consider myself ng been raised in one of empathetic, informed or quali- an's safest cities, I can- fied enough to take action against mprehend the effects of a atrocities? One week after the rally, murder or rape, nor do I I hope to never be qualified in any and how people from back- of these respects, because I remain similar to mine can only convinced that, short of personal audible gasps upon hear- or familial experience, one cannot uch things. The sole native know the trauma wrought by such an whom I spoke to at the atrocity. At the rally, I saw and - who immigrated to New heard celebrities, religious lead- st two years ago - did not ers and even survivors themselves r himself or his family (still speak in succession. While each ur) to be endangered. He speaker drew upon verbal or photo- ed that his family is from graphic testimony of death to vary- and it is only people from ing degrees, they were not striving ages who are in danger. for mass empathy - they were Darfurian can live so close demanding mass action. cide and not be personally For anyone who wavers about I by it, imagine being sepa- being active in calling for or person- thousands of miles, several ally taking action in Darfur, there odes of wealth and religion isn't enough time to be self-conscious he victims. How could I about what you know or how to relate a rally against genocide to what you've heard. By all means, inderstanding genocide? continue to read and gather informa- ite self-consciousness sur- tion on your own. But when people g my capacity to under- you trust or admire tell you how hor- 'hat Darfurian refugees are rible the situation is, you ought to acing, I don't foresee the believe them. And then, if someone edia being able to help me. else asks you exactly how horrible it ge of information" - fre- is, you may settle for "I don't quite tapped as the epithet for know ... but horrible enough." It's become conventional wisdom that Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier alone. In the past decade, Major League Baseball has reinforced this notion by retiring Robinson's uniform number (42), renaming its rookie of the year awards in his honor and dedicat- ing April 15 as Jackie Robinson Day. Make no mistake, Robinson forever belongs in boxes highlighting heroes in American history books, but such tokens of heroism from MLB fail to highlight the actions of another American hero - the University's own Branch Rickey. So now you ask,"Who the hell is Branch Rickey?" Rickey managed the Michigan baseball team from 1910-1913 and earned a degree from the University's law school. At the professional level, he is known for developing the minor league farm system, requiring his players to wear protective batting helmets and holding annual train- ing camps in the spring. Most importantly, though, Rickey was the Brooklyn Dodgers executive who signed Jackie Robinson to a major-league contract. Still,you won't find his name in too many history books. A search of the NAACP website returns no hits. Sometime in the last 50 years, history inexplicably lost sight of Rickey's contributions to civil rights. The major league talent pool post- World War II paled in comparison to that of the previous two decades. Base- ball executives traveled across the coun- try looking for the next Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb - so long as the players shared Ruth and Cobb's skin color. Branch Rickey, on the other hand, thought outside of the box and scouted The Negro Leagues, which had developed independently outside the major leagues to allow black players to showcase their tal- ents. What he saw there were star athletes whose only apparent vice was the color of their skin. Motivated by a taste for social justice and a desire to make the Dodgers competitive again, Rickey decided to vio- late baseball's unwritten rule that prohib- ited integration. On Aug. 28, 1945, Rickey signed Robinson to a minor-league con- tract, becoming the first MLB executive to sign a black player. After dominating in the minor league- level International League in 1946, Rob- inson dressed for his first National League game on April 15, 1947. Together, he and Rickey faced an uphill battle. If Robinson succeededinthemajors,it wouldencourage other baseball executives to sign black play- ers and, in the process, destroy baseball's color barrier. If Robinson failed, however, segregationists would claim victory, and both men would be out of a job. As history shows, Robinson continued his dominance at the major-league level by leading the Dodgers to the World Series in his first year and winning baseball's first Rookie of the Year award. When Cleve- land Indians executive Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby and Satchel Paige - thereby integrating the American League the fol- lowing season - baseball's color barrier rightfully headed down the path to per- manent extinction. Rickey's quest for social justice, how- ever, was not finished. Rickey left the Dodgers for the Pitts- burgh Pirates and drafted baseball's first Hispanic player - Puerto Rico's Roberto Clemente - in 1954. Despite a great deal of controversy, Rickey replaced popular incumbent right fielder Sid Gordon with Clemente, who would go down as one of the game's most celebrated Hall of Fam- ers. With scouts for the Pirates and other clubs flooding Latin America looking for talent, another one of baseball's racial bar- riers was toppled. Branch Rickey's plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY does not do his legacy justice.It reads: "Founder of the farm system for St. Louis Cardi- nals and Brooklyn Dodgers. Copied by all other major league teams. Served as exec- utive for the Browns, Cardinals, Dodgers and Pirates. Brought Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn in 1947" Rickey's plaque hangs with the Hall of Fame's class of 1967 andunlike Robinson's plaque, it receives no special attention from visitors. Currently, the most prestigious award given in Rickey's honor - The Branch Rickey Humanitarian Award - is awarded not by Major League Baseball but by the Denver Rotary Club. Rickey has a spot on the St. Louis Walk of Fame but not at Dodger Stadium's Wall of Fame. What shockingly inadequate remem- brance for a man whose legacy embodies all that is good about the civil rights move- ment, our nation and its pastime. Stiglich can be reached at jcsgolf@umich.edu. Vote for my bakesale CHRISTINA HILDRETH WEI.COME TO MY BUBiB LE ld in which we live - is fitting yet very misleading Soclof is an LSA senior. ile on a trip to Cuba last February, I lost my right to assemble. There, in Fidel Castro's land - where social gath- erings without the government's per- mission are outlawed - sitting squished between two middle-aged women intently listening to a sermon in a small house- church, I realized the privilege of Ameri- can political activists. It dawned on me as if it were some wonderful secret that every- one already knew. In the United States, we have the freedom to assemble in protest of our government, and for the first time in my life, I realized the value of this oft-for- gotten first-amendment right. On the way home, I contemplated sev- eral of the great protests of our nation's his- tory - like the civil rights marches of the 1960s and the rallies against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. These were the headlines of my parents' generation, but when I tried to think of similar assemblies in my years, I came up short. These days, it takes a great deal more to motivate a college student to march in pro- test.Political activismis no longer sexy. Even with the recent bout of nationwide marches, students have largely stayed home. For the 21st century's 20-somethings, the passion for political activism has been usurped by the lure of community service. Bono and Invisible Children have made global health disparities and humanitarian crises the cool causes of the decade. Even bake sales to help a local charity are now the thing to do. Even as interest in politics continually declines among our age cohortinvolvement in service organizations is steadily increas- ing. More than 70 percent of incoming col- lege freshmen in 2005 said they had done community service at least once a week in high school, according to an annual sur- vey by the University of California at Los Angeles. College students do everything from cleaning up after hurricanes to tutor- ing inmates to make an impact. The question, of course, is whether all of this is a good thing. As many of today's stu- dents hang up their parents' political gloves and step instead into service, will this help our generation make a bigger mark on the world than our parents? Don't get me wrong - the service efforts of students are much needed, and the new wave of humanitarianism is poised to reach incredible heights in battling disease and poverty. These are all good outcomes, but the betterment of the human race cannot wholly be done on the backs of NGOs and community-service organizations. There are some things that cannot be achieved through service alone but must instead be fought for. Lawmakers must be coaxed into legislating environments that eradicate inequality and bring about pros- perity. Without this action, all the char- ity in the world won't bring the poor out of poverty or the sick into health. Just ask aid workers in a place like Haiti or Darfur. Not surprisingly, most oppressive govern- ments will not reform themselves unless a loud voice demands change. Even in liberal democracies like the United States, politi- cal change often needs the impetus of a coalition of concerned citizens. This is precisely why students' conspicu- ous absence from recent rallies is troubling. Political movements need young adultseto be loud,to prove to those in power that the resis- tance won't go away in future generations. But it seems we students aren't even slightly interested. The same UCLA sur- vey showed that only one-third of entering freshmen feel it's important to even keep up with politics, let alone take actual action. We flock in droves to night-long fund- raisers to help little kids recuperate (not a bad thing in itself), but ask us to work a petition drive or lobby to increase health care subsidies to those same families and, apparently, we are too busy, tired, broke or just plain apathetic. Social justice is a noble cause, and the hundreds of thousands of students who dedi- cate their college careers to service are cer- tainly not wasting their time. But we cannot divorce ourselves from our political respon- sibilities, and we must not be naive when it comes to creating sustainable change. Some- times it is appropriate to take to the streets - and we shouldn't be afraid to do it. Hildreth can be reached at childret@umich.edu. STEPHEN BUSCH'