Question

Jackie Robinson heard President Eisenhower suggest that black Americans must have patience. What did Jackie Robinson feel like doing when he heard this?

Answer 1

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the first African American to officially play in Major League Baseball, breaking the color barrier in this league. Fact that made him a target of brutal racial abuse. However, he established himself a reputation of a black man who never tolerated affronts to his dignity.

When Jackie Robinson retired from baseball, he continued to champion the cause of civil rights from his position as an executive of the Chock Full o' Nuts Corporation, showing himself increasingly impatient regarding the President Eisenhower's failure to act decisively in combating racism.

Specifically, when President Eisenhower urged blacks to have patience in their struggle for equality, Jackie Robinson wrote him a letter where he criticized such comments and where he expressed his frustration, calling upon the President to finally guarantee Federal support of black civil rights.

Answer 2

After Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to keep nine African Americans students from entering a school in Arkansas on September 1957, President Eisenhower was forced to sent U.S. troops to enforce desegregation in that school, and gave a speech on the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders, where he asked African Americans to have patience.

Jackie Robinson (a famous baseball player, that later dedicated his life to the cause of civil rights) heard the President, and in response wrote him a letter, Robinson opened his letter with the following message:

"I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience. On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying, Oh no! Not again.".

Jackie Robinson explained in his letter that African American people had been patience enough, and that they couldn't achieve their goals by being patience, that they needed to act aggressively (which is what he felt like doing) to achieve the same rights and freedom all Americans had achieved and earned after the American Revolution. He also asked Eisenhower to stop asking for patience because it encouraged the pro segregation leaders like Governor Faubus.