Joe's Daily U.S. History Lesson -- April 14

APRIL 15 1947-Jackie Robinson plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, …thereby becoming the first African American to play in the Major Leagues. He was signed on April 10 by Branch Rickey, president of the Dodgers, made the announcement. As the first African American to play in the major leagues, he was the target of vicious racial abuse.

In his first season with the Dodgers, Jackie described how he played the best baseball he could despite the tons of racial abuse he endured, and the entire nation focused its attention on his game. Having established a reputation as a black man who never tolerated affronts to his dignity, he now found it in himself to resist the urge to strike bac. In the ballpark, he answered the people he called haters with the perfect eloquence of a base hit.

In 4949, his best year, Robinson was named the league’s MVP and in 1962 became the first African American to be elected to the Baseball hall of fame. Upon his retirement, he continued to be an activist fo civil rights. In fact there’s a letter he sent to President Eisenhower you just have to read. I’d read it, but I couldn’t do it justice. The letter is in response to the President sending US troops to enforce desegregation at Little Rock AR’s Central High School. It will send shivers down your spine.

And as important as it is to appreciate what Jackie has done for America, I think it’s important to give credit to Branch Rickey for breaking the all-white major league baseball unwritten law. Truly a great day in American history.

1912-Molly Brown becomes unsinkable. As legend has it in the old west, Molly Brown was pretty obnoxious, so no doubt she and I would have been great friends. Her friends called her Maggie. She grew up poor in Hannibal, Missouri; who left when she was young with her brother to Ladeville, CO. Once she was there she got involved with a mining engineer named JJ Brown, and shortly thereafter they got married. He struck gold and overnight the Browns became millionaires and moved to Denver.

According to her website, mollybrown.org, she was a progressive reformer who ran for state senate, a feat that was unheard of at the time. As her very own husband stated, a woman’s name should only show up in the paper three times: at her birth, her marriage, and her death. So she pulled out of the race. They traveled the world, visiting countries like Ireland, France, Russia, India and Japan, but after 23 years of marriage the Browns separated. He gave her a nice settlement, and she continued traveling. She was with some friends and her daughter in Paris when she received news about an ill grandson, and she had to cut her vacation short. She grabbed the first ride home available, and THAT, my friends, is how Molly Brown wound up on the Titanic.

They said it couldn’t sink.

She was in her bed reading during the crash, and it knocked her out of her bed and onto the floor. She went out in the hallway, and next thing she knew she was in lifeboat #6 and lowered to the water with 21 other women, men, and a a twelve year old boy. Her lifeboat was found by the Carpathathia and she was rescued.

Realizing all the other women were headed to a country without their husbands, children, clothes, money and valuables, she rallied the first class passengers to donate money to help less fortunate passengers. By the time she reached New York, she raised $10,000. She grew on to fight progressive causes, but ultimately is known as the Unsinkable Mollly Brown.

1967- Nancy and Frank Sinatra had the #1 song ...on the Billboard Hot 100, the Cashbox Best Sellers List and Britain’s New Musical Express record chart with “Something Stupid”. To this day, they are the only father and daughter team to have a US chart topping single. Unforgettable reached #14 in 1991.