Today’s Echoes of Jackie Robinson’s America

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Hey, everybody, welcome to Sports in America. Today, we are going to lean into this delicious theme in sports. It is the time of year in any sport that so many of us just revel in, because when a sports season begins, the playing field is level and every sports fan gets to ask, could this be our year? Even if your team is terrible and has been just consistently finishing in last place, as my Pittsburgh Pirates have. But it’s the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. We can all ask, could things materialize? Could this be different this year? Could we actually win games? And I’m with someone, I’m actually with the person I would want to be with more than anyone else in the world to have this conversation. It’s my dear friend, Tim Lambert, who’s a fellow Yinser, by the way, for everyone who doesn’t know that means a Pittsburgher. Tim also has this shared history with me as someone who was in public radio for years, hosted Morning Edition at WITF, is now the editor in chief of the Pennsylvania Capitol Star, but also my favorite text buddy and just buddy in general when it comes to loving Pittsburgh sports and acting like total degenerates. Tim, what have I not covered in our relationship?

TIM LAMBERT: (Laughs) That pretty much covers it. And I don’t want to count the number of texts I get from you during a Steelers game.

DG: It’s kind of frightenin, I think we’re in…

TL: It’s in the hundreds easy, per game.

DG: Per game, but like that means hundreds of thousands over many different like hockey, baseball, football.

TL: (Laughs) Yes, yes, it’s been a ride. Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. And I, of course, wouldn’t want to talk about opening day without anybody but you. So.

DG: I appreciate that. And thank you for the years of tolerating my insanity. I do, I feel like we’re kind of like therapists as mutual sports fans. Like, I feel like when you’re on the edge, I can, I tend to bring you back to sanity. When I’m on the edge you often bring me back and like control my anger. It’s really, I just want to say, I want to take this moment to thank you.

TL: You’re more than welcome. Except when you’re ahead of me watching the game in another time zone, and you’re like 30 seconds ahead, and you tell me something happened before I knew. And usually it’s bad. Yeah.

DG: That sucks. Yeah, like when the Penguins score a goal, and I see it first, and I’m like, LFG!

TL: (Laughs) Yes!

DG: Okay. So the central question, I mean, probably there are a lot of baseball fans out there from other teams that actually have been relevant that are wondering why the hell we’re just talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates. They couldn’t care less.

TL: No one’s talked about the Pirates.

DG: No one’s talked about the Pirates, but we care. And I think it’s a really important lesson in sports that, like the beginning of the season, means everyone can have hope. And I think we should say, like, if nothing else, we have the best pitcher, I would argue, on the planet. Certainly, to me and Major League Baseball in Paul Skenes, think everyone would, a lot of people would agree with that, but we wasted him last year. I, we finished, we were terrible, even though we have such great talent on the mound. It was awful.

TL: Yeah, and I was watching the World Baseball Championship that he pitched in the semifinal game, and they flashed his record on the screen, and it was 10- 10 last year. And I was thinking, this is the Cy Young award winner, and he was 10 – 10 because the Pirates just couldn’t give him any run support. So yes, let’s hope for an above 500 record for Paul Skenes this year.

DG: Well, above 500 for Paul Skenes, maybe just above 500 for our team, but in all honesty, like, am I insane to say that we actually have some hope for the first time in a while? Like, we could actually make some noise.

TL: Yeah, I think so. I think this is the year we can at least be competitive, right? Like you do have Paul Skenes taking the ball every fifth day. So that’s a guaranteed like win or no-decision for him for sure. (Laugh) But the team actually spent some money. They signed some bats for once. So I think there’s going to be some offense that we’re not going to be able to just be like in the seventh inning down by two, like we’re done, it’s over. I’m shutting the TV off. Like, they may be able to actually score two runs in a game. So yeah, think that, you know, and they have a young pitching staff. So pitching always is the, you know, the main factor in baseball. If you have a good pitching staff, you can win some games. So they just need to score like three or four runs a game. And I think they’ll be all right. Yeah.

DG: Yeah That’s it. Is that asking so much?

TL: It’s so simple.

DG: I mean, not only do we have a great pitcher, we have what I think is the best venue in Major League Baseball. I mean, I’m a little biased, but even non-Pittsburghers come to PNC Park, our stadium right in downtown Pittsburgh, and they love it. I mean, how would you describe it for people who don’t know our ballpark?

TL: I think it’s a great introduction to Pittsburgh as it is now, and not Pittsburgh as the stereotype of the 1970s. A lot of people still think that Pittsburgh is this smoky, steel town when it’s really this up-and-coming sort of Ed’s and Med’s kind of city that’s reinvented itself. And the park itself opens up to the city, the skyscraper, you could see the landscape, the city structure, the buildings. The PG place with all the glass, kind of reflecting the sun. Right along the Ohio River, you get to walk to it across the Monongahela, across the Clemente Bridge, and see what we call the Three Sisters in Pittsburgh, the three very similar bridges next to each other. So I think you get a chance to really get a nice glimpse of the city. And people just go to the park, and they’re like, this is a beautiful park. It’s too bad you have a terrible baseball team.

DG: Yeah, and let’s get away from that this year. Yeah. I mean, I think any fan base will say this. Well, a lot of fan bases will say this. I mean, if you’re in Boston or Chicago or Philly or, you know, these other great sports towns, Detroit, Cleveland, I’m probably missing ones that people are gonna be pissed off about, like..

TL: Cleveland? Well I’m saying Cleaveland?

DG: Yeah well I mean, sports means so much to our city and particularly the Pirates. I mean, it’s a hockey town, and we’ve won Stanley Cup championships recently. The Steelers, obviously, I mean, are heartbeat in many ways, but Pittsburgh’s a great baseball town that I just feel like we deserve to see a good team taking the field.

TL: Yeah, I mean, the Pirates have been around for 100 plus years. I mean, they’re one of the oldest franchises in professional baseball. And they were a great franchise for many years. I mean, when I was growing up, and again, very vintage here, but in the 70s, it was Lumber and Lightning. They were competing for division titles. They won the world championship in 79, which was the last year they won the world championship. And then that all sort of went away once free agency, you know, took hold and ownership, just didn’t have the capital to compete, or didn’t want to compete. And, you know, it’s just been floundering and foundering ever since. And, you know, we’d love to see it come back. We had that glimpse with A.J. Burnett back in the, was a 2015, 2013 to 2015 with the playoff runs they had. And you saw the city come alive for teams that not only competed, but won. So I think it’s just this like sleeping giant. Like, you give this city a competitive team and they’re going to be, they’re going to be ready to go.

DG: But I mean, you speak to something like I think baseball more than other sports, it’s really hard because of no salary cap for smaller markets, smaller franchises to stay competitive. I say that, but it’s, I stop myself because I don’t wanna make excuses because there are small-market teams in Major League Baseball that have figured out a way to compete and win championships. That said, it is tough.

TL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what was like the first thing when Paul Skenes got called up, that fans were saying, “They just, you know, for money, they wanted to keep that extra year for him.” And then right after that, “Well, he’s leaving in seven years. He’ll be a Yankee soon.”

DG: He’ll be Yankees. He’s going to be a great World Series champion with the Yankees. Yeah.

TL: Yeah, exactly. Or the Dodgers. So people already like just have this doom and gloom expectation that these homegrown stars that the Pirates once in a while get, they’re here for a short period of time, and they’re going to move on to the bigger money and the bigger markets. And for years, that’s been the case. But I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, we’re talking possibly a salary cap with the next collective bargaining agreement. That’s, you know, we’ll see. We’ll see.

DG: I think it’d be good for baseball, good for markets like Pittsburgh to really level the playing field.

TL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about football. Like how successful the salary cap has been for football. Would Green Bay be relevant if they had a baseball team? I don’t know. Milwaukee’s really well run, and they do a good job, but they spend money too. And they’re very smart about what they do. So, but Milwaukee is also a smaller market than Pittsburgh. So.

DG: Yeah, I see you’re wearing you’re wearing a t-shirt. Tell me about, tell everyone about the number that’s on it and what it means.

TL: 21, it’s Roberto Clemente’s number. So I have a bunch of these t-shirts in different colors and different styles. And it’s like the one pirate shirt I wear around because nobody can make fun of you for…

DG: No, they really can’t.
TL: For talking about Roberto Clemente. And, know, for those of you who don’t know, Roberto Clemente was not only an amazing baseball player on the field, his arm was so good in right field that it is measured by scouts as Clemente. Like this guy’s a 76. This guy, no one ever gets to the Clemente level. You could find some amazing clips of him on YouTube, just gunning guys out and throwing guys out at first base who were taking their time on a base hit to right field. He would throw guys out. He was, I think, the 13th player in major league history to get 3,000 hits. His 3,000th hit was in his last at-bat. But the story of Clemente, obviously, he was an amazing humanitarian. He lost his life trying to fly supplies to earthquake victims. And he loaded a plane that wasn’t very safe, and everybody told him not to take off, but he wanted to make sure that he was personally there to make sure these supplies get to the people who needed. And of course, the plane crashed soon after takeoff, and he died very young. You know, Clemente is always remembered as not only this amazing ballplayer, but someone who just gave back so much to those in need and you know, he’s just, he’s one of the Mount Rushmore guys in Pittsburgh sports for sure.

DG: I mean, to me, all sports, but yeah, mean, certainly Pittsburgh. I mean, he means so much to the city. And I think every time anyone sees that number, the name Clemente comes up, it just, you feel something.

TL: Yeah, absolutely. And you still see 21 at Pirates games, right? A lot of people are wearing Clementi shirts. And it’s great to see the young fans doing it too, because that legend and those lessons of Roberto are being passed down. It’s just awesome to see.

DG: I think one of my favorite moments watching sports together was I think it was 2015. It was PNC Park, the Pirates were playing the Cardinals, and our hero, Andrew McCutchen, former NL MVP, beloved Pittsburgh Pirate, hit a home run in extra innings.

ANNOUNCER: The pitch high fly ball to center field it’s hit pretty well towards the wall. Oh my god! Oh my god! Andrew McCoutchen has won it! They’re going crazy! The Pirates have won this game, an incredible game, you can raise the Jolly Roger and call it maybe the best all-time in Pittsburgh! What a game! They’ve won it! On McCoutchen’s home run.

DG: I don’t know what you remember. I just remember like embracing each other and every fan around us. Like it was one of the most storied moments kind of in my Pittsburgh fan life.

TL: Yeah, I think that was the greatest game I ever witnessed, sporting event live. When I watched the video of that home run, it’s still just amazing. It just brings me back. Yeah, it’s insane.

DG: Chills, yeah, total chills. And we should honor McCutchen for a moment. I mean, he, you know, I mean, so central to whatever success the Pirates have had in this latest chapter, you know, left Pittsburgh, was with, among other teams, the Philadelphia Phillies, but came back to Pittsburgh. And I think so many Pirates fans have an emotional attachment to him. We were just assuming that he’d be back for another year, but the Pirates just let him go, and it ended in kind of a sad, nasty sort of way, a real bummer to see him leave.

TL: Yeah, I mean, it felt like when he came back to the team, it was destined to be like he goes out on his own terms like every other legend in Pittsburgh sports, right? Like Mario Lemieux and Rothenberger, and Jack Lambert. And you know, you just go down the list of all these greats who’ve gone out when they knew they were ready. And for some reason, the team just didn’t have him in their plans. And he was unhappy about it was very public about that. But what he meant to the city was he was a homegrown talent, again, one of the few the Pirates have actually developed over the last 20-some years, who just became a superstar and became MVP of the league, took the team to the playoffs three straight years. They couldn’t go beyond the wild card or the next round. But he just brought that back. He brought baseball back, and people loved him for it. And he was also another like, he lived downtown Pittsburgh. People would see him walking around. He wasn’t hiding in his house, afraid of crowds. He was a Pittsburgher. He became a guy who just loved the city, and the city loved him back. And for the Pirates to just kind of let that go in such a public way, I think a lot of people are Texas Rangers fans because he made the team. (Laughs) So they signed him on a non-roster deal, and he made the team.

DG: Yeah. Of course he did. No, because he’s great, and the Pirate should have kept him. You know, it’s, I remember I learned something from Kutch. interviewed McCutcheon. It’s been a number of years, but you know, he talked about, I mean, McCutcheon always honored Jackie Robinson, you know, who broke the race barrier in baseball. And, know, Kutch would talk about how he feels like, you know, major league baseball does amazing recruiting in places like Venezuela and Dominican Republic, but that there needs to be more emphasis in making sure that if you’re, you know, a kid in the U S particularly an African-American kid, like, you know, Kutch was growing up, you know, just you face enormous challenges. You know, but you’ve got, if you have a dream to be in baseball, you know, teams should be there, you know, the resources should be there to support, you know, being able to find a path in that sport and he called on Major League Baseball to do a better job with that. And that’s part of what I always remember Kutch for in addition to those great home runs like we saw.

TL: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that’s part of the allure of Kutch. He’s a good guy, right? He cares about his community. Not only was he great on the field, he was great off the field and is great off the field. And he just kind of personified what us Pittsburghers like to think of as what a Pittsburgher really is. Yeah, it’s a shame he didn’t come back this year for sure.

DG: Yeah, well, I wanna set up for everyone where we’re going with the show today. I think about McCutcheon and so many other players in Major League Baseball who do think a lot about Jackie Robinson and what he did for Major League Baseball and integration in our country in general.

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DG: But we actually were gonna have a conversation in a sec with Howard Bryant, great author and sports journalist who has a new book out about a very different side of Jackie Robinson, going through a moment in our nation’s history when he was called on to do a very uncomfortable thing. And it says so much about the intersection of race and sports. So that is what’s coming up next. But for the moment, Tim Lambert, my friend, editor-in-chief of the Pennsylvania Capitol Star, I can’t wait to text you probably a hundred thousand times in this season. Penguins, let’s get them to the playoffs. Pirates, let’s at least get a winning season, and let’s see where the Steelers ‘ season goes with or without Aaron Rodgers.

TL: Let’s just get a quarterback. Let’s get a quarterback.

DG: Let’s just get a quarterback. That’s what we need in Pittsburgh. Tim, great to hang my friend.

TL: All right, thank you, David. Appreciate it.

DG: Coming up, our conversation with Howard Bryant.

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COMMITTEE MEMBER: This committee never had any illusions that we would be able to prove definitely whether or not you are a communist because, in dealing with people charged with being communists over a period of years, we have found that those who are guilty refuse to admit it and dodge the question or deliberately lie.

DG: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s a crowded hearing room. Cameras are waiting. Lawmakers invoking patriotism as a cudgel. Outside, a country on edge, told that enemies are everywhere, that loyalty must be proven, that dissent carries consequences. Nationalism is on the rise. If you criticize the country, you must not love it. If you refuse to answer the question the right way, you must be hiding something. The other is not just foreign, it’s domestic. It lives next door. It plays on your team. It might even wear the same uniform. A famous athlete is questioned. His success makes him useful. His visibility makes him vulnerable.

HOWARD BRYANT: It really didn’t have a whole lot to do with communism. The same questions we’re asking now about health care and wealth inequality in the 99% versus the 1%. It’s the same fight. It’s same battle.

DG: This could be Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem in 2016, or Muhammad Ali refusing to go to Vietnam a half century prior to that.

MUHAMMAD ALI: If I’m going to die, I’ll die now right here fighting you. You my enemy. My enemy is the white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese.

DG: Titans of the sports world refusing to bend the knee

HB: This story is not a Black story. This story a continuum of something that we’ve all been dealing with for the last 100 years.

DG: Howard Bryant is one of the more proactive historians of American sports working today, an old school reporter trained on the beat of a daily newspaper who has consistently treated sports as a lens on society. He’s interested in the uneasy relationship between Black athletes, American patriotism and state power. Which is why his new book, “Kings and Ponds, exploring Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson and the House Un-American Activities Committee,” feels so timely. Arriving at a moment in our history when the language of loyalty, protest, and appropriate dissent has returned to the center of public life. The debate over how a black public figure should love America is not new. In 2026, as athletes navigate endorsements, polarization, and internet outrage, Bryant’s work shows us that the tensions between survival and resistance have always been present. And that understanding that history sharpens how we read the news. Of course, Howard started as a fan.

DG: Could we start with just like a really basic question, like your first memory of sports being an interest and a passion in your life?

HB: Um…

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HB: With the caveat that you’re not going to penalize me for dating myself. Sure.

DG: We’ll both be dating ourselves, so don’t worry at all.

HB: My first image of sports, of sports really mattering, is 1974 Stanley Cup, Game Six, Bruins, Flyers.

ANNOUNCER: Ten seconds left in orange penalty. Thirty seconds left in the period. Ashton with a puck. 1-0 the Flyers lead. If they hold it, they will win the Stanley Cup.

HB: And I checked all this because I was just wondering if I was having flashbulb memory, if I would just remembering something that didn’t exist. I was like, I remember the Bruins losing that game to the Flyers, one, nothing. I remember Bobby Orr making a final rush unsuccessfully and the Bruin’s losing the Stanley Cup.

ANNOUNCER: The Flyers are going to win the Stanley Cup!

HB: We were all big street hockey fans in Boston, grown up in Dorchester, and so we were all playing out there and there were a couple of us that actually went to the MDC rink and played. That was the first. And then of course, the next year was 75, Red Sox. And if you’re, if you know anything about Boston and of that generation, that was the year that did it for all of us.

DG: Remind us why.

HB:That Game Six, 1975, Carlton Fisk, one of the great Boston moments in sports.

BROADCASTER: And Fisk will lead it off, has a single and has walked twice. And the wind blowing out. There it goes, a long drive if it stays fair. Home run!

[CROWD CHEERING]

DG: And why do these moments matter to you so much? Like, why do you think back to these singular moments or games when you think about why sports, you know, have become such a thing for you?

HB: Yeah, it’s a great question, David, as to why it matters so much. I mean, I think that’s the the eternal question that non-sports fans keep asking. Why does this matter? Why do you…

DG: Yeah what the hell is wrong with you people? (Laughs)

HB: Exactly. Why do you all retain this?

DG: Yeah.

HB: Why do you retain all of these moments? How do you have this? Why is it in you? I think for me, the adult answer is family. The adult answer is sports is really the wallpaper of your life, especially back in the day in summertime. There was nothing else happening. It was baseball. It was all baseball. So you remember the broadcasters because they were on the radio. Everywhere you went, there was the game on there. There was no, you know, NBA free agency drama. There was WNBA during the summer. There was not cable television. It was all baseball. So everywhere you went somebody had a transistor radio or where there was a TV here was game on. And so that really was the first thing that created it. And the second thing is that collective memory. There are very, very few things that bring everyone together. And combine that with your own, being a red-blooded American boy in the 1970s and 80s, everybody was playing it. You wanted to be… it was something to be part of.

DG: After years of street hockey in his Boston neighborhood, Howard came to journalism, putting in late nights to hit deadlines and giving himself a front row seat to the humanity of a locker room by showing up game after game.

So you mentioned Oakland. I mean, that’s where your sports journalism career kind of got started, right? Oakland Tribune? Yeah.

HB: That’s where my whole career started. Mhm/

DG: Why did sports journalism call you?

HB: I didn’t want to do this. I had no interest in it. I loved being a sports fan. I had always heard the words that I now disagree with, but I remember “If you get into sports, you won’t be a fan because now you’ve got to be objective and now you’re going to get too close to your heroes and you’re gonna find out how much they dislike you as a reporter and how much you’re going to dislike them and all of the things. ”

DG: “It’s all gonna ruin your life as a fan, don’t do it.”

HB: “It’s gonna ruin your life.” It actually made me a better sports fan because now I understand how the business works. I understand, how hard it is to win and what these guys are doing to their bodies and all of those things. And so with like three days before opening day, 1998, the San Jose Mercury News didn’t have a beat writer for the Oakland A’s. They didn’t time to go do a big national search. So I threw my hand up and said, “I’ll do it.” And they gave me the job and I’ve been doing it ever since.

DG: Is there a relationship that you look back on when you were covering sports in Oakland or working on an early book, whether it’s someone you were writing about or a fellow journalist, like a relationship that really stays with you and had an impact.

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HB: I remember Willie McGee, the great center fielder, used to play for the Cardinals, MVP with the Cardinal’s, played for the Giants when I got in. And Willie was on the exit cycle and he brought me over and he was telling me about the responsibilities that you have as a Black reporter covering baseball. You’re part of a lineage, you’re part a lineage that goes back into the 1800s. That relationship, that African-American relationship with the game is ironclad, it’s timeless. And remember, Willie McGee telling me, you’re part of this, and you have a responsibility as a reporter now to get it right, obviously, but also not to get us wrong. Those Black players in those days were so, you know, they were, they saw very few Black faces writing about them. And they felt extremely uncomfortable, for years. And then you’d see, you know, then I would show up you know, it was gonna be one of two things. It was either gonna be, here’s someone who’s gonna learn how to do this and we can trust him, or here comes another hack who’s going to get my story wrong. So Willie McGee really, you know stands out immediately. Willie, Dusty Baker, Art Howe. I mean, those are the people that I covered.

DG: Howard, I wonder if you could say more. I’m curious about your relationship with someone like Willie McGee and why being a Black athlete and a Black journalist, why that relationship is special and distinct in some way compared to other journalist player relationships?

HB: Well, because because of the history, because of Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and all of those guys who came in. I mean, let’s not forget that baseball is the sport… It’s the first major institution that even attempts to integrate. Baseball integrated before the military, baseball integrated before corporate America, baseball, integrated before a lot of the media. I mean, Jackie Robinson was the first black player to play in the 20th century, but he’s also the first Black full-time columnist in the United States with the New York Post in 1960\. So you’re realizing if you’re a player, you have all of these white faces with tape recorders and pens and pads in front of you and no one who looks like you, no one is from where you’re from, no one’s who is even close in your, to giving you a fair shake if you feel like you’re not by yourself all the time. And those players made that very, very clear that this was something of importance to them. And I think about it all the times when you watch TV, how many of these Black athletes are being covered by Black reporters, virtually, hardly any. And so that relationship is extremely important from just even the possibility of fairness, which is not to say that white reporters can’t give you a fair shake, but they’re not gonna understand you and where you’re from the same way I’m not gonna relate to somebody who was born in South Boston.

DG: In those intimate locker room conversations, Howard became all too familiar watching Black athletes walk that same line, celebrated for what they do, scrutinized for what the say, and often forced to represent more than themselves. Which is what drew him to two towering figures in mid-century America, moving through the same country, chasing the same promise, but choosing very different paths. Paul Robeson was a global icon, an actor, a singer and intellectual who spoke forcefully about racism at home and abroad, unwilling to soften his critique of the United States at the height of the Cold War. Jackie Robinson was the face of integration, breaking baseball’s color line, navigating a white America that demanded both his excellence and his restraint. They weren’t enemies, but they were pulled into opposition. Their words used to define what kind of Black leadership was acceptable.

I mean, this is obviously a perfect segue to “Kings and Pawns,” I mean, your newest book. A lot of these competing pressures that are so fundamental to the understanding of race in America. So we have Jackie Robinson who obviously everyone knows broke the color barrier in baseball. Probably people less familiar with Paul Robeson. I actually, you know, at times had forgotten that he was a star college and NFL football player. I just knew him for that beautiful baritone voice.

HB:That’s right.

PAUL ROBESON SINGING: There’s an old man called the Mississippi That’s the old man that I’d like to be…

HB: Maybe the greatest college football player of all time at his time.

DG: Yeah, and it’s so funny and you write about that it’s shocking the amount of his life that has been sort of forgotten or minimized over time because of how important he was in the history of our country. I guess maybe we could start with just how do you see Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson and why did you decide to tell their stories together?

HB: Well, the biggest reason why I wanted to tell this story was out of embarrassment, to be honest. You asked me at the beginning of this conversation about my entry into sports. And the more that I covered sports, the more I had written about sports, the more than I’d read about sports. We all knew somewhere, whether it was in a biography or any sort of baseball book, somewhere along the line there would be a mention of the fact that Jackie Robinson testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in July of 1949 to denounce comments made by Paul Robeson.

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DG: Yeah, so briefly, the House Un-American Activities Committee was a Cold War-era group set up to investigate suspected communist influence in the United States. When we talk about the Red Scare, it was these guys ginning up the paranoia. In the 1940s and 1950s, it famously targeted Hollywood, government workers, and activists. The goal was to expose threats, but fear often drove the process. The result? Blacklists. Ruined careers and a lasting debate about security versus civil liberties.

HB: And I had read that paragraph a gazillion times, and it never dawned on me that, wait a minute, these two are the greatest, most accomplished titans that this country’s produced. They were placed in opposition to each other, in service of the most notorious government body ever produced as well, the House and American Activities Committee. And that doesn’t qualify as news? (Laughs) I mean, I was embarrassed by the number of times I had read that sentence and never said, “Well, maybe there’s a little bit more here. Maybe what actually happened and who were these people?” And I’m…

DG: I think the metaphor used in the book was like you kept tripping over the roots and not actually understanding where those roots were kind of the foundation.

HB: Yeah, that’s right. And I remember, and also, you know, like I said, I went to Temple University and in 1987, 88, when I got there, in fact, my first visit to Philly was doing a college visit in 86\. Robeson had only been dead 10 years, so his memory was very much alive. It was very much present. And obviously at Temple, because the Charles Blockson collection was there, all the photos of Robeson, a lot of the Robeson collection, was there. So here’s this name that is hovering around, but you don’t quite know why he’s famous. You just know that he is famous. And to me, Robeson had always fascinated me anyway, simply because he’s that name, especially in a Black household, that he’s this mythic figure. But the reason why he is mythic is because he was erased. He shouldn’t be mythic. He should be present. He’s not somebody who is a figment of our imaginations. And so that was one of the things that really, really jumped out at me that made me want to explore this. And then also the combination of just caring so much about history, looking at, hey, wait a minute, on July 18th, 1949, these two guys were placed in a moment of history. What happened? And that really started the trip down the rabbit hole.

DG: Next, we’ll have more of our conversation with Howard Bryant

Alright, we’re back with more Sports in America, and let’s get right back into our conversation with writer Howard Bryant.

Remind us what that moment in history was. So Jackie Robinson is brought to testify in this committee against Paul Robeson. What was kind of set the scene for us.

BROADCASTER: May Day brings a wave of anti-communist sentiment as 100,000 march down New York’s Fifth Avenue in a loyalty parade. Everyone, from vets to youngsters, reveals his inborn dislike of communism, a united answer to those menacing our country’s liberties

HB: Well, the 1949 it really is the beginning of the Cold War, where the animosities are heightening between these two giants, the Soviet Union and the United States. And on top of that, you have Robeson in Paris in April of 1949 at the Paris Peace Conference, which had been derided as a conference of communist propaganda. And Robeson, essentially, to make it really simple, gave a sort of a version of the Muhammad Ali speech that he had no problem with the Viet Cong 20 years later during the Vietnam War. He essentially said, “I have no quarrel with the Soviet Union.” And in 1949, that was essentially you were being called a traitor.

DG: So just to add some context here, at that 1949 Paris Peace Conference, Paul Robeson delivered a message that would ignite fierce controversy back home. He basically argued that Black Americans facing racism and violence in the United States would be unlikely to support a war against the Soviet Union. He said it was unthinkable that Black Americans would fight on behalf of a country that denied them basic rights. The backlash was immediate and intense. Critics across the U S accused him of disloyalty, and his remarks were used as evidence against him during the Cold War. His passport was revoked, his concerts were canceled, and he became a major target of the U.S. Congress

HB: One thing that I wanted to do in this book was to really dig in and sort of create the scene of what it meant. You know, I’m 57 years old. I’m a Cold War child, but I’m an international Cold War child. The Cold War to me growing up was the United States versus Russia, the United States Soviet Union, the missile gap, the Olympics, the 1980 hockey team, the boycott in 84\. But this is domestic. This is the domestic era of the Cold War where it’s neighbor versus neighbor, where if you’re calling someone a communist, you are threatening their entire livelihood. And I really wanted to remind people or to sort of create that scene of what it really meant, of how dangerous it was, of how disqualifying it was. It was the most dangerous, most weaponized word in the English language during that period. And here was the country, or the government was essentially calling Paul Robeson a traitor. And so the way that the committee wanted to mute his voice and his influence in the Black community was to find somebody of equal stature. I mean, Robeson is a giant. He’s the most famous Black American in the country. Who can we find who can counter his voice?

[MUSIC]

DG: In short, the House Un-American Activities Committee needed a pawn, a famous Black American, to serve as a foil to Robeson’s bold activism. And so they reached out to Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, the man who helped break baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson, a man to whom the legendary ballplayer felt indebted.

HB: And that is where Branch Rickey steps in and asks the inspiration, Jackie Robinson, to step in and to testify. And essentially what he’s really asking him to do is to testify to the loyalty of Black Americans. The hearing was titled, Hearing on Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups. So this whole thing was a loyalty test of Black Americans.

DG: `Okay, to set the scene here, this is Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 1949, a sweltering room packed with reporters. Flash bulbs are popping. It was the height of baseball season, but Jackie Robinson wasn’t there to talk about the game. He was there to talked about Paul Robeson. In effect, to respond to Robeson’s controversial comments about the Soviet Union and where the real enemies live. Did he agree with Robeson? Wasn’t Robeson being disloyal? Robinson measured every word. He pushed back on Robeson’s remarks saying they didn’t reflect the views of most Black Americans. He affirmed that black citizens would defend the country, but he didn’t fully abandon the underlying truth either, that racism at home complicated any easy appeal to patriotism. It was a narrow path, one that required him to reassure the government without betraying his own experience, under oath and under a microscope.

JACKIE ROBINSON: That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop fighting race discrimination in this country until we’ve got it licked. It means that we are going to fight it all the harder. Because our state and the future is so big, we can run our fight without the communists and we don’t want their help.

HB: Jackie felt a responsibility. He felt a responsible to Branch Rickey. There were numerous people who told Robinson not to do this, that you are going to put yourself in service of right-wing segregationists who are not committed to integration. But Jackie also felt that he had a responsibility to Black Americans, in addition to his loyalty to Branch Ricky, to say that we are American and that we do have a stake in this. And you have to remember that were also coming out of World War II. It’s only been four years since World War II. And the amount of violence that was directed toward Black soldiers, Black veterans coming home was one of the reasons why Paul Robeson had been activated in the first place. One of the reason why he had been so upset about the real enemy to African-Americans in this country is right here. And so this was the thing that really excited me about this idea. I mean, there’s a lot of themes here. These are really big, important themes. And so many times when we talk about Black history, we put that word, we put Black in front of it as if it’s somehow lesser or different or othered history. The Cold War is not a Black story, but this chapter in history is a story of two African-Americans who were placed in the center of the most important theme in the country at that time.

DG: We should say this is obviously a time where there was, for one thing, Soviet propaganda, for example, that was driving home this message that we in a communist society are more integrated than sort of the terrible United States that is an incredibly racist society. And so that helps you understand why people like Paul Robeson would have flirtations or interests in communism and at a place like Soviet culture and be really struggling withheld to both. Reflect on that publicly while also feeling this pressure to to show that you as a Black American believe in your own country I mean, I can’t

HB: That’s right.

DG: Those pressures are crazy. And then and that’s a lot of your book, just these competing pressures, particularly on on figures like Robinson and Robeson.

HB: Yeah, and dueling. They are dueling pressures that are not clean. And I think that when you’re looking at where Black America is between, say, 1920 and 1950, you’re looking at a people who volunteered in World War I, volunteered in World War II, showing that they want to fight, to protect and defend and to be part of the American dream, while at the exact same time, recognizing that if, 2001 post, we say thank you for your service to Black veterans, we bring back, we try to restore the dignity of anybody who had fought, whether it was Vietnam or whether it was any other war or the Tuskegee Airmen try to bring back the dignity that had been lost from those people who were part of those conflicts. But at that time, whether you’re coming out of World War I, or whether you are coming out of World War II, if you were a Black person wearing a uniform, a veteran wearing a uniform, you are a target. And I think that if you’re someone like Robeson, you’re looking for a home. You’re looking for a place where you can actually live and thrive and it’s not happening here. That was the appeal of the communist socialist parties in the 1920s and 30s anyway, that this idea is it is there a place where you can go, where you are going to be treated, or a system where you were going to be treated with first-class dignity, and that was the appeal. And yes, some of it was propaganda, some of was absolutely determination, and some of is was very much a mission. There were many, many people in the progressive left-wing labor elements, political elements in this country, who were absolutely committed to integration. And that has been the battle. I mean, there’s so many stories in this book where we’re talking about communism and socialism, et cetera, and Branch Rickey being anti-communist, et cetera. But a lot of what those guys were, they were anti-New Dealers. They really didn’t have a whole lot to do with communism as much as it had to do with business versus the same questions we’re asking now about health care and wealth inequality and the 99% versus the 1%, which is terminology that Paul Robeson was using back in the 1930s. It’s the same fight. It’s the same battle. And I think that the question that we ask ourselves today is very similar to the question that Robeson was asking back then. Does the federal government have a responsibility to educate its citizens and keep them out of poverty? And for those people who believe the answer was yes, they were immediately branded anti-American. That battle as today still goes on.

DG: Yeah, what, what is the larger statement about our country at that time? And then I want to get to, to how these questions live on in today’s society. But the fact that Paul Robeson was looking for a different home, a place that was more, that was less hateful to African-Americans, um than his own country. And the fact he was put in opposition to Jackie Robinson, who, you know, we remember as the player who broke the color barrier, the fact that they were in opposition to each other on that day on Capitol Hill, what does this say about who we are?

HB: Yeah. And two people who had never met. They’d never met in their lifetimes, and yet they were placed in opposition to one another. And I think that is the thing that you find that is … For me, part of the book was it was part of It’s a continuum.

DG: It is not lost on Howard Bryant how these thorny questions of loyalty, patriotism, and falling in line reverberate in our present circumstances.

And so how do you reflect on all of that today? Like, and you know, I think about, you know Colin Kaepernick and activism and the choices that athletes, particularly Black athletes have to make when it comes to their paycheck and responsibility to entertain and also their responsibility to themselves their own values and fighting for a country that they believe is truly fair and welcoming.

HB: Yeah, 100%. The first answer, obviously, is that, at first, you take care of yourself.

[MUSIC]

HB: Right, that’s the very first thing, is that on top of everything else, you still have to perform. And people are going to look to you, you’re the one who made it, you’re where we are right now. Athletes are a little bit more quiet than ever. The George Floyd moment is over, the pandemic moment is also over, and so that level of activism that we saw 10 years ago is virtually non-existent. This is going to be the 10th anniversary of Muhammad Ali’s death in June upcoming. This is gonna be the 10th anniversary of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee this upcoming August.

DG: It’s amazing it’s 10 years. That’s crazy.

HB: Right? I can see the lines on my face telling me, yeah, it actually was that long ago. And so you see that these players are part of a continuum and part of legacy and I am very interested in seeing what they do now, what they do next.

DG: What are you looking for? Why is this a moment when you’re saying, I wanna see what they do next? Are you…

HB: Because we’re under assault, because now it’s not being hidden anymore. I mean, it was never really hidden, but now it is very, very clear that, one, the athletes are quiet. Two, there is an absolute assault on Black journalism in particular, in terms of as many people who were suddenly hired in 2020 after George Floyd. I think those rules have diminished greatly, especially as our industry collapses. The way that the where we are today in terms of our politics and you look at the similarities today between now and Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson’s time and the assault on on liberal politics, the assaults on progressive politics, the assault on universities and on liberal education, all of these things The fact that these Black athletes were asked to globetrotter around the world in service of American foreign policy as the United States is doing right now. It’s the same thing at the exact same time when they’re closing the borders to non-white countries just as they did during Robeson and Robinson’s time with the Smith-Mundt Act. It’s same playbook. So the athletes are part of this playbook now just as they were then.

DG: I think about the globetrotting. I mean, I think about the NFL expanding to more and more international cities, which, you know, as a fan, you’re like, that’s cool. My Steelers are playing in Ireland. Like that’s cool, but it’s like the, the greater the NFL brand grows in other parts of the world, I suppose that the less people might be thinking about things about our country that might seem really bad.

HB: Sure, but you’re using Black athletes…

DG: As the pawns.

HB: As the pawns, which is exactly the title of the book. That’s why it’s called “Kings and Pawns.” The reason, and once again, when you’re thinking about this from a global international standpoint, is so much of the State Department initiatives, whether it’s the ones that Donald Trump initiated last month in terms of expanding the NFL as ambassadors for U.S. foreign policy or whether it was in the 1940s and 50s when track stars and basketball players would go to Africa for the same reason. The original reason, entertainers as well, was to mute the international voice of Paul Robeson. He’s the reason why they exist in the first place, because of his influence and the influence of Du Bois in Africa. And that’s really the thing that I found fascinating too about how these things are tied together whether we want them to be tied together or not. That all of this, when we think about this continuum, so much of the Civil Rights Movement is taking place at the exact same time that the African Independence Movements are taking place. And yet because of this Cold War, and you can’t run afoul of the State Department because they’re gonna call you a communist, that decouples the African Independence Movements in Ghana and in the old Belgian Congo and Kenya. It decouple them. From the same things that are happening in the United States. These are the Robeson argument as well. You’re not taking my passport because I’m a communist. You’re taking my password because I am linking these two struggles together. And that’s the reason why you’re silencing me.

DG: I want to finish by coming full circle. I mean, we talked about how much you and I loved sports in this nostalgic way when we were kids, just the pure raw being out there playing with friends or watching our teams in the summertime when there wasn’t anything else to do. There’s this whole constant conversation about whether injecting politics into sports takes away from. You know, that just raw feeling of joy of sports. I mean, after all these projects that you’ve done in all these books, and especially this one that’s so intertwined, politics and sports, like where do you land on that? What role should politics play in sports and what role should sports play in our politics?

HB: I think it’s a red herring. I think all of it is one giant straw man. The politics have been involved in the sports and the sports have been involved in politics since day one.

[MUSIC]

HB: Why do we have Olympics? That is a political endeavor. It is to put your athletes against one another in a spirited, friendly competition in lieu of killing each other, right? It’s the same thing. Why is sports so important to Black people? Because sports is the place where we got to prove that, gee, if I’m faster than you, I get to win. And why you can’t have it. Really, people just really want to have it both ways. They want to be able to say, oh, we’ll keep your politics out of, you know, out of my sports, but at the same time want to use Jackie Robinson as a symbol of being an American hero for testifying in a political environment, or by looking at the 1936 Olympics as a triumph of American freedom over Nazism at the Berlin Olympics. And so you can’t have it both ways, but everybody wants it both ways. And so the sports is so important to the Black American story because sports was the place where we were gonna get a chance. And that’s the other reason why it inflames so many white sports fans because they don’t need sports to mean that to them. There are all kinds of other places where they can go for their self-worth. And that the reason why Black people need sports and entertainment. Why it’s so important to us because these are the places where we were allowed to show our talent and that talent equated to not just celebrity and money and everything else but to prove equality and to have a better life. And that’s the reason why we have these conversations and that’s why the you know, we talk about “Oh, well, there are no Black coaches who were hired at this NFL cycle.” Well, why is that important? Because the coach is the highest-paid guy on staff? And if you get that kind of money you get to have really good life, and if you’re shut out from those opportunities, you don’t get to have as good a life. It’s not that Black people can’t help but inject politics into basketball. It’s because they’ve always been intertwined because of the lack of opportunities in other places. I would love nothing more to conclude and not need LeBron James or Colin Kaepernick or anybody else. I would prefer them to be able to just play their game and live their life. But it’s not like that.

DG: Howard, I enjoyed this conversation so much and learned a ton. Yeah, I really, really, really enjoyed it, and best of luck with the book. It’s fantastic.

HB: No, my pleasure. Call anytime.

DG: Next time on Sports in America.

[MUSIC]

KEVIN SLAUGHTER: I’ve never seen one human being stay in front of her and stop her from scoring a basketball.

DG: High school phenom Shayla Smith smashes the all-time scoring record in Philadelphia basketball history.

SHAYLA SMITH: I was happy, actually. I don’t let pressure get to me.

DG: We talk to Shayla and her coach about her arsenal on the court, her role in her community, and the way she carries herself as a leader.

SS: If I’m not doing good, then the whole team’s not doing good so, so I just always gotta keep my head high.

DG: That’s next time on Sports in America.

[THEME MUSIC]

DG: This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, you know, wherever you get your podcasts.

We also want to hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsInamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsInamerica@whyy.org. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time for more Sports in America.

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Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineer: Mike Villers, Adam Staniczeski
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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