Kings and pawns Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America

Citing Jackie Robinson's 1949 testimony against the communist-leaning Paul Robeson before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as "an exposed root on the beaten path of the story of baseball integration," sports-journalist Bryant (Rickey, 2022) takes a long, unflinching look at the complex racial dynamics that created unlikely foes of two of the twentieth century's greatest figures as well as of Robinson, "the Black man celebrated for upholding the values of a segregated society through the rejection of communism." An improbable provocateur was Branch Rickey, who initially bypassed African American players in favor of Mexican or Cuban players, fearing that mass rooting for Black players might inflame white ticket buyers. Rickey also leveraged Robinson's "debt" to him by exhorting the player to espouse Rickey's own anticommunist politics before the HUAC. As Bryant writes, Robinson would, like Robeson, come to see his successes as secondary to the African American civil rights struggle, while Robeson, despite terrible damage to his career and personal life, would steadfastly refuse to recant his communist politics, explaining to a HUAC subcommittee member, "I have told you, Mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered 60 million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you." In this important corrective to America's self-soothing origin story, Bryant lays out a tale that still resounds.

Sports journalist Bryant (Rickey) charts in this powerful history the intersecting paths of baseball star Jackie Robinson and singer and actor Paul Robeson against the backdrop of U.S. segregation and Cold War politics. In 1943, Robeson was the first Black actor to play Othello in a major U.S. production, and a few years later Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Though the two never met, they were publicly pitted against each other. In 1947, Robeson, an advocate for civil rights and critic of capitalism, was deemed a "sponsor of communism" by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Encouraged by Dodgers president Branch Rickey, who wanted an opportunity to separate baseball from any associations with communism, Robinson reluctantly agreed to testify against Robeson. In his testimony, Robinson praised American democracy and denounced Robeson, which led government leaders and the mainstream press to laud him as a national hero. This moment, Bryant astutely demonstrates, personified Black Americans' internal conflict between patriotism and protest, with "one man appearing in conflicted service to and the other hunted for ferocious critique of a country that would ultimately and decisively wound both." Deeply researched and expertly crafted, this is an important corrective to the popular understanding of race and politics in mid-century America. (Jan.)

Groundbreaking heroes, Cold War combatants. With subtlety and insight, respected sportswriter Bryant spotlights Black men who rose to professional preeminence before landing on opposite sides of a political standoff. In 1949, world-renowned stage performer and unabashed socialist Paul Robeson reportedly declared it "unthinkable" for Black Americans to "go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations" against the more equitable Soviet Union. Robeson might've been misquoted, but his apparent comments aided Red Scare opportunists. Soon thereafter, Jackie Robinson, modern Major League Baseball's first Black player, told the House Un-American Activities Committee that Robeson's remarks were "silly" and unpatriotic. Bryant astutely plumbs the meaning of Robinson's congressional appearance, made "at the behest of Branch Rickey," his Brooklyn Dodgers boss. Robinson had long been subjected to vile bigotry, "but the United States remainedhis country," and its "contradictions gnaw[ed] at him." Rickey, among a "coterie of anticommunists," persuaded Robinson "that testifying against Robeson was part of his responsibility." Criticism from another prominent Black man sped Robeson's professional ruin, recounted here in poignant detail. The first Black man to play Othello in the U.S. alongside a white cast, Robeson too was a top athlete who pushed to integrate baseball. But after the Robinson contretemps, Robeson's appearances were targeted by violent racists and his accomplishments removed from reference texts. He spent "his last years in seclusion." Robinson later "regretted" his Robeson comments, his widow said. This book is a narrative and interpretive triumph. Bryant is excellent at explaining midcentury communism's appeal to some Black Americans and at viewing his subjects' actions through the lens of ideas developed by W.E.B. Du Bois. His tightly focused reporting on a sad mid-20th-century episode says plenty about the injustices of the 21st. A first-rate look at the very public ideological quarrel between Black superstars. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.