Transcripts For CSPAN2 Call-in With Sharon Robinson Child Of The Dream 20240713

So integrator our neighborhood and our school. Host i did want to ask that question. How much black people were living in stamford, connecticut, in 1963 . Guest it was north stanford so thats, morland and so it was our family. 63 there may have been more. There may have been two or three who lived up in that section of town. Still very much segregated in stamford, connecticut,. Host what do you remember about that segregation, possibly one of the few africanamericans . Guest i remember in Elementary School children ask d me if i made the and me feeling very insecure, very shy, didnt speak at all. I wouldnt ask questions. I wouldnt wear my glasses because i did want to be different in any other way. I didnt understand that was part of my experience there being the only black child in the fifth grade. So fifth grade is only black child in school. Host why did mom and dad want you to have that, or want you to live there . Guest i dont think the water as to that level of isolation nor lack of, they were not setting is out there as an experiment. My father was still playing for the brooklyn dodgers can one to live on land come have privacy. He thought it would be better for the family and stanford was 45 minutes of new york city so you would get in the game some practice easily. So thats really set up there and they actually ran into housing discrimination when they were looking for land and a house. So with the help of andrea simon from Simon Schuster family, because you lived in the community during the summertime that were able to even find this particular piece of property. Host were you aware that you were Jackie Robinson said daughter . Guest i was. We had a trophy room in our house. Our friends were very enamored of all the trophies and blacks. Wherever we went in public it was a different experience. We were a public family. We could go out on weekends and he would walk into the dining room and everyone turned and looked. We were very much aware that we had a public side and read this privacy at home so it balanced without drama from your book child of the dream you write something so we told you, maybe her older brother. Not easy being a robinson. It comes with such High Expectations and not enough praise. What does that mean . Guest it wasnt even so much our family. It with everyone else. People, for example, my brother who played Little League baseball and babe ruth baseball, they would compare him to my father. You cant do it as well as jackie. So youre constantly told youre not doing it as well. That was jackies experience, and set him up for a number of failures. In school and in life because he was compared all the time. Us, we didnt know how to measure success. We had this super dad and really a supermom as well. And so we were not sure how you measure success. My dad told us its not about trophies and awards. Its about how you live your life. How you change other peoples lives. We werent there yet so we worked kind of achieving at that level yet. Host who is Rachel Robinson . Guest she is my extraordinary mother. She is now 97 and i will see her on sunday. She is, she was my dads partner. They had a wonderful marriage. He died relatively early in his life and in her life as well and she moved right in from career so she could take of something if begun in housing and that gave her a new career, a model, and she found at the Jackie Robinson foundation. So she said both a number of successful careers as a nurse and an educator and then in housing and then with the Jackie Robinson foundation. Host Sharon Robinson, 1963 with standard benchmark your in this country and also for your family. What were some of the activities that happened . Guest the most important thing was birmingham, alabama. So thats where dr. King had a centralized his activity. Birmingham was considered the most segregated city in america at that point. Dr. King had a a birmingham campaign, and during that year, the beginning of the year, we had governor George Wallace announced segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. For me it set a tone of i thought he just declared war. We were talking about war anyway and i was like, is this another form of war . But also set the country up to understand what our battle was. That was sort of like a battle cry for us, and dr. King had organized in birmingham, alabama, after coming out of albany, georgia. They were marching sort of learned from albany, georgia, not to be as broad in what they were marching for and what the expectations were. They had been organizing with adults, but by april there were not able to mobilize enough adults in the longer and the turn to children. So for me the whole inspiration of this book was the childrens march. Because as a child watching it on Television Every Night and having my dad could end a birmingham, it became, i wanted to march with the children. I wanted to join the movement in a more substantial way and not just be sort of isolated in stamford, connecticut. My dad found a way to bring us into the Civil Rights Movement that tim and Floyd Patterson back then it was the boxers that would go down and trouble with my dad it wasnt the baseball players. They needed people to add visibility to the movement and floyd was one of the great guys that went down. That picture right there is actually Ag Gaston Motel were dr. King was staying. Host this one appear by my finger . Guest right. My dad Anne Patterson went down the next day to bring money for the children who had been jailed during the marches. They went to the site. They also state that that motel. Where it had been bombed . Guest edit just been bombed. Host Martin Luther king a friend of the family . Guest yes, a friend of the family. What we did as a family is we did, start doing jazz concerts and a first jazz concert was all to raise money. It was in june. Then we went host at the house . Guest our house congested my brothers and i sold hotdogs and sodas. Return in 1000 after the concert and we had a second one after, just after the march on washington. We had gone to the march on washington as a family and that was our first time as a family actually participating in the larger movement. It was just an amazing experience because this is what we are asking for. We used to ask a bad chemical we get birmingham . He said no, ill figure this out. He figured it out by bringing us with him to the march on washington. And then just after the march on washington we had our second jazz concert, and dr. King came to our house himself. It was amazing. Host we are talking with Sharon Robinson, the author of this book, child of the dream a memoir of 1963, talking about the Civil Rights Movement, her childhood during that time. Of course she is the daughter of Jackie Robinson. Sharon robinson, i saved the daughter of until the end. Do you get tired of hearing that . Guest no. I dont get tired of it, you know. As long as its in a business world. I do get tired of it where i live because of what two, oh and just be sharon, and i dont want to be the daughter of it i just want to be me. I feel like we should a a priv. Im working on my community to let them know, okay, now we know this. Lets go on and realize im a neighbor. Host do you work with major League Baseball today . Guest i still do. Yes. We have an credible program for 24 years that you start in 1997, breaking barriers. It essential apps gets understand that barriers are a part of life. Give them my dad story and give them values that i associate with the his success on and ofe field. Eventually tell their story in a National Essay contest, what barrier they the fed over, andk about that process, including which values they use. I go out, collect National Western we get between 11,000 11,00015,000 essays every year from kids all over the united states. I collect and visit with the winners in their classrooms, bring them to local major or Minor League Parks if we can, and in the grand Prize Winners are honored that is the allstar game or the world series. Its been an Incredible Program and really, ive been working with kids on the boards of fighting their voice to i tell them to me, voice is confidence. And by writing it down and telling, showing what it overcome, helping to build confidence and helping to build inner strength and thats been my work. Its just been incredible. I met some amazing children, and they stay in touch. Host it was 56 years ago i believe, if i got that that right, just about right now that the march on washington happened. Guest yes. Host two miles from where were sitting. What do remember about those august 1963 days of washington . Guest i remember it was hot and very, very crowded. People came from all over. There were buses all over the city. I remove remember us going as t because again this is our first ongoing on a march march and wed only seen the marches in birmingham on television. We didnt quite know what to expect. And i remember we were separated from my dad at one point, and in that process i got overheated and dehydrated and think it. So i remember being carted off to the medical tent, and they got as coming back together, and then we went and met up with my dad and we were able to hear dr. It was an experience that i wanted to be part of the larger move as of this was my First Experience of the participating as, being an activist on that level. I started being an activist on a lower level in terms of my School Papers and activating and advocating for myself in school. But now i felt the energy and the excitement of being in this mass of people that were all striving for equality and justice. Host what do you think of the movies that a been made about your dad and your family . Guest loved 42. Autos i could was i could. I felt they understood the determination versus i felt the original Jackie Robinson story which was made in 1950 ruby dee try to my dad himself in that movie. Black and white of course. Even as a child, and i was a child when this is made and watching it in day camp. I didnt record as my dad because the way he was directed. You can direct somebody to sort of people came away feeling well, he had the personality that he could have that adversity as opposed to some is so determined and seeing the Larger Mission and is pushing forward, and sort of holding back some Natural Instincts for some of the reactions. I loved 42 because chad was such a strong actor and he understood Jackie Robinson and showed up as a powerful, strong man who was on a mission. Host Sharon Robinson is our guest. First call from laura in maryland. Go ahead. Caller thank you so much. I am thrilled to be able to talk to you, and heres my question. Youre talking about the 63 march. I was 16 in 1959, and went on the youth march for integrated schools and im dying to know remember anything about that because your dad was there and so was i, and ive been trying to find out more information about it. I was going to get in touch with your mom, but now i have you. Do you know anything . Guest well, i remember that my dad did go to march 1959 also would like to hear your memories. So you can reach me through the Jackie Robinson Foundation Based in new york city. And please call and leave a message that youre trying to reach me and we will talk. Host share from dublin, ohio. Go ahead, sharon. Caller i was just wondering how long did it take you to write your book and where do you live now . Guest thank you, sharon. As an author you very much, you write books in your head for a long time before you start writing them down. I wanted to write a book about the childrens march, started doing research for several years before i actually started writing this book. My editor and publicist convinced me it was the writing process i would say i get about two years of research. It took about a year and a half to write, and be edited. And then, the inns of being a full process to the end, but he was a number of years to think about the childrens march and out effectively in 1963. So i actually lived in delray beach, florida, and went back and forth between york city. Host either writers the works best with structure, a desk, laptop, walls last with timelines and story arc, quiet, perched in bed on my books. Guest shes at the hotel. She travels with me still. Host she is a dog . Guest a dog, i found your key. Host you edit, you like to edit on the beach. Guest i like noise so actually i go to a diner. This particular is right across the street from the beach and they allow me to sit there for hours and theres a table i like i can see the water so i sit in the upper level and can look up and see the water and do my editing. I like noises around you when it edit. I dont know why that is. Host next call for Sharon Robinson is larry from macon, georgia. Caller i was here, macon is my home and as you probably know they filmed 42 here. I enjoyed watching the film and it was a wonderful experience. Ive been down to the ballpark so many times and i lived to all the integration and so many good ballplayers at that stadium, so many times, and i just had some wonderful experiences there and i enjoyed seeing all the filming, not only of the ballpark but in the downtown area also. I just Jackie Robinson has always been one of my heroes and so i want to say thank you for that good movie and everything and i know it was, you said i think previously that it was very accurate, and i thought it was, too. I really enjoyed watching them and everything, and i remember the integration of the stadium. One time johnny wrubel pitched year and there were so many africanamericans that came to watch him pitch, that i really didnt have any choice but to integrate the stadium because the blacks had previously been made to sit over on the third base side of the smaller section. Guest right. Host larry, do you remember, do you remember hearing from people who were opposed to the integration of baseball and the integration of the stadium, et cetera, et cetera . Caller yes, yes, yes. Very much so. Host what were some of the comments . Caller well, you know, they went through, you know, they cannot restarted with the schools and they protested that, and then, then they would make comments like, you know, you know, they cant be happy, you know . 90 want to integrate our baseball park. Now they want to integrate them into the army, and all the stuff like that, you know. It was really sad, but i like to say we were over that now bute did go through that period of time here in macon. It wasnt a good time but it was, you know, a dark part of our history. The whole nations history. Guest american history. Host larry, two final questions. What kind of work do you do and how old are you . Caller im 72 and im a librarian, or retired librarian. Host thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. Sharon robinson had a little chat with larry. Guest i heard that times have changed and that he experienced that change, and that the other part he didnt say that white people did want to sit next to black people in a stadium. And you know, unfortunately we are experiencing similar attitudes today. I mean, one of the things my dad told is in the 60s, in the Civil Rights Movement we were fighting to change laws. He said you cant legislate hate, you know, hate will be around and it will be a constant struggle. We certainly are seeing that today, the country is very divided so i dont think he wanted to say that schools are resegregated in many places in america. So there are lessons we can learn from the 1963 or the Civil Rights Movement from the mid50s through the 60s with past the Civil Rights Act in 1954, but we still are living in a very divided world. Host Sharon Robinson, you talked about the private family and the Robinson Family have public face. Did your parents have to walk that line quite a bit knowing in a sense that they were Cultural Icons . At of these your father was a cultural icon, and yet they had personal feelings as well . Guest you know, i wouldnt say that they stayed online. My dad wrote columns. He wrote letters. He never stopped advocating equality and justice. He did it even when, he did about politics. He was always a voice out there. The once he retired from major League Baseball, he worked activism was in his blood, the movement was heating up and he jumped right in there and found february he could to continue to use and found every way he could to continue use his voice. Host what about Richard Nixon . Guest i told him i was ten years old and, you know, it was my first discussion with him about politics. My fifth grade teacher asked us to go home and find up to our audit was voting for. I knew who my father was voting for. I didnt have enough selfconfidence to say it doesnt matter who my father is voting for. I was voting for candidate. I went home and had a discussion with my dad, and i learned about integrity and commitment, and he admitted commitment to Richard Nixon. But thankfully he didnt support him the Second Time Around and he learned that nixon wasnt going to listen to them very early in the campaign. He stuck with him but he said he met with kennedy. Kennedy did not looking in the eye and explain to me about trust and how you establish trust with somebody. And also he said kennedys voting record was not, you know, he had a chance to work on equality and justice issues as the center, and he had not done it. So we continued to have those discussions right until the until 64, goldwater. Vitale went out to San Francisco and republican convention, the entire family went and dad was there with rockefeller. They lost and had to regroup and we literally stopped, we drove back across country and stopped off at rockefellers ranch. So he and that could sit on the porch and say the Republican Party is going in a different direction, and they met in regroup. And then my dad, you know, from that point on kind of, well, he didnt live that much longer but he voted for candidates or supportive people he felt regardless of party were who he could support. Host what you did he pass . Guest 1972. October. He was 53. Host and the reason . Guest my dad had type i diabetes and heart disease. It runs in the males on his side. Adult onset type one and he had a massive heart attack. Host you had two brothers. What happened to jackie junior . Guest jackie died in a car accident when he was 24. Host key features in your book. Guest he does. Host what do you remember about him . Guest i remember that he was i loved my older brother very much, and i remember he struggled. He struggled from a young boy. He struggled in school, academically turned what he didnt struggle being jackie junior . Guest he struggled being named jackie junior. There was no hiding place for him, though we acted out, he struggled from an early age. He also didnt have the confidence you get from being successful in school. I was telling about baseball. He was actually a very good baseball player, but he couldnt be himself. He was constantly being compared soy dropped out of that. He struggled in school, finaly dropped out and went to vietnam. Came through addiction and came out of it and then died in a car accident. It was a very hard, hard years from a family. So in my book in 1963 we are just sort of beginning to see how adolescents, his adolescence and how traumatic it was on the family as well. Its funny because when i wrote my first scene of the book which was my birthday, january 13, 1963, i wrote it and everybody was home. My dad was home. My brother was home. And then i go, wait a minute. Then had to go back and do a research. He had to do Research Even though its your own story. Your to go back and research and thats when i found out my dad was not home. He was in hospital, and jackie was so. He had come back from boarding school. I had to rewrite that scene, and it showed me right then that the trauma that was happening in our family. So jackie literally ran away to california the day my dad comes home from the hospital. Host younger brother as well. Guest by younger brother, david, you know, we are very close. David lives in east africa. Hes the father of ten, close with all of his children, and hes a coffee grower, a businessman and, you know, does some work with baseball as well. Hes doing some Work International for the dodgers. Hes an incredible man. We see him two to three times a year. We no longer go my mother and i used to travel to see them but now he comes to new york and spends time with us. He and i hes not an independent farmer. Hes part of a cooperative. It all goes back to how we were raised in the kind of work we selected, our dad told us, find work that you love, stay committed to your family and will have a family mission. We have been Mission Driven from our childhood, and it shows in the kind of work that each of us selected. Host next call for Sharon Robinson is ginny in potomac, maryland,. Caller thank you for this opportunity. Sharon, my sister used to go to school years ago in the seventh grade and one of the friends was Mary Lou Robinson who happen to been goddaughter to your dad. And i often wondered whatever happened with mary lou . My sister is now gone. She died from pancreatic cancer, but i was a tomboy and i love playing baseball so im watching this broadcast and i thought this is the time to ask this question about mary lou. Guest well, i have no idea who mary lou is. So this is in connecticut . Caller no. We lived on the east side of manhattan, and my sister and mary lou read Robert Wagner Junior High School on 76th street at the time. This is going back a Long Distance ago. Because they would be around 74 years of age now. Guest wow. I dont know because, you know, it seems like we had some family association, and i dont recognize the name at all. I cant help you. Host lets see if pamela in petersburg, virginia, has a goddaughter as well. Go ahead, pamela. Caller thank you for the opportunity and the book festival. My mother is a retired [inaudible] im from jackson, mississippi. Im a summer of 64 baby and i have an older cousin on my mother side who played in negro leagues in washington state. So i watched the pbs documentary the other night, until about Early Morning and when i was growing up in mississippi we worked with a poet from new york. We always start a chilled them why all these people from new york coming down to mississippi . We appreciate your parents. We appreciate what you and your siblings have sacrificed being a celebrity family, and i just always curious, my friends from north come to mississippi now. Why. Why did you and why did celebrities like your dad, why get black new yorkers so connect to our struggles and in the so . Did your father ever feel any apprehension come down to alabama . Because been my friends are afraid of the states now. Host thank you trekkie thank you. All great points. My dad was a fundraiser for the Civil Rights Movement and he traveled the country. And then what the activities, the whole point of them going down south was to help bring visibility to the Civil Rights Movement. Only way we had to achieve change in this country was i getting that visibility. When the childrens march and activities in birmingham got the attention, finally got the attention of president kennedy, and that was after outrage for people all over the country who watched dogs being unleashed, or at least being threatened with children that were marching peacefully, and fire hoses that were knocking the children over, tumbling into each other. Some went over cars. So they needed visibility so they tried to get celebrities to help give visibility so we could have a change in this country. And also the celebrities helped raise money because all of these marches, you know, they went to jail and had to be bail money raised. So people like my dad in new york city, a would host things to raise money for the jazz concert i talked about that we had in our house. Yes, i had, i was apprehensive about my dad going down south, but they did what they had to do in order to change laws and bring equality and justice to american citizens. Host Sharon Robinson, according to your book the Birmingham Church bombing really hit you hard. Guest yeah, it did. You know, again, i was very invested in these children who were marching, and its interesting because i told you dr. King came to our house for the jazz concert. In his speech he talked about sacrifice, including death. And so, you know, i had i haven used, i understood why kids had to go to jail and why marchers went to jail and how that raised the visibility of the movement. But you didnt think about children dying, you know . And children died. They were going to sunday school and they died, you know, it was a children today at the baptist church. That was devastating to me, and my dad sat with me. My dad was always my sounding bar. He allowed me to talk about anything and he just sat with me and said, you know, heres what im going to do and you have to make a choice in life potentially. How many of these are post photos, political city photos. All of those are post. When i went to look for photographs i had back then the photographs were this big so i had some that were this big and i thought those are really ours but those were actually posed. Does this happen a lot in your childhood. Yeah. The dodgers or somebody would want to say we want family picture. Before i was born and it was taken in brooklyn and my parents were on the stoop looking very beautiful imposed. In my brother jackie who is now a toddler and acting out over the photographs, he is drinking a glass of milk and when he takes a shot he takes a glass and im like right on jackie. Retirement. Lets talk about everyday occurrence in the robertson. It was not every day but like i said, i told you we were a public family and photographs were part of the publicity. Lets hear from arlotta and charlottesville north carolina. Good afternoon and thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you. Im fascinated to be speaking with you for a couple of reasons, i do want in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania when they were talking about the pittsburgh crosses knowing his legacy and how it came into my life and his grandson coo. Absolutely. My question is a little different, do you think our society and talking about in our country and what can we learn from your memoir, what are your thoughts about that and how it applies to deciding today. Thank you. Great question and im also very close to that family. I love hearing about roberto. I think the most important thing about children is that one, to get an education. They dont offer the option as they move forward in life. But the other thing we talk about voice and finding invoice. Im hoping that children or adults read or watch my own development of voice at age 13 i started to lose my voice and it was part of the protest generation so i certainly marched on womens issues in south africa, so i am hoping the children will be encouraged to continue to use their voice and building selfconfidence and know that somebody is listening to them and they will fight against the division that we have in the country and the growing up in a very different time where there is a lot of divisions but these people are growing up in a time when theres a lot of diversity in their experience more so than we had in our childhood. So im hoping diversity will help them get to meet people that are from different cultures and religion and speak different languages and feel more comfortable, as adults they will not be as threatened by people who do not look like them and its more about how the dream is encouraging all of us to not just accept status quo and do not accept troubling times but to fight back, my parents told us we have to fight back, its an ongoing process because things have gone back, we have to continue to believe and have hope that we can continue to move forward as a country or move forward again. Wanita and california. Hello. K. I have a good friend from there. He just died but we wrote the book together and were Family Friends going back to brooklyn so they have a horse farm, and been there many, many times. That makes me happy. I am calling because i was changing channels and i saw you up there and my mother used to tell us stories and she sold u s that Jackie Robinson was her cousin in james brian, do you know that you have an uncle by the name of james brian . I have a lot of relatives in the south, florida and my father was from georgia and some from jacksonville, that does not matter, we have a lot of robinsons out there that my family and i dont know all about. You met a goddaughter and an uncle. And they will be part of my family. I have a very large robinson contingency. There is another part of your book that i want to mention since you mentioned your family friend. Simon was actually given to my brother but i had been researching and wanting a horse for a long time. He was given to both of us and we shared him. I tell people today the reason that we work so well together around my mother today because we had to share a horse and be responsible for a horse when we were kids. But he was also my freedom and my movement and he gave me the confidence and a lot of preteens dont have and he finally gave me that. I rode diamond bareback, i rode diamond with a saddle that he was very important to us. Do you still write today. I wish i could. I finally gave up and said after one ride it is not worth it. It took me a week to recover. Its a lot harder as you age on your back. Your 30 seconds to talk to Sharon Robinson. I just want to share the story with you briefly i grew up in a country out of baton rouge and louisiana and my mom lived in new orleans so he came down and he was the ceo with Jackie Robinson. I just found this out recently before she passed she passed in 2017 but my brother and i were raised by her grandparents and i just found out about it. Were going to have to cut you there. Thank you for calling. Any comments for ralph. Will leave it at that. He didnt get to tell his whole story. I know i apologize. A memoir of 1963 and she has been here on booktv thank you for your time. Thank you peter it was wonderful. I loved all thed collins. It was interesting comments and questions. Youre watching a special edition of book tv area now during the week while members of congress are in the district due to the pandemic. Tonight the digital world, michael strain discussion how the future of success is right in his book with the American Dream is not dead pretimothy carney on his book alienated america looking at how the American Dream is less attainable. Later Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn on the working class in rural america. Enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Washington journal primetime, a special evening edition of the washington journal on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic while guest former Republican Senate majority leader a cochair of the Bipartisan Policy Center health