Document for August 13th:
Telegram, Jackie Robinson to E. Frederick Morrow, August 13, 1957
Telegram, Jackie Robinson to E. Frederick Morrow, August 13, 1957 ; White House Central Files; Box 731; File: OF-142-A-3; Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; National Archives and Records Administration
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (1919-72) was the first African American to "officially" play in Major League Baseball. When he retired from the game, Jackie Robinson went on to champion the cause of civil rights from his position as a prominent executive of the Chock Full o'Nuts Corporation.
Jackie Robinson sent this message to Presidential assistant E. Frederick Morrow in August 1957 as the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction was being negotiated between Congress and the Eisenhower administration. Public citizen Robinson--along with race leaders such as Ralph Bunche, A. Philip Randolph, and the publishers of the popular black newspapers--the Chicago Defender, [Baltimore] Afro-American, and the [New York] Amsterdam News--considered the emerging final version of the 1957 Civil Rights Act too weak and urged Eisenhower to veto it. In the end, Eisenhower signed the bill.
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Irving Berlin’s This is the Army
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Social Security Act
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