The Press: Keeping Posted with Jackie

Featured thrice weekly in the sports section of the New York Post, the column often has a most unathletic aroma. Indeed, the Post's newest sports columnist plainly prefers discussing U.S. national affairs to writing about fun and games. On his favorite subject, civil rights, he is prepared to tilt at anyone, whether it be President Eisenhower (for supposedly standing aside from the battle) or Bing Crosby (for not taking a firm stand against segregated golf tournaments). In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the columnist supports and has gone stumping in Wisconsin for Hubert Humphrey ("One of the ablest and most liberal members of the upper House"); he is dead set against Jack Kennedy ("Fair-haired boy of the Southern segregationists").

The Post's Jack-of-many-interests is undeniably a man of parts: he is Jackie Robinson, at 41 greying and 15 lbs. over his best playing weight of 215, onetime (1939-40) star halfback at U.C.L.A., longtime (1947-56) first baseman, second baseman, third baseman and outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Negro who first breached the major leagues' color barrier. Since he quit baseball, Robinson has been a vice president in charge of labor relations for Chock Full O'Nuts Corp., an eatery chain and coffee company with a high proportion of Negro employees. Doubling as a Post columnist, Jackie has been chock full o' zeal and sometimes chock full o' nonsense.

A man with understandably intense convictions on civil rights, Robinson last April approached a friend, Negro Playwright William Branch, with the idea of writing a column for a Negro newspaper.

Branch suggested that the civil-righteous Post might provide a better soapbox. Post Publisher Dorothy Schiff was delighted with the idea, agreed to pay Robinson $150 a week (which Jackie splits with Branch, who writes the column after Robinson dictates the story line).

"This won't be a knock-knock-knock column," promised Robinson at the very outset—whereupon he started spraying his knocks to all fields. Sometimes he dismays even the Post, as when he declared that he might be compelled to support Republican Richard Nixon for President if the Democrats failed to nominate a staunch civil rights candidate.

Says the Post's Nixon-baiting Editor James Wechsler: "You can imagine our surprise when we saw that column." Now and then, to keep sports fans from starving, Robinson throws them a bare bone: "The National League picture this year again shows a race between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Milwaukee." The Post seems satisfied enough with its bargain. Says Editor Wechsler: "There's a lot of reaction to the column pro and con, but the main thing is that there is reaction. The writing style may not be the greatest in history, but it's a lot livelier than David Lawrence.''