I Never Had It Made Quotes

“There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey's drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made

“on Staten Island. The”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“Yell. Heckle. Do anything you want. We came here to play baseball.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“It isn’t a perfect America and it isn’t run right, but it still belongs to us. As”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“became a swellhead, a wise guy, an “uppity” nigger. When a white player did it, he had spirit. When a black player did it, he was “ungrateful,” an upstart, a”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“There was a popular saying once that in the North the white man didn’t care how close the black man came if he didn’t climb too high, and in the South the white man didn’t care how high the black man climbed if he didn’t come too close.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“The Democrats”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“the boys.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“Jim Crow”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“XIX The Influence of Martin Luther King, Jr.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography

“United States—and unfairly, I feel—the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.”
― Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography