The trial of George Zimmerman and his verdict of not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin has sparked outrage in millions of people and the town where it all occurred, Sanford, Florida, sadly has a history of racist behavior and one such witness t this was Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson.
According to the Huffington Post, when Robinson was in the minor leagues for the Montreal Royals, Brooklyn's farm club in the International League, he made his way to Sanford for spring training. On his way there he encountered racism, as he was taken off a plane for white passengers and also had to move to the back of a bus and later he suffered more.
The incidents were described in Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy and here is an exceprt:
"But one precedent that wasn't broken was Sanford's segregation laws. Robinson and Wright were not permitted to join their white teammates who were staying at the lakefront Mayfair Hotel, which barred blacks. So Rickey arranged for the two black players -- as well as Robinson's wife Rachel, Smith, and Rowe -- to stay at the Sanford home of David Brock, a local black businessman and doctor.
The Brocks, who lived in a large house, were one of Sanford's few middle class black families. In Sanford to cover Robinson's historic moment, Bill Mardo, a white sportswriter for the Daily Worker, described the city to his readers.
"Sanford's got the smell. The smell of the South, the silent, lazy and ominous smell of a million lychings that weren't good enough for the pretty palms. Strange Fruit Hangin' on the Poplar Trees," he wrote, referring to the Billie Holiday song about lynching. Mardo visited the city's black section. "Here's where the Negroes live. Here's where every street is a shanty-town. Here's where you walk by and the Negroes look up at you quickly and then away again. Here's where they live and die, some sooner than others."
