Jackie Robinson lived only a decade as a Hall of Famer. He suffered from diabetes and died of a heart attack at age 53, in 1972. Robinson had integrated the major leagues a quarter-century before, and he never stopped striving for social justice.
"I marvel at how much this man did in such a short period of time,” said Doug Glanville, a former major league outfielder and an ESPN analyst, who gave his son the middle name Robinson. "He lived, like, five lifetimes. He was in his 50s when he passed away, and you sit there and go, ‘How in the world did he do all this? How did he take all this on?’"
Glanville teaches a class on sports and society at the University of Connecticut and assigns students a letter Robinson wrote to Martin Luther King Jr., in 1960, urging King to help quell the infighting between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP. Robinson co-founded a Black-owned bank in Harlem, served as a columnist for New York newspapers and wrote in his autobiography that he could not stand and sing the national anthem.