6 The Hampton Roads Messenger Sports


CIAA Announces 2016 Female, Male Scholar Athletes of the Year


Volume 10 Number 10


June 2016


The Other Jackie Robinson Story


BY EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON The universally recognized and Charlotte, NC – The Central In-


tercollegiate Athletic Association announces one of its top student-ath- lete honors with the Scholar-Athlete of the Year award. Taylor White of the Virginia Union University women’s basketball program and Livingstone College golfer Philip Harrison have been named the 2016 Female and Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year.


The Scholar-Athlete of the Year


is awarded to the most outstanding and well-rounded male and female student-athlete in terms of their athletic, academic, and community performances. On the basketball court, Taylor White recorded an average of 10.1 rebounds and 9 points per game. She totaled 11 double-doubles, blocked 26 shots, and was named to the 2016 All-CIAA Women’s Basketball Team. In her best contest this season, the 4.0 Dean’s List education major grabbed 20 rebounds while scoring 21 points versus Rollins College.


Playing a major role in her


community, the White served as an essay judge for the Lucille M. Brown Community Youth Bowl, participated in the Teddy Bear Christmas Drive, and has volunteered more than 60 hours at the Overby-Shepheard Elementary School in Richmond. In


addition to serving as a linguistics tutor, the senior standout led her team in community initiatives during the Elite Eight Tournament.


Philip Harrison, Male Scholar-


Athlete of the Year, is a 4.0 business administration golf student-athlete. With the highest GPA on the golf team, the sophomore won low medalist in the CIAA Golf Championship Tournament and advanced as an individual to the NCAA Super Region Golf Tournament. Harrison and his Livingstone team placed second in the conference championship and won the Black College Hall of Fame tournament.


Outside of hours spent on the


course, Harrison volunteers his time to feed the less fortunate, mentor young athletes of the junior golf camp, and also spends time with the Special Olympics.


The Central Intercollegiate


Athletic Association (CIAA) was founded in 1912 and is the oldest Af- rican-American athletic conference in the nation. Although the membership has changed since 1912, the CIAA consists of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) spanning the east coast from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.


celebrated defining moment in Jackie Robinson’s life is the moment that he stepped to the batter’s plate at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on April 15, 1947. That Robinson attained immortality by breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. The annual rite of sports passage in the decades since is to mark the opening day of the baseball season with glowing tributes, remembrances, and much pageantry about the day, Robinson, and how it and he changed sport forever.


There a couple of new wrinkles to


the story this year. The Philadelphia city council in March passed a unanimous resolution formally apologizing for the racist treatment Robinson got from the Phillies management and hotels in the city in 1947. And there is yet another documentary on Robinson, this time by filmmaker Ken Burns.


But there’s the other Robinson


story that Jackie himself agonized and reveled in. This Robinson story started about as far from a baseball diamond as one can get.


For five hours on August 8, 1944, Prescriptions FROM PAGE 5


decision support, patient and health care provider education, and feedback to providers on their performance.


Patients can talk to their health


care providers about when antibiotics are needed and when they are not. These conversations should include information on patients’ risk for infections by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.


Congress has recognized the


urgent need to combat antibiotic resistance. In fiscal 2016, Congress appropriated $160 million in new funding for CDC to implement its activities listed in the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resis- tant Bacteria.


With this funding, CDC is fighting the spread of antibiotic resistance by:


Accelerating outbreak detection and prevention in every state.


Enhancing tracking of antibiotic


use and resistance mechanisms and resistant infections.


Supporting innovative research to address gaps in knowledge.


Informing providers and the


general public about antibiotic resistance and appropriate antibiotic use.


Improving antibiotic use


by supporting expansion and development of new programs and activities at the local level.


Information on antibiotic


stewardship and appropriate antibiotic use for health care providers and patients can be found at www.cdc. gov/getsmart.


second lieutenant Jackie Robinson stood nervously before an all-white nine judge military jury panel at Camp (now Fort) Hood, Texas. He faced multiple charges in his court martial proceedings. His only real offense was that he had defied a segregation mandate. While he rode on a bus back to his base camp, he refused to move to the back of the bus as all blacks were then required to do. Though the army had reduced the charges against him to two counts including insubordination, a conviction would have meant his bounce from the military and possible imprisonment. Fate, and his fame as a star athlete and vigorous protest from the black press and the NAACP, was with him. After lengthy testimony, the second lieutenant was acquitted. But he was not completely out of the legal woods, because of his court martial he was barred from seeing action with his tank unit overseas.


Jackie Robinson never forgot


that bitter experience. He talked often about it in years to come. He took special pride in taking a stand against injustice even though it could have cost him his freedom.


It was just that experience that


insured that Robinson would not simply be Robinson the baseball player who broke the color barrier, an all-star, and a revered sport icon after his playing days were over. He became the consummate civil rights activist, and along the way ruffled a lot of


feathers of those both in and outside of baseball.


In his immortal and provocative


autobiography, I Never Had It Made, he pulled no punches in saying so: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. I never had it made.” This is the other story Robinson told in his autobiography, and letters and columns in the New York Post and the Amsterdam News, and most importantly his tireless civil rights activism.


During the next decade, Robinson


gave speeches, helped raise funds, and made generous contributions to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But in 1967, he resigned from the NAACP’s board of directors accusing it of being “insensitive to the trends of our times, unresponsive to the needs and aims of the black masses — especially the young — and more and more they seem to reflect a refined, sophisticated, “Yassuh, Mr. Charlie, point of view.” His criticism foreshadowed the identical charges made by dissidents that would nearly wreck the NAACP almost two decades later.


Like many then, Robinson


at first regarded Malcolm X as an anti-Semitic, race-baiting demagogue and criticized his approach to racial problems. But in time he came to respect and admire Malcolm X: “Many of the statements he made about the problems faced by our people and the immorality of the white power structure were the naked truth.”


He staked his career and


reputation on making black economic empowerment a reality. He believed, “There were two keys to the advancement of blacks in America — the ballot and the buck. If we organized our political and economic strength, we would have a much easier fight on our hands.”


In 1972, Robinson refused


to attend an old-timers game and accused baseball owners of running “a big selfish business” for refusing to hire blacks as managers, coaches and front-office executives. At the end of his life he realized that many blacks had continued to lose ground and he said so: “I can’t believe that I have it made while so many of my black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity, live in slums or barely exist on welfare.”


This is the other Jackie Robinson


story. The story that must be told and remembered as much if not more than the story of the Robinson on the baseball diamond.


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