Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson. Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays.

Ask any college, middle or high school student what these two groups of names represent, he would tell you the first are great civil rights leaders and the second are great African American baseball players. Without hesitation, he would be able to tell you about King’s “I have a dream” speech and Bonds’ assault on Aaron’s home run record.

But ask the same student the question “Who was Jackie Robinson?” and 90 percent could not tell you. Don’t believe me. Wait a week and try it.

Now, while this is a shame on our American education system, it is also an indictment of our failure as a society to truly appreciate Robinson and the magnitude of his accomplishments as both a baseball legend and as one of the primary initiators of the American Civil Rights movement. It is a failure deserving of our correction.

We spout the name “Jackie Robinson” with lackluster fanfare. We say “broke baseball’s color barrier” as though it were just another historical act of the past century. But do we really understand how big this milestone was for America?

The year 1947 was not the hotbed year of civil rights activism; this was a year two years removed from the end of World War II. This was an era in which racial segregation was the rule in at least half of America’s states with Jim Crow laws permeating the southern states, with the singular intent of preventing blacks from voting. Racially separated schools had not yet met the challenge of Brown vs. Board of Education. Rosa Parks was still 16 years away from her famous bus ride. Martin Luther King and his era-changing sit-ins, freedom marches, letters from a Birmingham jail and the public declaration of his dream of seeing a society that judged its citizens by the content of their character and not the color of their skin was still more than 17 years away. Even at this point in time, the United States military was still segregated, even though Robinson and thousands of young black men had served with distinction in the war defending a country that refused to grant them the same rights which they fought to defend for others. This was Jackie Robinson’s America in 1947.

This was an America where Robinson would face International League game cancellations because of city rules prohibiting “whites and colored players from playing each other”. He would be the target of petitions from members of the Brooklyn Dodgers to prevent his entry onto their roster. He was the target of ultimatums from members of the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals, who said they would boycott games against the Dodgers if Robinson was in the line-up. He would face “welcoming committees” waiting for him outside of clubhouses, waiting to lynch him for the crime of playing baseball.

Robinson was a sports hero who fought racism and inequality the only way he could. Long before King advocated winning equality peacefully, Robinson literally offered the other cheek to those who tried to deny him the opportunity to display his God-given abilities on the baseball field, no matter what the color of his skin. By doing so, he literally made America start thinking about its treatment of race as it never had. In doing so, he paved the way for Parks, King and Aaron.

Jackie Robinson deserves a better place in our memory than we as a society have given him. He certainly deserves more credit than history has afforded him. Maybe we need a national Jackie Robinson Holiday. It certainly wouldn’t be undeserved.

That’s how I see it from the other side of the desk. See ya down the road.