This story about the federal indictments handed down regarding corruption at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) just keeps getting better and better or worse and worse, depending on your perspective!

Let’s recap: in late April some 25 people were indicted on charges of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering and drug possession with intent to distribute.

Seven of those people were, at the time, BCDC inmates and members of the prison gang known as the Black Guerilla Family (BGF). Five were gang members, relatives or sympathizers not incarcerated and 13 were corrections officers, all of whom worked at the BCDC. All are female.

The indictments allege that the corrections officers helped the BGF smuggle drugs, cell phones and tobacco into the BCDC. Federal officials also say that four of the corrections officers had sexual relations with Tavon White, head of the BGF at the BCDC.

All four allegedly became pregnant with White’s children, one of them twice.

By any reasonable standard, what we have here is a mess. It might even be called a “putrid mess,” as one U.S. senator called America’s involvement in Vietnam back in the 1960s.

Enter Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley— a.k.a. the Notorious Martin O’Shameless—  telling the press that the indictments are a “positive achievement.”

The proper words to describe what happened at the BCDC might be “low down, dirty, crying shame.” However, O’Shameless is a master at making his political failures look like victories.

Didn’t the man run for governor in 2006 on a record of failure? Didn’t he win?

Didn’t he commit the gaffe of the decade in 2010 when, running for re-election against former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, he called illegal immigrants “new Americans”? Didn’t his popularity surge after uttering such nonsense?

Any guy who can do that can certainly hoodwink Marylanders into thinking that what happened at the BCDC is a “positive achievement.”

But O’Shameless has presidential aspirations. He would be sorely mistaken in assuming that voters in the rest of the country are as sappy as the ones here in Maryland. And he would be just as mistaken if he believes that all of us are going to buy into his spiel that the protections that corrections officers get in a bill he signed into law three years ago didn’t help foster the culture of corruption.

It’s called the Correctional Officers’ Bill of Rights, which I’ve abbreviated to COBOR for the sake of simplicity.

If we listen to Jeff Pittman, a local representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, COBOR is pretty harmless. It doesn’t protect dirty, corrupt corrections officers at all.

“It’s not about protecting dirty correctional officers. It’s about protecting due-process rights of officers of integrity who are facing charges.”

Look, Pittman, I was born at night. But not last night, OK?

The fact is COBOR will, indeed, at some point protect dirty corrections officers. FBI agents that investigated the corruption at the BCDC acknowledged that.

According to a story that appeared on the Web site www.foxnews.com, “one FBI agent is now claiming the ‘rights’ helped shield bad apples from discipline,” and that “an affidavit attached to the indictment and written by an FBI agent clearly states that disciplining guards under the bill of rights ‘has proven to be very difficult, so cases are dropped.”

The piece de resistance comes from The Washington Post, far from a conservative publication.

“The absurd situation took root at least partly because….this bill of rights grants extraordinary rights to guards, including shielding them from threats of prosecution, transfer, dismissal or even disciplinary action during questioning for suspected wrongdoing.”

The “absurd situation” WP editors refer to is, no doubt, what happened at the BCDC. It’s so absurd that Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly has commented on it at least twice, in an attempt to do what most Marylanders will refuse to do:  Hold O’Shameless accountable.

O’Malley has called O’Reilly’s comments about the BCDC mess a “cheap shot.” Methinks the shameless one doth whine too much.

If you are wondering where to take your mom for Mothers’ Day, look no further than the campus of Morgan State University.

In the Gilliam Concert Hall of the Murphy Fine Arts Center, the Dance Theater of Harlem (DTOH) will perform on Sunday, May 12, 2013 at 7:00 p.m.

At this performance, members of the DTOH will have local talent dancing with them. Six young ladies from the Baltimore School for the Arts will perform a ballet with DTOH dancers; two dancers from the Flair Studio of Dance and Modeling will also perform.

Mari Andrea Travis, who teaches dance at Flair, said that eight-year-old Diamond Tomlin and nine-year-old Morgan Cruise will perform with the DTOH on Mothers’ Day.

Diamond has been dancing with Flair for about three years, Travis said. Morgan has been dancing at the studio for about one year.

About two weeks before Mothers’ Day, Travis got a text message— an urgent one— from Dwight Cook, the production manager at the Murphy Fine Arts Center.

Travis contacted Cook to get the details about the message. Cook told her the DTOH wanted to include performers from a couple of local dance schools in their Mothers’ Day performance at Morgan.

Cook said that he was looking for girls, ages eight to 12, five feet or under, with at least an intermediate level of technique.

Their faces just appeared to me when he described what he wanted,” Travis said of Diamond and Morgan. “I thought of these girls right away. Their potential is great and their abilities are fitting.”

Travis knows how to evaluate dance talent. In addition to teaching dance at Flair, she’s the head of the Charm City Dance Theater.

Last year, Travis created some superb and creative choreography for the production of “Smokey Joe’s Café,” which ran at the Arena Playhouse.

Travis is the granddaughter of Willia Bland, who founded Flair in April of 1968, just after the assassination of

Martin Luther King Jr.

That Flair story, if it isn’t familiar to Baltimoreans by now, should be. Bland, who was a model said she wanted to start something positive in the wake of the tragedy of King’s death.

So she started a modeling school in her home. Later, the dance component was added.

Mari Andrea Travis is also the daughter of Andrea Travis, an exquisite, elegant model herself who puts on at least two fashion shows a year. Andrea Travis is the vice president of Flair, and the director of the studio’s modeling program.

Dancing is in the blood for this family. Willia Noel Montague, Bland’s granddaughter and another daughter of Andrea Travis, is the dance captain of “The Lion King” on Broadway.

Mari Andrea Travis said that the name of the ballet the Flair and Baltimore School for the Arts dancers will perform with the DTOH is called “Gloria.” Diamond and Morgan are learning the moves for the ballet, Travis said, and will attend a dress rehearsal the day of the performance.

The parents of both girls are, as you might expect, excited about the opportunity for their daughters to perform with the DTOH. Diamond and Morgan, Travis said, are also excited, but she wonders if they realize what an opportunity it is for them to perform with the DTOH.

“They’re really excited,” Travis said of Diamond and Morgan. “They just don’t know what they’re in for. They don’t realize what a big deal this is. The Dance Theater of Harlem is one of the top African American dance companies in the world. That I know (Diamond and Morgan) don’t know yet.”

But both girls, Travis said, are taking the opportunity seriously, and have committed to practicing at least one hour per night.

If you are in a quandary about how to celebrate Mothers’ Day this year, you might want to consider heading out to Morgan and supporting some of our youth.

“Brighter days are ahead.” “The check is being put in the mail.”

That is what the Republicans seem to be saying after they released their “Growth and Opportunity Project” report in March 2013. Six months after Republicans took a drubbing in the 2012 elections, GOP National Committee Chair Reince Priebus announced a $10 million outreach program to seek more minorities as members.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) provides national leadership for the party. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, coordinating fundraising and election strategy. The problem for Priebus and the party is that the RNC is often viewed as “an old white guy’s club” that is unsympathetic to the needs of blacks and minorities.

So in March, Priebus decided that it was time for the party to “call Tyrone.” In past months, the Republicans set new goals for “outreach” and their spring meeting was to “focus on putting the party on a path to fulfill” their goals. The agenda for the RNC’s spring conference called for strategy sessions and workshops on voter outreach and party coordination.

The “Growth and Opportunity Project” chided the Republicans for not dealing with “shifting” voter demographics. Just after the “Growth and Opportunity Project” was announced, the RNC tapped Raffi Williams, son of TV newscaster, Juan, to be an African-American press contact with a focus on youth outlets. During the spring meeting in Hollywood, California, the RNC announced hiring Asian and Pacific

Island field and communications directors and election of a state party director “to support and empower the work of grassroots activists and volunteers.” There are reports that “some RNC members discussed working with minority media” in their quest.

In past months, the Republicans haven’t actually called Tyrone, and have stepped back from the heady days of the “Growth and Opportunity Project” announcement. Short of sending checks in the mail to black voters, the Republicans face long odds connecting with them. Unless, the Grand Ole Party expands its level of electoral support, it could slide into complete irrelevance.

Bottom line is the Republicans will need minority media to develop meaningful relationships and channels of communication to change black Americans attitudes. The way Republicans make inroads among African Americans is to help them gain weight in their wallets. Priebus and company need to take public policy positions that have potential to advance blacks’ interests. As they make their way through the “hood,” Republicans can make much of the fact that black population, uptown and in suburbia, have always done well economically under their governance. Under Republicans, blacks could again know political reciprocity like they did the last time they supported a Republican presidential ticket in any sizeable numbers, and gave Richard Nixon more than 30 percent of their vote. Nixon, in turn, generated millions of dollars through black-oriented programs and projects.

In 2012, just five percent of African Americans considered themselves Republicans. Republicans need to do more than shout slogans to gain higher numbers of African American registrants. It’s time greater numbers of blacks and Republicans align in projects that generate mutual benefits. Such alliances can repair and bring new successes to black communities. In the past, Republican practices have helped empower blacks— from President Lincoln’s Emancipation to Booker T. Washington’s post-slavery practices of commerce to Richard Nixon’s endorsements for “minority enterprise.”

Even a slight GOP inroad among blacks could swing a state or two in close 2014 elections and the 2016 presidential contest. The promotion of the Republican brand among black Americans requires messages that connect with the realities of black life in America. As opposed to tepid trials of the past, the GOP’s chiefs and corps have to move quickly to have a meaningful presence among blacks and at their community events and cultural ceremonies.

The RNC should have no reservations in chronicling that they’ve “made progress” in mending relationships with African Americans; but for the party to be viable on the national stage so much more needs to be done.

William Reed is head of the Business Exchange Network and is available for speaking and seminar projects through the Bailey Group.org.

Kiera Wilmont a black, 16-year old straight-A student was handcuffed, arrested and charged with two felonies after her high school science experiment blew the top off a small water bottle. Kiera, an honor roll student has a reputation for being nice to everyone. She has never been in trouble with the law. However, she was expelled from school and charged as an adult. Kiera is black.  

Kiera, who attended Bartow Senior High School, in Bartow, Florida, became the victim of a zero tolerance policy that disproportionately channels poor and minority students into the criminal justice system for minor incidents that warrant a more thoughtful, less life-altering reprimand.

According to the police report, “At 7:00 a.m. Monday April 30, Kiera and a classmate mixed aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner in a small water bottle. After about 30 seconds, the reaction created pressure inside the bottle, blowing the cap off with a pop that according to witnesses sounded like firecrackers going off. The reaction created a small amount of smoke. No one was hurt.”

 Science sites familiar with the experiment describe what to expect: aluminum in the foil reacted with hydrochloric acid in the cleaner. The reaction produces hydrogen gas, which quickly builds the pressure inside the closed bottle until the plastic can't take it any more and explodes outwards.

After the “explosion” Kiera tidied up and went to class thinking there was no problem. One can imagine her shock later in the day when police showed up to arrest, escort her off school grounds, and charge her with two felonies: possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds" and "discharging a destructive device."

She was also expelled from school under a zero tolerance policy, which required immediate expulsion for any student in possession of a bomb (or) explosive device — while at a school (or) a school-sponsored activity— unless the material or device is being used as part of a legitimate school-related activity or science project conducted under the supervision of an instructor."

The aluminum foil and drain cleaner reaction is a popular high school experiment. “The problem seems to be that she wasn't doing the experiment under controlled safety conditions, as in class or with her teachers.” Kiera told police she conducted the experiment in preparation for an upcoming science fair.

Authorities said if she had performed the experiment “in her own backyard, there would never have been an issue. But, since Kiera lives in an apartment, she “didn't have access to any private outdoor areas.”

Public outrage over this well-publicized incident has been tremendous. It perhaps accounts for the fact that now Kiera will not be charged as an adult. At this time the felony charges are still pending.  Her family is hopeful that the case will be dropped and she be allowed to return to school.

 Things are looking brighter for Kiera. Her situation no doubt benefited from the national attention. Nevertheless, it makes one wonder how many other students suffer from an overzealous adherence to a policy that may or may fulfill its original intention.

A policy research report by Indiana University examines the history, philosophy and effectiveness of zero tolerance school disciplinary strategies. The following extract is an excellent departure point for a thoughtful consideration of these policies:  

Growing out of Reagan-Bush era drug enforcement policy, zero tolerance discipline attempts to send a message by punishing both major and minor incidents severely. Analysis of a representative range of zero tolerance suspensions and expulsions suggests that controversial applications of the policy are not idiosyncratic, but may be inherent in zero tolerance philosophy.

There is as yet little evidence that the strategies typically associated with zero tolerance contribute to improved student behavior or overall school safety.

Research on the effectiveness of school security measures is extremely sparse, while data on suspension and expulsion raise serious concerns about both the equity and effectiveness of school exclusion as an educational intervention.

Community reaction has led some districts to adopt alternatives to zero tolerance, stressing a graduated system matching offenses and consequences, and preventive strategies, including bullying prevention, early identification, and improved classroom management. Building a research base on these alternatives is critical, in order to assist schools in developing more effective, less intrusive methods for school discipline.

Jayne Matthews Hopson, an education writer and mother of three school-aged children believes that “education matters, because only the educated are free.”

Needed: at least 15 corrections officers like Stanley Cherry to work in the Baltimore City Detention Center. Who, many readers will no doubt ask, is Stanley Cherry?

It would be more accurate to ask who he was. Cherry is now deceased, but he was a Baltimore high school and college sports legend before his untimely death from a drug overdose. Oh, and he was also a corrections officer.

From the years 1966-1969, Cherry attended Edmondson High School. A gifted athlete, he excelled in three sports: football, wrestling and lacrosse.

At what was then Morgan State College, Cherry played football and lacrosse. He is mentioned quite often in the book “Ten Bears,” co-written by Chip Silverman and Dr. Miles Harrison.

Silverman was the coach of Morgan’s lacrosse team in the early 1970s. His squad more than held its own with several elite white teams of the era.

In one segment of “Ten Bears” Silverman described what an intimidating force in lacrosse Cherry was. It seems Cherry was knocking opposing players out cold with body checks, which were perfectly legal.

Officials ejected Cherry from the game. Silverman protested, claiming that all of Cherry’s body checks were quite legal.

Didn’t matter, the refs countered. They wanted Cherry out of the game before he killed somebody.

Throughout the “Ten Bears,” Silverman gave examples of Cherry’s menacing demeanor on and off the field. The six words no one wanted to hear, Silverman said, were these: “Stanley Cherry is looking for you.”

Cherry planned to play in the National Football League. When that plan didn’t pan out, he became a corrections officer.

A former prison inmate, now deceased, that knew Cherry since he was a boy wrote several pieces about him for The Baltimore Sun. Apparently Cherry was every bit as intimidating as a corrections officer as he was on the football field, on the wrestling mat and on the lacrosse field.

Inmates didn’t intimidate Stanley Cherry; Stanley Cherry intimidated inmates.

We could use about 15 or 20 corrections officers like Cherry now, especially at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

You’ve no doubt read— or seen a television news report— about what a hot mess, the Baltimore City Department of Corrections (BCDC) is. Federal officials announced the indictment of 25 people on charges of smuggling drugs, cell phones and other contraband into the facility.

Thirteen of those indicted were corrections officers. All of those corrections officers are female.

They are accused of helping members of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) prison gang with its smuggling operation. Four are alleged to have had sex with Tavon White, supposedly the BGF leader inside the BCDC.

A fifth corrections officer is accused of having sex with another BGF member. The four accused of having sex with White allegedly became pregnant with his children, one of them twice.

I confess to having absolutely no understanding of what was going through the minds of any of these 13 young women. The upside of helping incarcerated gang members would be what, exactly?

The upside of having sex with them, getting pregnant and then bearing their children would be what, exactly?

I might not understand, but BGF members certainly do. According to a story in the April 28, 2013 edition of The Baltimore Sun, “Corrections department investigators discovered BGF documents outlining that new recruits are trained to target female officers with ‘low self-esteem, insecurities and certain physical attributes.’ Gang members believe such officers can be easily manipulated.”

 I’d love to see BGF members try to manipulate a Stanley Cherry, or a corrections officer like him. It couldn’t and wouldn’t be done.

Cherry was an old-school kind of corrections officer, one that would guarantee an inmate who stepped out of line that the dislocation of a body joint would soon follow.

Had Gary D. Maynard, Maryland’s secretary of public safety and correctional services, had 15 or 20 tough male corrections officers working for the BCDC, he would have saved himself the embarrassment of having to take the blame for the hot mess that exists there now.

He has taken the blame, but has he learned his lesson? Let’s see what kind of corrections officers he picks to work at the BCDC in the near future.

I was on “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” last week. This is a weekly TV show that deals with black political issues, among other things. The roundtable discussion was very lively, but I was amazed at my fellow panelists’ response to something I said.

Americans somehow have this strange notion that all discrimination is bad. But it isn’t. We discriminate every day. You choose one restaurant over another; you watch one TV show versus another; you date skinny girls and not heavy girls.

As a matter of fact, some discrimination is quite healthy. If you know drug dealers sell their drugs in certain neighborhoods, why would you go there if you have no interest in buying drugs? If, you are allergic to smoke why would you go to a bar where smoking is allowed? If, certain countries are more likely to kidnap an American tourist, why would you go there, if you are an American?

I think most reasonable people would agree that this type of discrimination is good and healthy. Similarly, our immigration policy should have a certain level of discrimination built into the policy. I was totally surprised that my fellow panelists disagreed. They seemed to be in favor of an open borders approach to immigration. The open borders crowd basically believes that anyone who wants to come to America has a right to come here if they follow the rules.

I find this view very idiotic. If you are not an American citizen, then you have absolutely no basis for the assertion of any right. Post 9/11, at a minimum, our immigration policy should discriminate based on country of origin. We know that certain countries are hotbeds for producing terrorists: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya, etc. So, why would our immigration policy even allow people from those countries to come to the U.S. for any reason, let alone to get a green card or citizenship?

Is this discrimination? You betcha! It’s the good kind of discrimination. Just as you can have good and bad cholesterol, the same applies to discrimination. What we call affirmative action is called “positive discrimination” in France.

You don’t see terrorists being trained in Australia, the Seychelles, or Trinidad & Tobago so therefore there should be less concern about immigrants from these countries. Is this not reasonable?

American visas, green cards and citizenship are not enshrined rights; they are privileges. No one has a right to enter into our country and we don’t need to justify our requirements for admittance into the U.S.

I am sure my fellow panelists would agree that an 80-year-old woman should not have to go through secondary screening at the airport before she gets on an airplane. Why? Because she is very unlikely to have a bomb or other weapon on her body. Is this not profiling? How many 80-year-old female terrorists have you read about? Exactly my point!

However, these same panelists took issue with me for saying that America should deny entry and student visas to people from certain countries. Is it discriminatory? Yes. Is it appropriate and reasonable? Yes.

Does that mean that every person from a country that is known to produce terrorists is a terrorist? Of course not, but that is not the overriding issue in my decision to deny them entry into the U.S. I am sure there are many good people from countries that are known for producing terrorists; but I am not willing to take a chance, just for the sake of making Americans feel good.

If, you are the parent of a young boy would you leave him alone with a Catholic priest? I wouldn’t and most of you wouldn’t, either. I would venture to think that most Catholic priests are good people, but I am not willing to sacrifice my son’s safety to prove a point.

The two brothers from Chechnya who committed the bombings in Boston should have never been allowed in the U.S. Is this an indictment of all people from Chechnya? No. It simply means that the U.S. is exercising its sovereignty to determine who is admitted to its shores. This is a very reasonable and smart approach to our immigration policy. To do anything else is a reckless disregard for the future and safety of our country.

Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a Washington, D.C.-based public relations/government affairs firm. He can be reached through his website: www.raynardjackson.com.

What happens to students when a school closes, and what is the impact on the alumni?

As a native Baltimorean and proud graduate of the city’s public school system I am saddened each time a schoolhouse padlocks its door for the final time. These closures make me wonder if others feel the same sense of loss or displacement.

Every primary and middle school my siblings or I attended has been closed. Once shuttered, the classrooms where I learned to read, count, make friends and began my dream of earning a living as a writer, often fall upon hard times. 

One of my old schools sat vacant for years, vandalized nearly beyond recognition. Another building etched into youthful memories was re-purposed into municipal use as a training facility. The middle school my brother attended became an alternative learning center for at-risk juveniles. Years after it was closed, toxic installation materials were discovered in the school where I attended kindergarten. It was quickly and quietly demolished.

During the 2013 Maryland legislative session, Baltimore City Public Schools secured permission and funding to implement a multi-million dollar facilities improvement venture. It remains to be seen if a better building equals a better education. One thing is certain, for many current students the upheaval and anxiety of going to a new, unfamiliar school will be disruptive at best and in some cases disastrous.

There is also the impact on underserved neighborhoods that desperately need the jobs and professional presence of a public school. Long after the chain grocery stores, first-run movie theaters, pharmacies and banks pulled up and moved away, schools and churches are often the only institutions left to anchor the community and offer a safe haven to

residents.

I am aware that the city’s long-range plan is to replace the aging school buildings with new and better structures. But, in fragile neighborhoods, 18 months (or more) of construction and displacement can be tough on a family’s routine.  

A few months ago, I heard that my high school, Northwestern is slated for closure. I can remember when the school opened. I was a seventh grader at Pimlico Junior High, which by the way closed a few years ago and is now a rather elaborate, state-of-the art police training facility. Former mayor Sheila Dixon graduated from Northwestern, a school that produced a number of doctors, lawyers, at least one public school principal and scores of professionals in other respected fields. 

It’s no surprise that I’m pretty upset by the prospect of Northwestern shutting down. Given my thoughts on this issue it may seem I’m just someone resistant to change, reluctant to let go of the past. However, consider the words and thoughts of 17-year-old Alexis Banks,

a senior who spoke out publicly in protest of the planned closing of her high school. "Every student should have a high school to go back to, to say, 'This is where I came from. This is what got me where I am.” Alexis, has been accepted to seven colleges including Virginia Tech and offered a full scholarship at Towson University.

Moving on, I’m just asking… am I the only one disturbed by the fact that one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers had failed seven college courses without getting kicked out of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth?

In my years as an educational advocate for poor and African American students, I have seen several young people who struggled academically be dismissed from a white college after failing two or three classes. To me this is an unbelievable footnote to the bombing that killed three bystanders and seriously injured over a 250 people. Nevertheless it’s  true!

The New York Times obtained a copy of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s college transcript. The 19-year-old University of Massachusetts (UMASS) student had seven Fs over three semesters, a D and a D-plus in two other courses. Ironically, one of his failing grades was in “Introduction to American Politics. 

According to the school’s website the average GPA of accepted students is 3.25. Yet, he was a white, foreign-born student with grades that put him well below the college’s academic standards.   

A former classmate reports that Tsarnaev said he wasn’t doing as well as he expected because going from high school to college is “totally different.”

Reports indicate he was in this country on a student visa, which would have been revoked if the school had kicked him out of college for academic failure. This is of course pure speculation, but perhaps the Boston Marathon tragedy could have been avoided with more diligent and fair academic oversight by UMASS. 

Jayne Matthews Hopson, an education writer and mother of three school-aged children believes that “Education matters, because only the educated are free.”

You could say “42,” the film about the life of Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, is a gripping baseball tale, and your assessment would be correct— but woefully incomplete.

“42” is not just a baseball story. It’s a compelling history lesson as well. It tells the story of not just baseball, but of a central facet of 20th century American life— the suffocating reach of racism— in the decades before the 1960s.

It conveys the grievous wrong black Americans endured and signals what it cost them, and America as a whole and it indicates how the barrier of racism was cracked by blacks and whites who worked— many over the course of decades— to destroy it.

“42” reminds us, as the Major League’s season gets underway, that, given its mythic status in American life, baseball’s s most important milestone had nothing to do with the mechanics of playing the game or a particular game that was played, but with cleansing the moral center of American democracy itself. It recounts once again in popular form, the story of a man whose life proved that history sometimes acts through individuals and how individuals can act to influence history.

“42” tells a story that never gets old; for it’s rooted in the saga of an America that once was, and then began to change sharply— a change which has yielded enormous benefits but which also remains both incomplete and resisted.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson, born in 1919, grew up in an America where the words “Too bad he’s the wrong color” were often the kindest remarks white Americans would say about black Americans.

A Boston Red Sox scout said those words in April 1945 during the now-infamous sham tryout at which that storied team passed on signing the future Hall of Famer despite his impressing Sox officials with his hitting and fielding. A few years later, the Sox would also pass on signing Willie Mays. They would be the last team in baseball to add— in 1959— a black player to their roster.

Of course, the scout was wrong. As would become evident two years later, beginning on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson was the right color, and of the right character, after all, to help ratchet up the pressure that had been building for decades among black Americans in the North and South to confront the country’s great sin. To repeat, that wrong wasn’t merely blacks’ 50-year exclusion from the playing fields of Major League Baseball.

Even as white America was boasting that its victory over Germany and Japan in World War II had made the world “safe” for democracy, black Americans could see in every sector of American society— higher education, the movie industry, the civil service, residential housing, the military, large corporations and small businesses alike, the labor unions, collegiate and professional sports, and so on— that bigotry, not democracy, was triumphant.

The South’s apartheid system had its explicit “Whites Only” and “No Colored Allowed” signs. Although the signs were absent, the same noxious sentiments existed almost everywhere in the North and West, from Boston to Pasadena, California where the Georgia-born Robinson grew up.

In the immediate postwar environment, Robinson’s signing by the Branch Rickey-led Dodgers was the thunderclap that heralded the massing of new forces in the domestic fight to make America itself safe for democracy.

By then, black Americans had the diverse organizational strength at the national and local levels to field multiple challenges to racism and a still very small but growing number of white organizations— and individuals like Branch Rickey— were actively looking for ways to break the numerous “color barriers” that characterized American society. Also by then, America’s position of global leadership was beginning to exert pressure on it to live up to its boasts about loving freedom by extending it to black Americans.

It was no accident of history that within a year of Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color barrier, President Truman ordered the desegregation of America’s other signal mythic institution— the military.

Jackie Robinson’s story was but one facet of the diamond of black determination in the 20 years after World War II that would dismantle the legalized structure of racism.

However, he— an extraordinarily gifted, fiercely competitive athlete who possessed a deeply spiritual, disciplined character— was superbly suited for the challenge he, and America, confronted.

The wrong color? Not on your life!

Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. Daniels collaborated with Rachel Robinson on her 1998 book, Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait.