It’s one of the most famous moments in sports history, or 20th Century American history, period. Jackie Robinson, the first player to break the pro baseball color barrier, took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on the road against the Cincinnati Reds. A hostile racist crowd poured abuse down onto him. But then, Robinson’s teammate Harold “Pee Wee” Reese shamed and quieted the crowd by walking over to Robinson and putting his arm around him in a gesture of support. It’s a moment immortalized in film, in children’s books, and even in bronze.
But as the Wall Street Journal revealed in a recent article, the whole episode never happened…
This wasn’t just a harmless myth…
They promote a certain story about America: That until very recently the country was overwhelmingly bigoted and hateful, and good for very little else. In fact, America’s entire 20th-century history, as it is taught in schools and portrayed on screen, is essentially “fake.” It is a sequence of myths atop myths, created to make Americans hate their ancestors and their history.
A full list of these myths could fill several books. For now, we will illustrate the point with some central examples. Read more…