The clerk replied, “I don’t care if it’s the University of Michigan football and baseball teams, we do not register Negroes in this hotel.”
By now, all business in the lobby ceased and all those passing through waited to see what would transpire next. The coach asked if the young man could stay in his room, thus not having to officially register. The clerk thought for a moment and decided that would be all right.
When the coach got up to the room, he found this young man sitting on the bed and sobbing. He was pulling at the skin on his hands. Here was a young man who had been raised in the upper peninsula of Michigan and who had never experienced racial prejudice. He looked up at the coach and said, “It’s my skin coach, it’s my skin. If I could just tear it off, I’d be like everybody else underneath.”
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The coach vowed on that day that he would do something to address this injustice. Years later, as the General Manager of the Dodgers, he did just that.3 It was that one act of injustice that drove Branch Rickey to act.
Disciples are those who see the injustices of the world, are affected by them, and strive to do something about it. Disciples are those who recognize God’s call whenever and wherever they see injustice, suffering, or oppression in the world around them. Disciples are those who minister on behalf of God in a hurting, often hurtful, sometimes hate-filled world.
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Daniel Nicksich is Senior Minister of First Christian Church in Somerset, PA.
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Notes
1. Matthew 22:39
2. See Luke 4:14-21 including the quote from Isaiah 61:1, 2
3. Red Barber, Branch Rickey, & Jackie Robinson references are from the book, The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told.
Guilford: The
Lyons Press, 2001, pp. 127-137.