Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, a remarkable and courageous move widely celebrated now, 75 years later.
But Robinson didn’t just make history in the Major Leagues: Two years later, he broke the color barrier in Georgia as the first Black baseball player to play against white players in the state.
The Cairo, Georgia, native, played an exhibition game in Macon on April 7, 1949. The Dodgers beat the Peaches 11-2 in the game attended by more than 6,400 people at Luther Williams Field. In the game, Robinson drove in a run to contribute to the Brooklyn victory.
The audience was segregated, with white people sitting on the first-base side of the stadium, and Black people sitting opposite on the third-base side.
The late Bobby Pope, former executive director of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, told The Telegraph in 2012 that it was the largest attendance at the stadium until 1964 when Macon native John “Blue Moon” Odom appeared in a game for the Birmingham Barons.
Robinson’s career spanned 10 seasons. He won Rookie of the Year honors in 1947, the first time the award had been given and was later renamed for Robinson.
He was elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, once again breaking a barrier as the first Black player enshrined. He retired with a .311 lifetime batting average, 137 home runs, 734 RBIs and 197 stolen bases. In 1999, he was selected to the All-Century Team.
Two years before Robinson was selected to the All-Century Team, then-Commissioner Bud Selig retired Robinson’s No. 42 jersey for use across the league.
His hometown of Cairo has a baseball field named in his honor as well as a 10-mile stretch of Georgia Highway 93.
Robinson died of a heart attack at 53 in 1972. He was buried in Brooklyn beside his son, Jack Jr.
The game is not Robinson’s only connection to Luther Williams Field. Clint Eastwood came to Macon to film movie scenes for the Jackie Robinson biopic “42.” Many of the scenes were shot in Macon, including at Luther Williams Field. Chadwick Boseman, the star of Marvel’s “The Black Panther,” who died in 2020, starred as Robinson in the film.
Large segments were also filmed at Chattanooga’s Engel Stadium in 2012. The film hit theaters April 12, 2013, the 66th anniversary of the day Robinson broke down Major League Baseball’s race barrier by taking the field with Brooklyn.