May 7, 1963 - Former Brooklyn Dodger baseball star Jackie Robinson (left with Floyd Patterson) said today he will lead anti-segregation demonstrations in Birmingham next week. Mr. Robinson, now an executive with the Chock Full o’Nuts restaurant chain, made the announcement at a meeting to raise funds to back integrationists in the South. “I am going down to Birmingham myself,” said Mr. Robinson. “I don’t like to be bitten by dogs because I am a coward. I don’t like to go to jail either because, as I say, I’m a coward. But we have got to show Martin Luther King that we are behind him.” Mr. Robinson broke baseball’s “color line” when he entered the major leagues with the Dodgers in 1947.
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