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Ninth Lens: Jackie Robinson

December26

My ninth lens, Jackie Robinson: American Hero is one of my best lenses, with great videos and pictures and a story to tell. Plus it earns mon

I created it on 05/25/2007, a month after Jackie Robinson Day (Apr 15).

Photo Credit: Allan Grant
Buy at AllPosters.com

What This Lens is About

The story of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, and what he endured behind the scenes to help the cause of civil rights.

Excerpt

If a player punched him or spiked him with cleats, or pitched a baseball at his head that might kill him, he couldn’t respond. If an ump made an unfair call, he couldn’t respond. If hotels refused to house him with his team, if teams protested his presence on the field or cancelled games to avoid him, he couldn’t respond. If the papers vilified him, he couldn’t respond. If spectators cursed him or ordered him to shine their shoes or threw black cats onto the field, he couldn’t respond. If he got death threats pinned inside his locker, or if his wife was harassed in the stands, he couldn’t respond.

All those things happened…

Why I Made This Lens

I wanted to teach more people about a personal hero of mine, and get across what “breaking the color barrier” really meant. I wanted to create a charity lens to support the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides scholarships and training.

I also wanted to find and share some video of Jackie playing baseball, because he was amazing to watch!

Things I Learned Making This Lens

In doing research for this lens, I learned more about Jackie Robinson– including the fact that he starred in a full-length autobiographical film, which is now archived online!

I also learned that two legal sources of good photographs are The Library of Congress (only some photos may be used…check rights and permissions) and AllPosters.com.

Things I DIDN’T Learn Making This Lens

If there’s a lot of webpages already on your topic (especially famous people), it’s really hard to optimize or get your webpage to the front of Google search engine results. It would take a ton of linkbuilding. It probably isn’t possible, because the best pages out there already have thousands of links to them. The only thing you can do is target “long tail” searches.