Atlanta Daily World

Spingarn Medal Standards
(From The California Eagle)

We don't know what standards are applied by the committee which selects the Spingarn Medal winner for the NAACP but we think that the selection of Jackie Robinson for this year's award indicates the need for a little overhauling in committee thinking standards.

Jackie is a home-town boy and all of us who live out here in the West are proud of him and his exploits in athletics. There can be no doubt that his skill as a player and his fierce competitive spirit did much to destroy the barrier against Negro players in baseball. That's all to the good. Aside from that, Jackie has kept a clear head and has conducted himself as a good citizen.

We doubt that those accomplishments mark him out as the person who has contributed most in the field of race relations in the past several years for that matter. There may have been a time when an athlete's skill and conduct entitled him to the Spingarn medal. That may have been true when the award went to Joe Louis, though we have reservations on that score.

But the critical area of our lives does not lie in the field of sports in this year of 1956. The important conflict of our time is that raging around civil rights and enforcement and implementation of the Supreme Court decisions in the field of education, voting, transportation and housing.

The past year produced some outstanding men in those fields. There was Rev. George Lee, who died for the right to vote, for Gus Courts who had to flee from his home. There was Dr. T. R. M. Howard, who sacrificed a lucrative medical practice to his beliefs and ideals. There were the Rev. King and the Rev. Abernathy who laid bus segregation low in Alabama. There were many others.

Jackie Robinson, like many another great baseball player, belongs in Baseball's Hall of Fame for his exploits in his chosen field. We doubt that his claim to the Spingarn Medal is as sound when that claim is weighed in today's scales.