As star players for the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, and prior to that as the first black players to be candidates to break professional baseball’s color barrier, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella would seem to be natural allies. But the two men were divided by a rivalry going far beyond the personality differences and petty jealousies of competitive teammates. Behind the bitterness were deep and differing beliefs about the fight for civil rights.

Robinson, the more aggressive and intense of the two, thought Jim Crow should be attacked head-on; Campanella, more passive and easygoing, believed that ability and not militancy was the key to racial equality.

Drawing on interviews with former players such as Monte Irvin, Hank Aaron, Carl Erskine, and Don Zimmer, Jackie & Campy offers a closer look at these two players and their place in a historical movement torn between active defiance and passive resistance. William C. Kashatus deepens our understanding of these two baseball icons and civil rights pioneers and provides a clearer picture of their time and our own.

University of Nebraska Press

2014 | Hardcover, eBook

ISBN: 978-0-8032-4633-1 (hardcover), 978-0-8032-5447-3 (eBook, EPUB), 978-0-8032-5446-6 (eBook, PDF)

Pages: 248

Illustrations: 23 photographs, 1 map

Price: $24.95 (hardcover, eBook)

Audiobook

2017 | Redwood Audiobooks

Narrated by: Lamarr Gulley

Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins

Price: 19.95

“While much has been published about each player, the team, and the integration of baseball, never until now has this topic received its deserved treatment. This is an original and important book.” –Spitball Magazine

“Kashatus has given us a very human account of Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella.” – Monte Irvin, New York Giants Hall of Famer

“Using their racial and social attitudes as a springboard, Kashatus has written a superb narrative of sports, race, and politics in the 1950s and ‘60s.” – Publishers Weekly

“Kashatus sheds new and important insight on the Robinson-Campanella relationship by placing it in the larger framework of African American history.” – Larry Hogan, author, Shades of Glory: Negro Leagues & African-American Baseball

“Robinson and Campanella were trailblazers. Both were passionate, strong-minded men who excelled in baseball and had definite ideas about handling race relations in the game. Kashatus has provided a nice narrative that explains how both men were successful at achieving their goals – on and off the field.” – Tampa Tribune

“A fantastic and thought-provoking analysis of how two men championed the fight for racial harmony in segregated America via different rules of engagement. A must-read for any serious student of baseball and American history.” – Larry Lester, historian for the Negro League Baseball Hall of Fame