JACKIE ROBINSON.\o7 By Arnold Rampersad\f7 .\o7 Alfred A. Knopf: 448 pp., $27.50\f7

It had been a custom for black students to gather in the mezzanine at PJC assemblies, and Robinson began urging them to mingle in the total student population, as later when there were several blacks with the Dodger baseball team, Jack would command "Spread out" as they arrived at road dining rooms. Those who urge the "brothers" to bond often called Robinson an Uncle Tom, which will seem a cruel misnomer to anyone who follows the career of dedication detailed in this book.

My own association with Jack Robinson began in 1947 when as a baseball writer for the newspaper PM in New York, I accompanied the Dodgers to Havana for spring training. The Montreal Royals of the International League with which Jack had had a brilliant year in '46 accompanied the Dodgers but, to the dismay of many, Jack had not been added to the Brooklyn roster.

Rampersad is properly admiring of Dodger boss Branch Rickey's pioneering courage in signing what was to be the first black player of the modern era, but he may not have known the immense thoroughness that preceded that first step. Rickey read his way through a library on race relations that included Gunnar Myrdal's massive "An American Dilemma" and St. Clair Drake's and Horace R. Cayton's "Black Metropolis" before he even began scouting. It was because of his research that he chose Montreal because French-Canadians were too busy fighting the English to be hostile to blacks, and for the second tier of black players, chose Nashua, N.H., because there were only 32 black people in a population of 60,000, a number he considered too small to arouse bigotry. It was at this time that Rickey decided that his first candidate should be a college graduate, an army officer, very black and--a test which several candidates sadly failed--not grateful for the opportunity to play with whites.

The Dodgers were mortified to discover that their presence in Havana aroused little excitement because the Cuban League was in the middle of a close pennant fight, and indeed Havana's only interest in the visitors was in Robinson, playing exhibitions with Montreal.

All the while, executive phones were ringing and Rickey was discovering the depth of anti-black feeling in the league, which was 50 years short of Robinson shoulder patches. The New York Herald Tribune revealed that the St. Louis Cardinals planned to strike against Robinson, and the New York Giants were said to be ready to join the boycott. Jimmy Gallagher, general manager of the Chicago Cubs, told me--saying he would deny it if I printed it--that his players were going to strike until he told them no play, no pay.