(Jackie Robinson, “editor”) Our Sports / The Negro’s Own Sports Magazine / A New Monthly Magazine Featuring Negro Athletes”. The first three of the only five issues published: Vol. 1, Nos. 1-3, May-June-July 1953. Original pictorial wrappers. 8.5 x 11”, 74, 74 and 70pp. Very rare. Only the University of Notre Dame and one other institution hold copies of the short-lived periodical.
Six years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line of major league baseball, he lent his name, as nominal “editor”, to this first attempt to publish a magazine about Black athletes in all areas of American sport - which failed in less than a year.
As Robinson was then still an All-Star of the Brooklyn Dodgers, it’s doubtful that he had any hands-on responsibility for this magazine, though he did write two articles – one in which he “Picks the Pennant Winners” of the 1953 season, and another about his “feud” with manager Leo Durocher. Executive Editor S.W.Garlington, veteran African-American journalist, newscaster and columnist for the influential Black New York Amsterdam News, may have had more to do with the intriguing blend of articles, which, in the issues offered here included boxer Joe Louis’ “Lowdown on How I Cracked Jim Crow Golf”, “Why Can’t Negroes Wrestle in Nation’s Capital?”, “Will There Ever be a Big League Negro Manager?”, 1st All-American Negro Basketball Awards, “What white Big Leaguers REALLY Think of Negro Players”, “Are the Yankees Anti-Negro?” and “The Negro Jockey – What Happened To Him? – plus a piquant pictorial on the Black “Glamor Girls” who were “Bronze Wrestling Beauties.”