The wife of Jackie Robinson, the legendary black baseball player who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, will speak on campus Nov. 9 as part of a lecture series on her husband’s life.

Rachael Robinson, 78, will speak in an open lecture as part of a 700 series sociology class, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream, said sociology professor Richard Zamoff, who teaches the class.

The lecture is designed to be an informal question and answer period, Zamoff said.

She’s basically coming down to acknowledge what we’ve done with the University, he said. To the best of my knowledge, she has never come to GW before, and this would be her first visit to campus. It’s a big thing.

On April 15, 1947 Robinson became the first black player in a Major League game. He played nine seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and died in 1972.

In 1997, Zamoff secured a grant from the D.C. Humanities Council to put on a project celebrating the anniversary of Robinson’s breaking the Major League color barrier. Zamoff began creating museum exhibits and guest-lecture series in 1997.

Zamoff and the 38 students in his class decided to make three of the class’s lectures open to the rest of the campus.

The message of the program is that he was much, much more than a baseball player to society, Zamoff said.

A time and location for the lecture has not been set.-Ashley M. Heher</I