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| First Lady Michelle Obama introduces a panel of the cast and crew of the movie "42", next to Rachel Robinson, widow of baseball great Jackie Robinson, before a workshop for high school and college students, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Michelle Obama said Tuesday that a new movie chronicling Jackie
Robinson's rise through Major League Baseball, including the racial
discrimination he endured while breaking the sport's color barrier in
the 1940s, left her and the president "visibly, physically moved" after
they saw it over the weekend.
The film, "42,"
also left the couple wondering "how on Earth did (the Robinsons) live
through that. How did they do it? How did they endure the taunts and the
bigotry for all of that time?" she said.
Mrs.
Obama commented at a workshop for a group of high school and college
students who saw the movie in the White House theater. Some of the
students attend a Los Angeles charter school named for Robinson and
others are undergraduate scholars in a program that bears the baseball
great's name.
The students also participated
in a question-and-answer session with Robinson's widow, Rachel, and
members of the cast and crew, including Chadwick Boseman, who plays
Robinson, Harrison Ford, who stars as former Brooklyn Dodgers General
Manager Branch Rickey, and director-screenwriter Brian Helgeland.
President Barack Obama held a separate screening of "42" for the cast and crew Tuesday evening.
Mrs. Obama said everyone should see the movie, which opens nationwide April 12.
"I
can say with all sincerity that it was truly powerful for us," she
said. "We walked away from that just visibly, physically moved by the
experience of the movie, of the story," and the "raw emotion" they felt
afterward.
The first lady added that she was
also "struck by how far removed that way of life seems today," noting
how times have changed despite progress still to be made toward
eliminating racial discrimination.
"You can't
imagine the baseball league not being integrated. There are no more
"Whites Only" signs posted anywhere in this country. Although it still
happens, it is far less acceptable for someone to yell out a racial slur
while you're walking down the street," she told the students. "That
kind of prejudice is simply just not something that can happen in the
light of day today."
After playing for the
Negro Baseball League and the International League, Robinson became
Major League Baseball's first black player on April 15, 1947, batting
for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His number was 42.
Barack Obama broke a similar barrier in politics by winning election in 2008 as the first black U.S. president.
Mrs. Obama said the Robinsons' story is a reminder of the hard work it takes to move a country forward.
"It reminds you how much struggle is required to make real progress and change," she said, echoing her husband.
