I'm Jonathan K. Parton, welcome to K-PART.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of baseball, great, and civil rights

icon Jackie Robinson, and there's a new biography of his life that focuses on four distinct

years in Robinson's life.

In true, the four seasons of Jackie Robinson, author Kostya Kennedy homes in on 1946,

49, 56, and 1972, each one a significant moment in the arc of Robinson's story.

Robinson's barrier-breaking life of crashing the color barrier during segregation had a big

impact on black Americans, and Kennedy explains why Ebott's field was a harbinger of things

to come.

When he's coming in it before Rosa Parks, it's before a lot of the signature events, and

it's changed having him play in its venue.

There may have been no other place that was so disaggregated as Ebott's field in the

late 1940s, right?

That's certainly not many.

This conversation was first recorded on April 29th for Washington Post Live, and Kennedy

gets into why Jackie Robinson was a Republican who supported Nixon.

Kostya Kennedy joins me now.

Kostya, welcome to K-PART on Washington Post Live.

Wonderful to be here with you.

Thanks for having me.

So there have been a plethora of movies and documentaries and books dedicated to Jackie

Robinson's life and career, but the approach you take is different by focusing on four years.

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