27 Sep Rare find of Jackie Robinson autograph highlights Lynchburg Museum’s upcoming baseball exhibit
Amid the brittle phone bills and medical records strewn on the floor of a family friend’s house, Randy Smith saw something on yellow cardstock that looked out of place.
It was a baseball program, and Smith didn’t believe what he saw when he opened the folded page: It was a hand-kept scorecard from the Brooklyn Dodgers’ and Boston Braves’ 1952 exhibition game at Lynchburg’s City Stadium, and it was autographed by baseball greats Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, among others.
Smith’s friend’s house was that of Robert Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson, a Lynchburg legend. Johnson was a prominent physician and community leader in the Hill City, but he is best remembered as the man instrumental to the integration of professional tennis. He took tennis greats Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe from training in Lynchburg to becoming the first Black woman and man, respectively, to win Grand Slam events. In the process, he became a world-renowned tennis instructor.
In Lynchburg, Johnson was a pillar of the Black community. His house was on the corner of Pierce and 15th streets, smack in the middle of one of the Black cultural centers in a segregated Lynchburg. Given his status, the home became somewhat of a museum over the years, filled with memorabilia pertaining both to sports (mainly tennis, but also others) and Lynchburg’s Black history.
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