Rachel Robinson To Join Husband In Hall Of Fame

Rachel Robinson will join her husband Jackie in the Hall of Fame this summer.

Robinson, 95, was selected as the 2017 winner of the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, which was established in 2007 in honor of the late Negro League great who also played a large role in the creation of the Negro League Museum in Kansas City. O’Neil died in 2006 at the age of 94.

Robinson, the widow of the man who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, is the fourth recipient of the O’Neil award, following O’Neil himself in 2008, longtime baseball executive Roland Hemond in 2011 and broadcaster and player Joe Garagiola in 2014.

Robinson will receive the award on July 29 as part of Hall of Fame Weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y. Jackie Robinson was inducted in 1962 and died in 1972.

Rachel Robinson created the Jackie Robinson Development Corp., founded to build and manage housing for people of moderate and low incomes, and later formed the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides college scholarships and leadership training.

“Rachel Robinson has worked tirelessly to raise the level of equality not only in baseball, but throughout society,” Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark aid in a statement. “Through her grace, dignity and unsurpassed spirit, she continues to show the value, decency and importance of inclusiveness. She personifies the strength and character of Buck O’Neil, and on behalf of our Board of Directors, we are very happy and honored to bestow upon her this prestigious award.”

Following Jackie’s retirement in 1956, Rachel earned a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing from New York University. She became the director of nursing for the Connecticut Mental Health Center and an assistant professor of nursing at Yale University.

“I am honored that the Hall of Fame has invited me to receive the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award,” Robinson said in a statement. “Buck O’Neil was such a champion of baseball—and the Hall of Fame does an extraordinary job of recognizing individuals who have committed their lives to this great game. I commend Jane Forbes Clark and Jeff Idelson for their leadership and extend my gratitude to the Board of Directors for recognizing me in this way.”