Ken Burns Discusses His 'Profile in Courage'

The documentary filmmaker on Jackie Robinson.The least we forget that this is the first real progress in civil rights since the civil war this isn't a bus in Montgomery Alabama this isn't a lunch counter and Virginia. -- North Carolina this -- -- school in South Carolina -- to peek a Kansas. This isn't even -- in our in our military this is on the diamonds of our so called national pastime when Jack Roosevelt Robinson April 15 1947.

I’m making a film on Jackie Robinson and you know, we forget that this is the first real progress in civil rights since the civil war, this isn't a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, this isn’t a lunch counter in Virginia or North Carolina, this isn’t a school in South Carolina or Topeka Kansas, this isn’t even a barrack in our military, this is on the diamonds of our so-called national pastime when Jack Roosevelt Robinson April 15th, 1947 runs out to play first base at Ebbets Field. This is American history made a profound social change and we cannot appreciate the load he carried. He died at 53 years old. I’m 60. When you look at the last pictures of Jackie Robinson, old, stooped, white-haired, you realize 53? This kid is 60? What’s happening here? He, the load he carried is one of the greatest profiles in courage I’ve ever seen, and remember, baseball’s about a kind of equipoise in which you have to be focused in the moment. But if someone is threatening to kill your kid and your wife or you, and there are guys throwing at your head, and sliding into first base with your spice on, how do you maintain that equipoise and yet he is in the Hall of Fame, he galvanized and totally changed the game of baseball. And that’s just you know, one of many profiles about Jackie‘s extraordinary.