Heard.

Jackie Robinson was born on this day in 1919.

"And he climbed high on the cliffs above the sea and stripped bare his shoulders and raised his arms to the water, crying: 'I am a man. I live and breathe and bleed as a man. Give me my freedom…'

When the people saw him they scorned him for his naked shoulders and wild eyes and again he cried: 'I am a man and I seek the means of my freedom.'

But the people laughed at him, saying, 'We see no chains on your arms, no weight on your feet. Go! You are free…' And they called him mad and drove him from their village. His soul wept, for it knew the weight of chains, and tears fell like tiny stones into the well of his loneliness, and his heart was as empty as a giant hall is empty after a feast.

And the man journeyed on until he came to the banks of a stream, and he saw the beauty in the water and he laughed for he felt the strength of the stream flowing throwing his veins, and he cried: 'I am a man' and the majesty of his voice echoed off the mountaintops and was heard above the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, and he was free."

David Robinson, from "The Baptism"