Uncovering Unseen Jackie Robinson Photos

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There’s a storage facility in New Jersey that holds secrets of the sports world’s past. Within it contains archives from Sports Illustrated’s photographic history. Beginning with images shot in 1953, even before SI’s first issue ran in August of ’54, the facility holds previously unseen photography.

To honor Jackie Robinson Day, which on April 15 honors the day Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier and made his debut, SI’s director of photography, Marguerite Schropp Lucarelli, didn’t want to rely solely on famous images of Robinson.

Instead, she was curious if they could find something new.

“I was thinking that we always pull our favorite Jackie Robinson pictures and it always seems to be the same pictures every year,” she said. “So I said to [photo editor Abby Nicolas], ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to take one of our famous Jackie Robinson photos and call in that take (the X number which marks the file in which the pictures exist)? Why don’t we call that X number in from the archives and see if there are other pictures in the take that we’ve never seen before?’ ”

The X number is a sequential naming system that catalogs all of SI’s photography and is still used today.

After contacting the storage facility, the take with the black-and-white negatives of Robinson was delivered to Nicolas, who scanned the negatives and saw, for the first time, previously unpublished images of the icon.

As you can see from the assignment log below, the images were given X3970 and shot by photographer Richard Meek. The assignment sheet also indicates that there were 45 prints made from this set.

Though the technology has changed, SI still uses a version of this log. SI’s director of photo operations, Erick W. Rasco, was on assignment earlier this month shooting a game between the Blue Jays and Yankees. His images received assignment number x164014.

It’s likely that Meek, a staff photographer at SI from 1955 to ’58, had never seen all of the images from this game himself. The photo archive is organized in a way where it’s easy to see if it’s been previously used or published, Lucarelli said, and these images appear to have never been publicized.

Meek was able to get into the Dodgers’ locker room to photograph Robinson and his teammates that day, Aug. 2, 1956.

Robinson started that game at third base and went 1–4 in a 3–0 Dodgers win at Ebbets Field.

“The reason why we did this was to do something different and honor Jackie Robinson,” Lucarelli said. “It was our own unboxing. It’s like we’re getting this package and let’s see what’s in it because you have no idea what’s in the package until it arrives. Not every picture is scanned so you have no idea what you will receive. You do not even know if it is negative strips or chromes.”

You can view more of this gallery at SI.com.