Jackie Robinson's native town struggles to remember him

CAIRO - Jackie Robinson wasn&#39;t even two years old when his mother packed her five children on a midnight train from Georgia bound for a better life in California. <br> <br> Because he left little behind in Cairo, the small southwest Georgia town where he was born, people in Cairo have struggled to memorialize his achievement as the first black player in Major League Baseball. <br> <br> Robinson&#39;s 83-year-old first cousin, Elstine Brown, said ``All we know is he went to California, and he came to be a famous ballplayer. But we think it would be a good thing to recognize him because he was from down here.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Some opponents of Jackie Robinson memorials have been openly racist, but others simply don&#39;t think they can lay claim to a man who left Cairo before he was old enough to have any memory of it. <br> <br> Linda Walden took up the cause shortly after moving to Cairo in 1996 -- the same year a tin-roofed wooden house where Robinson was born burned down, leaving only a brick chimney and double fireplace. <br> <br> Since then, she has helped rename a county road after Robinson and placed a bronze marker highlighting his career behind home plate at Cairo High School&#39;s baseball field. <br> <br> Walden is Robinson&#39;s third cousin and is the founder of the Jackie Robinson Cairo Memorial Institute. <br> <br> He said, ``If I had not come back here, who knows if there would have ever been anything done. It&#39;s getting a little bit better. But when you&#39;re trying to do something, it&#39;s just sad to know that you get so much opposition from people.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> When Walden tried to erect a statue to honor Robinson in front of the county courthouse or downtown library, she said she was threatened by Ku Klux Klan members. Her request was denied by the county commission, which later approved a stone memorial for the Sons of the Confederacy at the courthouse.