Happy Chandler

The bill levied fines against local governments and individual government officials in counties where illegal lynchings occurred. Nevertheless future baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Washington Post sportswriter Bob Addie maintained that Robinson would not have played had it not been for Chandler's intervention. His grandson Ben Chandler is a former congressman from Kentucky's Sixth District.

Wilkinson later resisted calls to remove Chandler from the University of Kentucky board of trustees following Chandler's use of a racial epithet during a board meeting in 1988. Following his term as commissioner Chandler returned to Kentucky and won a second term as governor in 1955. The major accomplishments of his second term were enforcing the integration of the state's public schools and establishing a medical school at the University of Kentucky which was later named the Chandler Medical Center in his honor.