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The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball's Color Barrier

Presenter: Ted Reinstein

Jackie Robinson is among history’s most famous Americans. When he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947—breaking Major League Baseball’s longtime ban on Black players—one of the 20th century’s most significant events was recorded. His uniform number (42) is the only one permanently retired by all of Major League Baseball’s thirty teams. What’s less well-known, and largely lost to history, is the small army of men, women, and institutions of many types that fought for many long, bitter, and deeply dispiriting years prior to Robinson’s triumphant debut in Brooklyn. All these and more unsung heroes were the pioneers that battled the color barrier for sixty years before Brooklyn, while making a path possible for Jackie Robinson. It was a battle largely in the shadows. But like Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus, or John Lewis on a bridge in Selma, it was a battle of dignity and defiance in a hard-won war for justice. And this is their story.

Based on the book "Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball's Color Barrier" by Ted Reinstein. 

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