Opening the Door for Jackie

The integration of Major League Baseball is an important milestone in America''s struggle for racial equality. Activists began pressuring Rickey to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers days after he took over the team in late 1942. When the historic signing of Jackie Robinson was made public in October 1945, the Black press celebrated it as a victory for democracy, and even some White journalists credited the Ives-Quinn Law for breaking baseball''s color barrier. Although many works celebrate Robinson as the Black ballplayer who heroically integrated the national pastime and Rickey as the White baseball executive who heroically defied the national pastime''s policy of segregation, there is much more to the story. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, this book reframes the conventional narrative of baseball''s integration to include those who fought against employment discrimination on and off the field during World War II.