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Category: Politics

JACKIE ROBINSON: FOOTBALL HERO BEFORE BASEBALL STAR

JACKIE ROBINSON: FOOTBALL HERO BEFORE BASEBALL STAR

Jackie Robinson was already an inspiration to millions of Black Americans – and had been for eight years – when in 1947 he became the first Black person since 1884 to play Major League Baseball. Because in 1939, Robinson burst upon the national sports scene as one of the best American football players in the country as he and teammates Kenny Washington, Woody Strode and Ray Bartlett established the undefeated 1939 UCLA football squad as the first team in  the history of America’s white-dominated world of commercial spectator sports to be led by as many as four Black players.

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BLACK MEDIA, JACKIE ROBINSON DEFIED NFL COLOR LINE

BLACK MEDIA, JACKIE ROBINSON DEFIED NFL COLOR LINE

Long before he made history with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Jackie Robinson was a nationally-known football player who led the UCLA football team to the school’s first undefeated season in 1939. But 1940 for Robinson and the Bruins was another story. Gone were Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, the Bruin stars who would eventually re-integrate the NFL and who Robinson teamed with in 1939 to elevate the UCLA football program to unprecedented heights. And to make matters worse, UCLA head coach Babe Horrell had failed to make up for those vacancies in recruiting, leaving Robinson on an island.

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VICTIMS OF NFL COLOR LINE WERE NUMEROUS, UNFORGETTABLE

VICTIMS OF NFL COLOR LINE WERE NUMEROUS, UNFORGETTABLE

The desegregation of Major League Baseball by Jackie Robinson in 1947 is one of the most prominent events in the popular historical narrative of the United States. And in the 75 years that the story of the erasure of baseball’s color line has been told, some of the great Negro …

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THE LIST OF BLACK PLAYERS EXCLUDED BY THE NFL COLOR LINE

THE LIST OF BLACK PLAYERS EXCLUDED BY THE NFL COLOR LINE

The National Football League has formally acknowledged that from 1934 to 1945, NFL team owners secretly conspired to exclude Black football players from the league solely because of the color of their skin. But unlike some of the Negro League players who were victimized by the Major League Baseball color line and who later had their talent – and the injustice done to them – acknowledged by MLB and the public, none of the many victims of the NFL color line have been recognized as such.

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