Looking forward to Ken Burn's 4 hour salute that premieres tonight. A few previews worth noting:
- He was a UCLA Bruin college graduate. The Dodgers wanted a college man for its first African-American player.
- There was no law against having Black players. There was not anything in the baseball rules. It was a "Gentleman's Agreement" that was ruining our national game.
- There were no anti-discrimination laws in those days. If you were born Black or Jewish, you lived with this as an everyday reality. The NAACP fought on a daily basis to get rid of discrimination. It was so awful that when there was a lynching, they would hang a banner outside their New York headquarters proclaiming "Today a man was lynched."
- Beware blogs, tweets, Facebook posts or any other social media entries that talk about the "good old days." The courts existed to help some but not all.
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