Opening the Door for Jackie : The Untold Story of Baseball's Integration

The integration of Major League Baseball is an important milestone in America''s struggle for racial equality. Branch Rickey''s signing of Jackie Robinson has inspired countless films, musicals, plays, dissertations, essays, articles, and of course, books. Most of these works focus on the Black ballplayer who heroically integrated the national pastime and the White baseball executive who heroically defied the national pastime''s secret-not-so-secret policy of segregation. But there is much more to the story.

A dynamic civil rights movement emerged in America during World War II. Indeed, between Pearl Harbor and Robinson''s signing, NAACP membership grew from 18,000 to 520,000. Activists began pressuring Rickey integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers days after he took over the team in late 1942. He only signed Robinson in 1945, while under investigation by state commissioners for violating New York State''s newly enacted anti-discrimination law. When that historic signing 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. Taking advantage of 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 the war.