Major League Baseball marked the 77th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the sport’s color barrier on Monday.
Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, beginning the end of the racial segregation that had relegated Black players to the Negro Leagues for decades.
“Jackie Robinson became the most vilified, targeted subject of verbal abuse and malicious treatment in the sports arena since Jack Johnson had the audacity to become heavyweight champion of the world in 1908,” sociologist and civil rights activist Harry Edwards said at Dodger Stadium. “Like Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson stood alone.”
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