Ken Burns’ 4 hour salute of Jackie Robinson premiered on Monday. A few notes:

1. He was a UCLA Bruin. The Dodgers wanted a college man for its first African-American player.
2. 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.
3. 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 “A man was lynched yesterday.”
4. 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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