Kathleen Kouatelay
History 1301
10/18/2014

Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball

In the 1940s, the American society was rigidly segregated by race.For example, public schools were segregated by law in the South and by custom and policy in the North; public facilities such as hospitals, parks, buses, railroad station were also excluded or segregated black patrons, as did theaters, amusement parks, hotels and restaurants. Segregation means to separate or set apart from others or from the main body or group; therefore African American possessed few or no political power.
Segregation also existed in sport. Most professional sport leagues, indeed such as the National Football League or the Major League Baseball, excluded or segregated African Americans because almost everything else was already segregated. This led to the creation of the Negro League as the first step of the African Americans' response. It is during World War II that African Americans' will begin to challenge exclusion in sports. The Negro League, directed by black sportswriters Wendell Scott of the Pittsburg Courier and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American and joined by black advancement organizations and northern black politicians, would start his second step: pressure Major League Baseball to end its unwritten agreement to exclude black ballplayers. A committee consisting of Larry McPhail, president of the New York Yankees and Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was established to investigate the feasibility of African Americans playing in the Major Leagues by June 1954. As an example, Bill Veeck tried to stock the Negro League with the Philadelphia Phillies that he wanted to own in 1943; however he had somebody else bying the team. To show how anchored segregation was in white people's mind. The last step was the integration of Jackie Robinson to the Major League in 1947.
Jackie Robinson was shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, and a track and football star at UCLA ( University at Los Angeles) and an army officer during Word War II. He had all the qualities to be promoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers. His years at UCLA and with the Kansas City Monarchs Demonstrated his athletic abilities, there more his time as an army officer gave him discipline, and experience with racism. All of this armed him to deal with the racial challenges he faced in Major League Baseball. His