East End Libraries Present: Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier, via Zoom

Join author Ted Reinstein as he discusses his book Before Brooklyn, which tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from communist newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that black newspapers espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes of blacks throughout the country. He will also remind us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual. Then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew.