The Jackie Robinson memorial inside the Jackie Robinson rotunda at Citi Field

Topics on the Page

• African Americans and Professional Baseball

• Special Topic Page:  Negro Baseball Leagues

• African American Firsts in Other Sports

• African Americans and Professional Football 
• Lesson plan about the Washington Redskins and racist names for sports teams

• African Americans and Golf

Integration of Professional Sports

The integration of sports in America created a framework for changing racial attitudes toward people of color. Click here for a brief overview from ESPN

For a perspective, see the essay "Why Sports History is American History" by Mark Naison

African Americans and Integration of Professional Baseball

See also Historic Baseball Resources from the Library of Congress.

"Southern League": Birmingham Barons Break Racial Divide, from NPR describes how in 1964 the Barons became the first integrated professional sports team in Alabama.


Jackie Robinson broke baseball's "color barrier" in 1947 as in this video from the History Channel. 

• Robinson became the first publicly acknowledged African American to play in the MLB since 1884 when Moses Fleetwood Walker last played for the Toledo Mudhens. 

• Robinson, prior to signing with the Dodgers, had had a tryout with the Boston Red Sox as did another Hall Of Fame player Willie Mays. 

• Boston however would sign neither and would be the last team to integrate when Elijah "Pumpsie" Green joined the team in 1957.

See also, Jackie Robinson Integrates Major League Baseball (1947) from the PBS website, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.

Jackie Robinson Letter to President Dwight Eisenhower, May 3, 1958

The Negro Leagues

Negro League World Series, opening game Oct. 11, 1924, Kansas City, Mo.

Negro Leagues History from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.


See also the following about Latinos and Baseball

• The History of Latinos in Major League Baseball provides a basic overview.

• Arriba Baseball: Latin America's Rich Tradition is an interactive map showing players from each country.

• The Forgotten All-Star Game describes the only Latino All-Star held in 1963 in the last game at the Polo Grounds in New York City.

African American Firsts from Other Sports

• Willie O'Ree became the first black person to play in the National Hockey league in 1957, suiting up for the Boston Bruins in a game against the Montreal Canadiens. O'Ree did all this while being 95% blind in his right eye. However he would not be in the NHL for very long and would never play in it again after 1960 and it would be another 14 years for another black person to play in the NHL. In fact O'Ree was Canadian so an African-American did not play in the NHL until 1977.

• Arthur Ashe was the first African American male to win the U.S. Open (1968) and Wimbledon (1975) Tennis Titles as well as the first African American male to play on the American Davis Cup team (1963). Althea Gibson was the first African American woman to win Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958.

• Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton entered the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1950. In a weird string of events, Cooper was the first African American drafted (Celtics 2nd round 1950), Clifton, of Harlem Globetrotters fame, was the first African American to sign a contract with a NBA team (NY Knicks) and Earl Lloyd was the first to play in a game due to the Washington Capitols schedule starting a day before Boston and four days before New York.

African Americans and Professional Football

Kenny Washington

• Kenny Washington was the first African American to sign a contract with a National Football League team in 1946. 

• Click here to read his story and to learn about segregation and integration in professional football.

For more, see Forgotten Four: The Integration of Pro Football (official trailer on YouTube)

 Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins. Thomas G. Smith, Beacon Press, 2011 details how the Washington Redskins became the last team to integrate African American players. 

The Washington Redskins became the last NFL team to integrate its roster in 1962.

• Read the history in Civil Rights on the Girdiron by Thomas G. Smith based on his book Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins, Beacon Books, 2011.

• See book review, The Racist Redskins by Michael Tomasky, November 10, 2011

• See Fifty Years Ago, Last Outpost of Segregation in NFL Fell, New York Times, October 6, 2012

• U.S. Patent Office Cancels Redskins Trademark Registration, Says Name is Disparaging, The Washington Post, June 18, 2014

• Judge Upholds Redskins Trademark Cancellation Decision, SBNation, July 8, 2015

• Redskins, Rock Band Battle Government in Trademark Fight

The 2,128 Native American Mascots People Are Not Talking About from FiveThirtyEight Sports, September 2, 2014

• California Racial Mascots Act. California has banned schools in the state from using "redskins" as a name for sports teams.

• Lanham Act (Trademark Act of 1946) as amended by Trademark Act of 1988

African Americans and Golf

“National Colored Tournament," Shady Rest Country Club, Westfield, New Jersey, July 12, 1925

Uneven Fairways is a documentary from the Golf Channel about the struggles of African Americans to integrate the professional golf tour. 

• See the trailer on Vimeo here.

See also When the Fairways Weren't Fairfrom ESPN (February 11, 2009). The article includes text from the PGA charter banning Black players.

Timeline of African American 

Achievements in Golf from PGA.com


Redemption for Negro League Players. Story of 16 year old student working to connect old Negro League Teammates and even getting some their pensions from Major League Baseball. Click here for the story.

For information about African American basketball teams in New York from 1900 to the 1950s, see The Black Fives from the New York Historical Society.

• See also How the Black Fives led to Racial Integration in Basketball. (*Lloyd was the first African-American to play in an NBA game.)

Major General Walter E. Gaskin, left, greets, Earl "The Pearl" Lloyd*, March 3, 2006.

Bill Russell, 2005