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"Jackie Robinson always loved sports, especially baseball. He could run, leap, and throw better than any other kid around. But he lived at a time when the rules weren't fair to African Americans: Even though Jackie was a great athlete, he wasn't allowed on the best teams just because of the color of his skin. Jackie knew that sports were best when everyone, of every color, played together. He became the first black baseball player on a major-league...
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In 1947, Larry Doby signed with the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first Black player in the American leagues. He endured terrible racism, both from fans and his fellow teammates. Despite this, he became a unifying force on and off the field, and went on to become a seven-time All Star. Illustrated with Cannaday Chapman's bold, stylized illustrations, this exceptional biography tells the story of an unsung hero who not only opened doors for those...
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"Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well. Through recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson's family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, Henry details a side of Jackie's humanity that few have taken the time to see. With many baseball stories...
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"A captivating book that brilliantly reveals an American sports legend long overlooked. Sally Jacobs tells the riveting story of Althea Gibson, my personal hero, who overcame daunting odds - on the tennis court and off - to stand at the world pinnacle of her sport and became an inspiration to many." - Billie Jean King. In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis...
9) Black ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the generation that saved the soul of the NBA
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"Against the backdrop of ongoing massive resistance to racial desegregation and increasingly strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into disorder. The press and the public blamed young Black players for the chaos in the NBA, citing drugs, violence, greed, and criminality. The supposed decline of pro basketball became a metaphor for the first decades of integration in America: the rules of the game...
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"A captivating chronicle of the pivotal decade in American sports, when the games invaded prime time, and sports moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in THE BIG TIME, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade-the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning...
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"Before there was Colin Kaepernick, there was Fritz Pollard. The first Black quarterback to play in the NFL, Pollard was a dynamo, leading his team to a national championship, drawing record crowds, and earning the highest salary in the league. He was also subject to a constant stream of racist abuse. Spectators jeered and threw rocks, and opposing players singled him out, using the cover of the game to pummel the only Black man on the field. It would...
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"The unknown story of the Black pioneers who collectively changed the face of the NFL in 1946. The Forgotten First chronicles the lives of four incredible men, the racism they experienced as Black players entering a segregated sport, the burden of expectation they carried, and their many achievements, which would go on to affect football for generations to come. More than a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball,...
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In 1936, the New York Yankees wanted to test a hot prospect named Joe DiMaggio to see if he was ready for the big leagues. They knew just the ballplayer to call, Satchel Paige, the best pitcher anywhere, black or white. For the game, Paige joined a group of amateur African-American players, and they faced off against a team of white major leaguers plus young DiMaggio.