“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me…All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” Jackie Robinson
On April 15, 1947, Major League Baseball was integrated when Jackie Robinson became the first Black player on a modern-era major league baseball team to take the field at historic Ebbets Field.
Robinson endured racial antagonism and bigotry throughout his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the national pastime’s color barrier was broken permanently.
In 1997, Major League Baseball retired Robinson’s number, 42, across all teams, and in 2004 it began the annual April 15 observance of Jackie Robinson Day.