Jackie Robinson and the Color Line is an exhibition of the collection of Paul Reiferson, that uses photographs and artifacts to vividly narrate the story of baseball’s journey toward integration.
Jackie Robinson, a trailblazing figure in civil rights, shattered baseball’s color line when Martin Luther King Jr. was still in college, earning praise from King as “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” The exhibition frames Robinson’s odyssey within a larger one that had begun sixty years earlier, when men like Fleet and Weldy Walker, Sol White, Robert Higgins, and Javan Emory played for integrated teams in the late 19th century.
The visual history of the Negro Leagues is marked by absence: black newspapers, lacking large photography staffs, rarely shot games, and white newspapers saw little profit in it. When black players approached or crossed the boundary into the white world, however, they became more visible. Inspired by this insight, this collection of photographs, complemented by significant objects offering context, directs its focus to narratives situated proximate to the color line, communicating both the forward-flowing hopes of integration and the undertow of racism and, in no modest measure, derives its impact from these competing currents.
This collection of over 60 objects has been meticulously curated over more than a quarter century and spans the years 1885-1955. The endpoint was chosen because it coincides with the beginning of the modern civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.’s activism, to which the long challenge to baseball’s color line serves as a prologue acknowledged by King himself.
Please note: The word “Negro” appears several times throughout this exhibition. Historically, this term was used to denote persons of Black African ancestry. Although some people utilized it to promote positive Black identity in the mid-20th century, it began to take on increasingly negative connotations during the American civil rights movement. We use it only in reference to the Negro Leagues, as those institutions were known at the time, and when citing historically significant quotes.