Jackie Robinson and the Color Line

Gitterman Gallery proudly presents Jackie Robinson and the Color Line, an exhibition of the collection of Paul Reiferson, which uses photographs and artifacts to vividly narrate the story of baseball’s journey toward integration. The exhibition opens on Monday, April 15th in honor of Major League Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and runs through Friday, May 24th.

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 19^th century.

• Witness the original photographs of Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson that were used to produce the iconic images in LIFE magazine

• Explore the telegrams establishing the first contact between the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson and arranging and planning the historic meeting with Branch Rickey

• See Jackie Robinson’s journey through original photographs capturing on-field triumphs and challenges 


Paul Reiferson is a dedicated collector driven by a passion for preserving American stories. “I saw that the color line transcended baseball, that it was about America struggling to solve a terrible problem, and that the stories of the people in that fight were extraordinary,” Reiferson explained.

This exhibition of photographs, complemented by historic artifacts, illuminates the pervasive racism and the fervent aspirations for integration during that era. We hope everyone from collectors to students and families with children can visit this exhibition. By experiencing these powerful images together, we hope to help foster a deeper appreciation for photography as a medium of storytelling.

Nearly 500 prints from Reiferson’s collection of photographs by Charles M. Conlon have been gifted or promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many others have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, American Folk Art Museum, and Tampa Museum of Art, among others.



Please note:
The word “Negro” appears several times throughout this exhibition. Historically, this term was used to denote person 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 only use it in reference to the Negro Leagues as those institutions were known at the time and when siting historically significant quotes.