Jackie Robinson Race Man

Today is Opening Day -- a day that brings back a lot of memories of my father Jackie Robinson.They are memories that my mother and I carried with us when, last week, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama invited us to join them on a trip to Havana, Cuba. It was an experience of a lifetime. We were thrilled and honored to be in their company and to witness our President extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. Sharon Robinson Whitehouse Website

Eleven years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in the major leagues, Laster Rodney, a Jew from Brooklyn, turned the sports page of the "Daily Worker" into a launching pad against organized baseball's Jim Crow exclusion of African-Americans. "Nobody was making any fuss about the fact that the great black players -- we called them Negroes at that time -- were not allowed to play in the big leagues," Rodney said in a 1996 interview with ESPN.