First Black Player

After World War Two, many Americans still believed that people of [different:diverse] races should not mix. In some parts of the country, blacks and whites lived in separate areas and went to separate schools. Blacks who tried to change the system [risked:exposing] being beaten or killed. Blacks were not permitted to play on professional [baseball:football] teams or in any other major league sport. No black man had played for a major league baseball team since eighteen eighty-four. In that year, American baseball [organizations:company] agreed to bar blacks. That began changing when Jackie [Robinson:William] played his first game for New York's Brooklyn Dodgers on April fifteenth, nineteen forty-seven.