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To celebrate Jackie Robinson Day.

It is important to remember that Robinson broke major league baseball's color line on April 15, 1947. But if we restrict Robinson's influence to baseball, we do both him and what he accomplished a tremendous disservice. He was arguably the most important civil rights figure, and the integration of baseball the most important civil rights story, in the years immediately after World War II.

When he played his first game for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he carried the hopes and dreams of millions of blacks. If Robinson succeeded in baseball, as civil rights leader Roy Wilkins had earlier said, it meant blacks "should have their own rights, should have jobs, decent homes and education, free from insult, and equality of opportunity to achieve."