Today many children dream of playing professional baseball. Perhaps you are one of them. If you have good athletic skills and you work hard, your dream may be realized. But this wasn’t always true for athletes in the first part of this century. More was required. A player had to be white. Black players–no matter how well they could hit, catch, or throw–were not signed up by the major leagues.

One brave black player named Jackie Robinson worked to change the rules, so that all races could have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams on the baseball diamond–or anywhere. This is Jackie Robinson’s story.