Wesley Branch Rickey

In the spring of 1903, Ohio Wesleyan was scheduled to play Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana. Rickey's star was the first baseman, Charles "Tommy" Thomas, an African American equally skilled at baseball and football….

[When] Rickey and his team filed into the lobby of the Oliver Hotel at South Bend, the clerk told Rickey that while he and the rest of the team were welcome, Thomas was not. Thomas, humiliated, suggested that he just quietly return to Ohio Wesleyan and forget about playing.

Rickey wouldn't hear of it; he took Thomas to his own room. When the manager protested, Rickey threatened to take his whole team elsewhere if he didn't cooperate. The manager backed down.

Many years later, Rickey remembered what happened after he sent for the team captain to come to his room and talk over strategy for the big game: "Tommy stood in the corner, tense and brooding and in silence. I asked him to sit on a chair and relax. Instead, he sat on the edge of the cot, his huge shoulders hunched and his hands clasped between his knees. I tried to talk to the captain, but I couldn't take my gaze from Tommy. Tears welled, … spilled down his black face. … Then his shoulders heaved convulsively, and he rubbed one great hand over the other with all the power of his body, muttering, 'Black skin, … black skin. If I could only make 'em white.' He kept rubbing and rubbing as though he would remove the blackness by sheer friction."

Rickey did his best to reassure Thomas, but "whatever mark that incident left on Charles Thomas, it was no more indelible than the impression made on me." The memory never left him and the conviction slowly grew that he would someday try to see to it that such things never happened again.

Source: Ward, Geoffrey C. and Ken Burns. Baseball: An Illustrated History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.