Wesley Branch Rickey Biography

1881-1965

American baseball executive

The names Rickey and Robinson will always be linked in the annals of sport because of their respective roles in breaking major league baseball's "color line," a seminal event which is regarded as having had a monumental effect — perhaps most of all symbolically, but also in a practical sense — on the Civil Rights movement. Wesley Branch Rickey's determination, in the face of opposition from other baseball owners, to sign a black player and desegregate professional baseball; his recruitment and signing of Jackie Robinson; and his orchestration of Robinson's debut in the major leagues opened the door for blacks in baseball and helped change the course of American history.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY RICKEY:

(With Robert Riger) The American Diamond: A Documentary of the Game of Baseball, Simon & Schuster, 1965.