Crime of the Big Leagues: Lester Rodney 2011

Overview

We know a lot about how major league baseball was strictly segregated before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. But strangely, few of us know much about the decade-long, fierce, organized efforts to bring that about. Lester Rodney, sports editor and writer for New York’s Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker, made it his crusade beginning in 1936. This riveting 10-minute film, much of it in Lester Rodney’s own words, tells about the man, his passion for baseball, why he fought