The following episode marks the 75th anniversary of Major League Baseball's integration on April 15, 1947, and is made possible in part by the work of William J. Marshall, courtesy of the Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky, Kentucky Oral History.org.

Integration marked the culmination of nothing.

The completion of nothing.

It was not an endpoint.

It was an underlying passage in the long, complex, unfinished history of Black America, yet an essential one.

You see, professional baseball came to existence at the same time as, and in a way, because of, the freedom of black Americans following the Civil War.

After the Civil War,

black folks left the Deep South and moved to the Midwest

and really the Northern Seaboard

looking for what I like to refer to as

industrialized opportunities,

which coincidentally is why you saw

the formation of Negro League teams anchored in those cities,

because quite frankly, that is where you had your largest concentration of that primary black fan base

that supported black baseball. But the seeking of these opportunities also came with the seeking of justice and liberty.

And those things have been a little bit harder to come by.

The struggles have been well documented.

You know, when you go from being enslaved people to fighting for freedom and trying to get access to what was called the American dream.

That dream for African Americans was seemingly more of a nightmare because it has been a long

winding road

toward the pursuit of what America held as the dream.

Life in Black America itself was unique.

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