INTRODUCTION

January 30, 2008

I realized as this book began to take shape in  that the
year encompassed two sets of events of profound relation
and resonance—one set echoing the past, the other dramati-
cally unfolding in the present. First,  was a year of two
historic anniversaries: the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie
Robinson’s breaking major league baseball’s color barrier and
the fiftieth anniversary of the heroic stand the black commu-
nity of Little Rock, Arkansas, undertook to integrate that
city’s central high school. Those events demanded of their
participants what the centuries-long black freedom struggle
had always required: the determined pursuit of justice, un-
shakable courage against great odds, and what is often not re-
marked upon, an extraordinary patriotism and commitment
to the American ideal. They were part of the tapestry of
forces that ultimately compelled America to shed its overtly
racist laws and practices and expand opportunity across the
color line.

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