ranch Rickey knew breaking baseball’s color barrier would require more kinds of players than African-American ballplayers who could excel in the major leagues. There were off-the-field considerations, and that included working with the Black community of New York to assist in the transition from an all-White institution to an integrated one.
“It is clear now, but wasn’t back then, that each step the Dodgers took involved hard work by numerous individuals on the team and in the city; and no step was taken without careful consideration and debate,” wrote Thomas Oliphant in Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
One person with whom Rickey collaborated was Rev. Gardner Calvin Taylor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ.
