Join author Ted Reinstein at Old Town Hall on Thursday February 27th at 6:30 as he discusses his book, Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier and the history of desegregation in baseball. Reinstein recounts the long history, reminding us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual. And then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew. In April of 1945, exactly two years before Jackie Robinson’s debut, Boston City Councilman Izzy Muchnick persuaded the Red Sox to try out three black players in return for a favorable vote to allow the team to play on Sundays. The Red Sox got the councilman’s much-needed vote, but the three players did not make the major league club. It was a lost battle in a war that was ultimately won by Robinson in 1947. Reinstein will also touch on the stories of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that newspapers espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes throughout the country.