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Klan leader Samuel Green said Jackie and his teammate Roy Campanella could not play in the games because they were African Americans. He said it was illegal for black players and white players to appear on the field together in Georgia. Green said he would make sure that Jackie and Campanella were not in the games.

This kind of reaction to Jackie was not new to him during his career. He broke baseball’s color line when the Dodgers signed him to a contract three years before. The color line kept all but white ballplayers from playing in the major leagues for many years.

After they signed Jackie, the Dodgers sent him to play for their minor league team in Montreal in 1946 to teach him how to compete in professional baseball. They made this decision because there was less bias against black people in Canada than in the United States. But the Montreal Royals held spring training in Florida. There, Jackie faced great prejudice.

On his trip to Florida from his home in California with his wife, Rachel, he had to change planes in New Orleans. There the Robinsons saw the effect of Jim Crow laws that states in the American South enforced. Jim Crow was a character created by a white singer more than 100 years before Jackie joined the Dodgers. The singer painted his face black and made fun of the language and songs of slaves to entertain white audiences. After the United States outlawed slavery, some states passed laws to keep African Americans as second-class citizens. They named those laws after Jim Crow.