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Baseball and Race in Canada: The Case of Jackie Robinson

John Herd Thompson from the Department of History at Duke University will present a lecture titled, “Baseball and Race in Canada: The Case of Jackie Robinson.” This lecture will take place:

Time: Monday, September 24, 7:30 pm

Location: Arts 241 (Neatby-Timlin Theatre)

Lecture Abstract

Thompson will discuss the intersections of sport and race in Canada from the late 19th Century through the 1940s. The focal point of the presentation will be Canada's role in creating, maintaining, and (eventually) breaking Organized Baseball's "color line" during Jackie Robinson's year with the Montréal Royals from October 1945 until the end of the 1946 International League season.

The lecture won't be baseball history/sport history per se, but an attempt to use baseball and Robinson's year in Montréal to consider changing conceptions of "race" in the city, the province, and in Canada in general, and to explore if, why, and how those conceptions diverged from those in the USA.

The lecture is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity and the Department of History.