Sugar Ray Robinson (1921-1989) was hailed as the finest boxer to ever enter a ring. Muhammad Ali once called him "the king, my master, my idol"--and indeed, he was the idol of everyone who had anything to do with boxing. But for African Americans, he was more than a great boxer. In an era when blacks were supposed to be humble and grateful for favors received, he was a man whose every move in and out of the ring showed what black pride and power meant.Sugar Ray grew up during the Depression in the ghettos of Detroit and New York, rose through the amateur boxing ranks, became Golden Gloves...

Before the rise of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, baseball was a game of white men, cloth caps and concrete walls. Four men helped to change thesport as America knew it: Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Jackie Robinson and Pete Reiser.

These men were essential to the evolution of baseball, especially in their home of Brooklyn's Ebbets Field. It was there that the first major league game was televised, where the batting helmet was developed, where the first walls were padded and the first outfield warning tracks laid down and with the arrival of Jackie Robinson, it is where the color line...