Jackie Robinson (1919-72) United States Major League Baseball player. In 1947, Robinson became the first African American to play in the major leagues when he signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was also the first black to win the Most Valuable Player award, the first to play in a major league World Series, and the first to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For many blacks, Jackie Robinson symbolized a triumph in the fight for racial integration.
Joe Louis (1914-81) United States professional boxer. Nicknamed "The Brown Bomber," Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937-49, still holds the record for the longest reign as heavyweight champion: 11 years, 8 months, and 7 days.
Keats, Byron, Scott John Keats, George Gordon Byron, and Sir Walter Scott are nineteenth-century Romantic poets. The attorney implies that since Jefferson lacks a formal Eurocentric education, he is not a "civilized" human being. This blatantly racist argument fails to note that blacks had been legally denied the right to learn to read and write, often upon threat of death or disfigurement, and that even now they were denied the textbooks and other resources that could enable them to study Western classics. Later in the book, we see the school superintendent suggest that students earn money to buy toothbrushes — not books.
