Source: allhiphop.com --- Tuesday, February 02, 2016
So we all know the story of the great Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But while the struggles that Jackie endured are well known, there were other athletes in other sports that also fought to break color barriers. Of those athletes is former NHL hockey player Willie O’Ree who was the first Black player in the NHL back in the 1950’s. O’Ree was known for his hard hitting play and for being one of the faster skaters on the ice, but he also had a knack for scoring when given the chance. Although Art Dorrington was the first Black player to sign an NHL contract in 1950 with the New York Rangers, he never made it out of the minors and O’Ree became the first Black NHL player in 1958 with the Boston Bruins. We all know that isn’t a knock on Dorrington’s play, it probably had more to do with other issues like his race to be honest, but O’Ree was the first. (Note: The first player to break the color barrier in the NHL was Larry Kwong of Chinese decent.) But O’Ree’s story in the NHL starts when he was called up from the minors to the NHL. Despite the groundbreaking achievement, it did not appear on the nightly news. Even The New York Times did not find it newsworthy since Canada didn’t have the same racial problems that plagued the U.S.. The crazy thing about O’Ree’s story is that we would wait 25 years before another Black NHL player made it. “Racist remarks were much worse in ...
from Baseball http://ift.tt/1UHU3m3
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