It was in 1946 that Jackie Robinson played his extraordinary
summer of baseball with the Triple A Montreal Royals affiliate
of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the year prior to his 1947
breakthrough as America’s first ever Black player in Major
League Baseball. Robinson’s achievement is a seminal event
in the history of the sport that was described as America’s
favourite pastime. But breaking baseball’s colour barrier was
also a transformational event in the advancement of the civil
rights movement in the United States. A decade before Rosa
Parks went down in history for her heroic 1955 refusal to give
up her seat and move to the back of a Montgomery city bus,
Robinson refused to give up his seat and move to the back of
a US Army bus when ordered to do so. Twentieth-century
civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. described Jackie
Robinson as an important contributor to his extraordinary
achievements.
Guest edited by eminent philosopher Will Kymlicka, this edition considers the evolution and public perceptions of Canadian multiculturalism and explores the drive to reframe the policy in a society increasingly aware of the problems caused by embedded social inequities and racism.