Over the past fifty years there has been an increasing number of blacks who participate in sports at all levels. While blacks have increased their numbers in sports both on the field and off the field, there is still a good deal of racial prejudice that prohibits blacks from participating in sports on an equal level with whites. However, during the past fifty years there have been many milestones achieved by black athletes that have helped pave the way for the success of today’s black athletes. In 1945, Major League Baseball opened its previously white-only doors to black baseball player Jackie Robinson, who, in 1947, made his major league debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets field (Leavy, 131). The year before his major league debut the National Football League broke the all-white barrier for blacks by signing Kenny Washington and Woody Strode to the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns respectively. As Jackie Robinson was winning the MVP in the late 1940s for his outstanding play, Alice Coachman became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. In 1950, the color barrier was broken in the National Basketball Association when Chuck Cooper, Early Lloyd and Nathaniel Clifton were signed. Of course, throughout the 1940s, Joe Louis was pummeling contenders for the heavyweight title as Sugar Ray Robinson would do to middleweight contenders in the 1950s. The advent of television and media coverage of sports helped promote the popularity of black athletes across the country. In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali and Olympic winners John Carlos and Tommie Smith forged an alliance between black athletes and black politics. Ali would refuse to fight in the Vietnam War due to his religious beliefs and Carlos and Smith raised black-gloved fists of protests while standing on the victory podium. In the 1970s, Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals helped form free agency when he filed a federal suit opposing baseball’s reserve clau...