Before Jackie: The Negro Leagues, Civil Rights, and the American Dream will be out and available on amazon or a bookstore near you by mid-October. It is the product of nearly four years of dedicated research that began with a master’s degree project that grew into a collaborative effort between me and my former student, now colleague, Mark.

He came to me with his idea for his research project actually thinking I might not find it worthy. How wrong he was. His idea was to do his research on the impact of a major league franchise on the city in which it was located — his choice: Ebbets Field, home of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. The one caveat he imposed on himself was that it would not segue into a project with Jackie Robinson as the centerpiece. I’ve always felt that, with pretty rare exceptions, that my job as a thesis adviser is to encourage students to follow their research where it takes them. No one could have foreseen the direction my own research would take, so I don’t think I should limit my students. The process alone does a good job of setting the direction and parameters!

As he continued with his work and began bringing me rough drafts though, I began seeing ways that my research interests and his might work together — but after he completed his degree. And so it came to pass that he finished his work (And, Jackie Robinson did make an important appearance in it).

It was at that point that I floated the possibility of extracting one thread of his research, building on it, and adding my work to it. As we talked it became clear right away that our mutual interest in baseball as a mirror and barometer of life in American had promise. Our first joint effort along that path was published in the April, 2010, issue of the OAH Magazine of History under the title, “Cap, Jackie, and Ted: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow Baseball.” At that point we actually thought we knew a lot about Negro League baseball — boy were we wrong. So, for me anyway, the opportunity to deepen and broaden my own understandings about the world of Jim Crow was one of the best parts of the project.

Now the complete volume is at the printers. It’s a history, to be sure, but as we worked we agreed that we needed to tackle head-on the issue of how best to get our work into classrooms. In our opinion way too much good research doesn’t transition into the very classrooms that need it. It was at that point that we decided that to our history we would add a variety of teaching materials specifically designed to encourage the possibility that our research would make the transition.

In large part our motivation to be as teacher-friendly as possible stemmed from our hope that our work would reach all kids, but especially African-American kids, with a history of active engagement by the African-American community in resisting and overcoming the world of Jim Crow. It’s a long history that fills the gap between the Civil War and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Textbook narratives too often focus what limited attention they do give to African-American history almost exclusively on what was done to and for African Americans with little mention or elaboration about what the African-American community did on its own behalf. This leaves an enormous gap in the historic narrative with all the obvious consequences it causes. Besides, writing history like that, is just plain bad history writing.

Along the way we’ve met and will be introducing you to new heroes and villains; poetry and art; YA literature and picture books; and a portfolio of classroom-ready teaching ideas and strategies. Mark and I hope you’ll like it, but mostly we hope teachers will like it and use it.