Hey, it's Shannon from C-SPAN, back with the final episode of our special series on the history of baseball.

Today we're stepping up to one of the most significant chapters in the sports story.

Professor Donald Spivey takes us into the world of Satchel Page and the Negro Leagues,

where the love of the game intersected with the fight for civil rights.

Satchel Page, a legendary pitcher and the first Negro League's player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, was more than just a baseball icon.

He and other players and owners challenged Jim Crow laws, supported civil rights organizations like the NAACP, and built bridges with Major League Baseball's

white players, all while redefining what was possible on and off the field.

Professor Spivey gave this lecture at the University of Miami in 2014.

More after this.

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We'll be talking today about Satchel Page and Negro League's baseball in the rethinking of the

civil rights movement.

Let me first of all start out with a confession to you that for the long as I avoided like the plague, any teaching of the Civil Rights Movement.

It didn't make sense to me. I'm a baby boomer.

I was born at the end of World War II. I came of age in the 1950s and 60s, so all of this were current events.

So why as a historian present something

that's current? My mind changed in 2001. Let me tell you what happened in 2001. I had the

...