It’s my skin. If I could just tear it off, I’d be like everybody else.

In 1903 Branch Rickey took his Ohio Wesleyan University baseball team to play Notre Dame. When the team arrived at the old Oliver Hotel to check in, the hotel manager said, according to the Rev. Bob Olmstead, a Methodist minister in Palo Alto, CA, “I have rooms for all of you — except for him” — and he pointed to the team’s catcher, Charley Thomas, who was black.

“Why don’t you have a room for him?” Rickey asked.

“Because our policy is whites only.”

“I’d like to have Charley stay in my room,” Rickey responded. “Can you bring in a cot?”

After long deliberations, the innkeeper relented. Rickey sent the ball players to their rooms. But when he got to his room Charlie Thomas was sitting on a chair sobbing. Rickey recounted later, “Charlie was pulling frantically at his hands, pulling at his hands. “He looked at me and said, ‘It’s my skin. If I could just tear it off, I’d be like everybody else. It’s my skin, it’s my skin, Mr. Rickey!’”

Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson Signing 1948