Race

When Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, it heralded an end to racial segregation in professional baseball.

And even though Major League Baseball teams were integrated, official recordkeepers refused to acknowledge stats from the Negro Leagues – where Black players were relegated to for decades.

Author and historian Larry Lester is one of the people who has fought to change that for years.

He's spent over 50 years compiling statistics from the Negro Leagues. Now, that effort is getting recognition from the MLB, and Lester spoke to Ari Shapiro on the battle for inclusion.

Statistics from the Negro Leagues have now been incorporated into the MLB's records – and it's reshaping the history of baseball.

For generations, Black baseball players' contributions to the sport have been ignored. Now, their legacies are being recognized.

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As war continues to rage in the Middle East, attention has been turned to how American Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians relate to the state of Israel. But when we talk about the region, American Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, are often not part of that story. But their political support for Israel is a major driver for U.S. policy — in part because Evangelicals make up an organized, dedicated constituency with the numbers to exert major influence on U.S. politics.

A new genetic analysis could help explain why people in the U.S. with African ancestry face a greater risk for stroke and Alzheimer's disease, but less risk of another brain disease, Parkinson's.

This week Code Switch digs into The Ministry of Time, a new book that author Kailene Bradley describes as a "romance about imperialism." It focuses on real-life Victorian explorer Graham Gore, who died on a doomed Arctic expedition in 1847. But in this novel, time travel is possible and Gore is brought to the 21st century where he's confronted with the fact that everyone he's ever known is dead, that the British Empire has collapsed, and that perhaps he was a colonizer.

Almost 40 percent of caregivers of older adults are men, and a third of that group is Black. But African American men face some issues other guys don't.

Facing potential headwinds with both young voters and Black voters, President Biden's Morehouse College commencement address focused on his view of the importance — and future of — democracy.