Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) became the first African-American major league baseball player of the moern era in 1947. While not the first African American professional baseball player in United States history, his Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately eighty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball color line, or color barrier. In the United States at this time, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be segregated or kept apart in many phases of life, including sports and daily life.