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HISTORY DETECTIVES: Jackie Robinson All-Stars, Modoc Basket, Special Agent Five

Jason Mishelow (right) asks HISTORY DETECTIVES host Tukufu Zuberi (left) to find out whether the game recorded in this Pittsburgh Pirate’s baseball program played a role in integrating professional baseball. In this game, Jackie Robinson’s All Star team included black and white athletes, yet this game occurred six months before Robinson became America’s first black major league baseball player.
Courtesy of Tom Denison
Jason Mishelow (right) asks HISTORY DETECTIVES host Tukufu Zuberi (left) to find out whether the game recorded in this Pittsburgh Pirate’s baseball program played a role in integrating professional baseball. In this game, Jackie Robinson’s All Star team included black and white athletes, yet this game occurred six months before Robinson became America’s first black major league baseball player.

Airs Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV

America's top gumshoes are back to prove once again that an object found in an attic or backyard might be anything but ordinary in the HISTORY DETECTIVES series. Wesley Cowan, independent appraiser and auctioneer; Gwendolyn Wright, historian and professor of architecture, Columbia University; Elyse Luray, independent appraiser and expert in art history; Dr. Eduardo Pagán, professor of history and American studies at Arizona State University; and Tukufu Zuberi, professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, leave no stone unturned as they travel around the country to explore the stories behind local folklore, prominent figures and family legends.

"Jackie Robinson All-Stars" - Tukufu Zuberi tallies the facts on a 1940s Jackie Robinson All-Stars scorecard. Black and white athletes played this game before Robinson became the first black major league baseball player. What role did this game play in the integration of major league baseball?

"Modoc Basket" - Then, we see the name ‘Toby’ worked into the weave of this basket. Could that be Toby Riddle, the woman congress honored as a heroine of the Indian Wars of the American West?

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"Special Agent Five" - And, why would J. Edgar Hoover endorse a crime radio drama? Does the script portray actual events?

This episode originally aired in 2010.

HISTORY DETECTIVES is on Facebook.