that is how they broke into major leagues before jackie robinson.usan: what are the biggest names in hispanic history in baseball that people should know? adrian: we all know roberto clemente. that is the standard no. -- he was the first black latino who came into major leagues. everyone thought he was a black man. there were other latinos, a cuban known as a mulatto who made it into major league baseline was racialized and faced a lot of hostility. he was called the n word constantly, even sometimes by his own teammates. he fit that ambiguity. his coach even said he was cuban, not black. that is an interesting story. another story that is important. he played in the 1880's with the providence grays. he was mexican american. he was presented to the major league public as the spanish catcher of the providence club, because to present him as an actual mexican american identity, to put him as not high enough stock, but to make him spaniard, that is acceptable because he is european. those are the kinds of stories that we can learn about how race catego

that's where we see over 240 latinos played in the negro leagues prior to jackie robinson's arrival in 1947. and there were over 50 latino who is had played in the major leagues or in that same period. there was a dozen who played in both. so what does that tell us? it tells us that the color line was changing. that there were these categories people had power to change it. ricky did.what i'm just going to do it. and that's what he did. >> in the history of the inclusion, did it matter how dark your skin was? >> it totally mattered. very early on in the 19 teens where we see the first cubans that are lighter skin and well off backgrounds in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980 eeks cubans were sending the kids to the education. they're the well off. they're able to do that and if their children or grandchildren, the first wave that broke into the major leagues. throughout that time you had darker skin cubans, afro cubans playing in the negro leagues. they did not discriminate on the basis of color. and so you had some lighter skin cubans playing in the negro leagues and major league teams would

jackie robinson did understand the larger role he was playing. jack johnson wanteox, make money, he wanted to sleep with whomever he wanted, hwanted to live the way he wanted to. in some ways, he's a perfect s erican, but we also have added in our demandr heroism people to be more than that and i think jackie robinson realized and assumed the burden of what hisymbolic act of trotting out to first base on3, april 1947, meant for civil rights. jack johnson wanted no such qualms. he wanted to live well and he did. >> filmmaker ken burns, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> woodruff:urns had a lot more to say about race relations then and now. you can find that and more on our website, pbs.org/newshour. >> woodruff: finally, we turn to another installment of our weekly brief but spectacular series. tonight, author and astrophysicist, neil degrasse tyson. for more than two , cades has served as director of the hohayden planetarium in hi town of new york city. tyson's latest book, "aysics for people in a hurry," is available now. >> what i th

from a male perspective, i don't remember any point whether we're talking about muhammed ali, jackie robinsonand carlos or kaepernick today where you had any sort of plurality of white player who is have gotten involved and said look, this is our issue, too, we're all in this together and that's the challenge. >> i'm curious, howard, how much do you think people, the average fan, the average viewer of this broadcast and this discussion, remembers the genesis of all this. that the reason those players were taking a knee was to oppose and stand up against police brutality against people of color? has that gotten lost? just the genesis of this. >> i don't think it's gotten lost. i don't think it ever existed. that was one of the things i talk about in this project as well. is that it is a classic humungous, enormous media fail on this. because we have focused so much on the reaction to the protest, than the reason for it. and because we've done that. that allows the lens to completely, to always be shifted toward the flag. always be shifted toward the people that this isn't even about. i would b