This is an official Major League Baseball Season pass given to Jackie Robinson by baseball’s National League allowing him to attend any game during the 1968 season. Jackie broke modern baseball’s color barrier in 1947 as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1968 was a year of tremendous upheaval in America. Opening Day of the baseball season was postponed to commemorate the death of Martin Luther King Jr., which had occurred five days earlier, on April 4, 1968. Two months later, New York Senator, Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated (June 5th, 1968). In August of that year, the Democratic Convention in Chicago brought riots in the streets. Many American cities experienced riots that spring and summer, including Detroit, which, in October, hosted the World Series (won by the Tigers).

Jackie Robinson, the first black player inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962, vocally took up the cause of racial equality after his retirement from baseball.
One can only imagine what he -- one of the civil rights’ movements greatest leaders -- thought during that tumultuous year of 1968, as he watched a game, possibly reflecting on how far (or not), America had come since he first set foot on a major league field 21 years earlier.