Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier but these Black players still faced racism Updated 3:02 PM ET, Thu April 15, 2021 Ernest Fann played in the Negro Leagues with the Raleigh Tigers in the 1950s and spent time in the minor leagues for affiliates of St. Louis and Kansas City. (CNN)Ernest Fann never imagined his baseball career would be tainted by racism more than a decade after Jackie Robinson's debut. "Somebody told me baseball was a White man's game," he says about a teammate who approached him while he sat on the bench. It was the early 1960s and Fann was playing for the Burlington Bees, a minor league affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics in Burlington, Iowa.