<P> Jackie Robinson was a sports pioneer of the civil rights movement, best known for becoming the first African American to play professional sports in the major leagues . Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball on April 15, 1947 . His first major league game came one year before the US Army was integrated, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, eight years before Rosa Parks, and before Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the movement . </P> <P> Following the Civil War, black leaders made substantial progress in establishing representation in the Republican Party . </P> <P> Among the most prominent was Norris Wright Cuney, the Republican Party chairman in late 19th century Texas . These gains led to substantial discomfort among many white voters, who generally supported the Democrats . During the 1888 Texas Republican Convention, Cuney coined the term lily - white movement to describe efforts by white conservatives to oust blacks from positions of party leadership and incite riots to divide the party . Increasingly organized efforts by this movement gradually eliminated black leaders from the party . The writer Michael Fauntroy contends that the effort was coordinated with Democrats as part of a larger movement toward disenfranchisement of blacks in the South at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century by increasing restrictions in voter registration rules . </P> <P> Following biracial victories by a Populist - Republican slates in several states, by the late 19th century the Democratic Party had regained control of most state legislatures in the South . From 1890 to 1908, they accomplished disenfranchisement of blacks and, in some states, many poor whites . Despite repeated legal challenges and some successes by the NAACP, the Democrats continued to devise new ways to limit black electoral participation, such as white primaries, through the 1960s . </P>

Who fought to gain civil rights for minorities in texas