color line

noun

variants US color line or British colour line

plural color lines

: a set of societal or legal barriers that segregates people of color from white people (as by restricting social interaction or requiring separate facilities) and prevents people of color from exercising the same rights and accessing the same opportunities as white people

—usually used with the

His father … had grown up in California with Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in Major League Baseball.

—Maureen O'Donnell

called also color bar

Examples of color line in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

When the two separated in 1897, Fleet changed the family’s last name to Greene and, along with her five children, crossed the color line. —Deborah W. Parker, The Conversation, 31 Jan. 2025

The novel tested theories about assimilation and the color line. —Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Mar. 2025

How the Black Press Helped Integrate Baseball In the 1930s and ’40s, Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier used their platform to help break the sport’s color line. —JSTOR Daily, 20 Feb. 2025

After a season with the Royals, Robinson was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, breaking the modern-day color line in Major League Baseball. —Russell Contreras, Axios, 6 Jan. 2025

Millions of African Americans migrated north in the decades following World War I, confounding efforts to police the color line in many cities. —Bryan Greene, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Nov. 2024

Violence and murder were not, of course, the only problems that Du Bois associated with the color line. —Kwame Anthony Appiah, Foreign Affairs, 1 Mar. 2015

Still, as the eugenics movement gained traction in the early 20th century, American lawmakers took steps to ensure that those deemed racially inferior didn’t surreptitiously cross the color line. —Bryan Greene, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Nov. 2024

Several scholars and students think that slave owners freed their slaves out of pure generosity, embracing the idea that enslaved people were part of the family of slaveholders, and that the color line didn’t exist in countries such as Brazil. —Ana Lucia Araujo / Made By History, TIME, 4 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1873, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for color line

• acridine
• alkaline
• andesine
• anodyne
• anticline
• arginine
• asinine
• atropine
• benzidine
• borderline
• byzantine
• calamine