Lester Rodney (April 17, 1911 – December 20, 2009) was an American journalist who helped break down the color barrier in baseball as sports writer for the Daily Worker.

Rodney’s father lost his business, and then the family home, in the 1929 stock market crash that began the Great Depression, an era in which communism and other radical social philosophies captured the attention of the intelligentsia.

Rodney earned a partial track scholarship to Syracuse University, but his family could not afford the other half of his tuition so he did not complete his formal education.

Rodney was given wide discretion in his sportswriting, permitted to criticize baseball, America, and Hitler in order to prove the fact that African American ballplayers were the equals of white major leaguers.

[9] One of his closest friends was Satchel Paige, who he covered a lot on his page because he was one of the best pitchers ever at the time, but did not get the career and recognition that he deserved because he was in the Negro League.

His sports page often carried more stories about Joe Louis and Kenny Washington than on those white athletes whose prowess was the subject of the mainstream papers.

Following Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech detailing the crimes of the Joseph Stalin era, Rodney joined Daily Worker editor John Gates in an attempt to open the pages of the paper to debate.

After 22 years as the Daily Worker's sports writer, Rodney resigned from the CPUSA and the paper in January 1958 to seek a new life in California.

Rodney kept active all his life playing sports, and in his 60s saw success in his senior amateur tennis career, ranking as the #1 or #2 player in his age group in California until retiring from competition in 1998.