 With that, Goode broke the network TV news color line, much like his friend Jackie Robinson had done for Major League Baseball 15 years earlier. The road there had been long. Goode was born in Virginia in 1908, the grandson of former slaves. He grew up in Homestead, a mill town outside Pittsburgh, where his father was a steelworker who encouraged his children to attend college. Here's Goode in a 1991 archival interview.