Days prior to Chandler's assumption of the commissionership, the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager, Branch Rickey, had announced the signing of Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract with the Montreal Royals, making him the first black man to play for a Major League Baseball affiliate. The following year, Rickey transferred Robinson's contract from Montreal to Brooklyn, effectively breaking baseball's color line. In a speech at Wilberforce University in February 1948, Rickey recounted a secret meeting that had allegedly been held by baseball officials at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on August 28, 1946. At the meeting, Rickey claimed that Ford Frick disseminated a report that stated, "However well-intentioned, the use of Negro players would hazard all physical properties of baseball." According to Rickey, all 15 team owners except for him voted to endorse the report. Rickey claimed Frick meticulously collected all copies of the report at the end of the meeting to prevent them from being disseminated. Baseball historian Bill Marshall later wrote that the document and subsequent vote to which Rickey was referring was the advisory committee's initial draft of recommended reforms. Marshall further recorded that Rickey identified the meeting and the report shortly after his speech at Wilberforce and retracted his claim of 15–1 opposition to Robinson's entry into Major League Baseball.