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Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers signing Robinson heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

For other people named Jackie Robinson, see Jackie Robinson (disambiguation).

Jackie Robinson

141

77.5% (first ballot)

Born in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson was raised in Pasadena, California. A four-sport student athlete at Pasadena Junior College and the University of California, Los Angeles, he was better known for football than he was for baseball, becoming a star college player with the UCLA Bruins football team. Following his college career, Robinson was drafted for service during World War II but was court martialed for refusing to sit at the back of a segregated Army bus, eventually being honorably discharged. Afterwards, he signed with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues from where he caught the eye of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who thought he would be the perfect candidate for breaking the color line in Major League Baseball.


During his 10-year MLB career, Robinson won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, was an All-Star for six consecutive seasons from 1949 through 1954, and won the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Award in 1949—the first black player so honored. Robinson played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Series championship. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform No. 42 across all major league teams; he was the first professional athlete in any sport to be so honored. MLB also adopted a new annual tradition, "Jackie Robinson Day", for the first time on April 15, 2004, on which every player on every team wears No. 42.


Robinson's character, his use of nonviolence, and his talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation that had then marked many other aspects of American life. He influenced the culture of and contributed significantly to the civil rights movement. Robinson also was the first black television analyst in MLB and the first black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock full o'Nuts. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York. After his death in 1972, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his achievements on and off the field.

Early life

Family and personal life

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, into a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia. He was the youngest of five children born to Mallie (née McGriff) and Jerry Robinson, after siblings Edgar, Frank, Matthew (nicknamed "Mack"), and Willa Mae.[1][2] His middle name honored former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born.[3] After Robinson's father left the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California.[4][5]


The extended Robinson family established itself on a residential plot containing two small houses at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena. Robinson's mother worked various odd jobs to support the family.[6] Growing up in relative poverty in an otherwise affluent community, Robinson and his minority friends were excluded from many recreational opportunities.[7] As a result, Robinson joined a neighborhood gang, but his friend Carl Anderson persuaded him to abandon it.[7][8][9]

John Muir High School

In 1935, Robinson graduated from Washington Junior High School and enrolled at John Muir Technical High School.[10] Recognizing his athletic talents, Robinson's older brothers, Frank and Mack (himself an accomplished track and field athlete and silver medalist behind Jesse Owens in the 200 meters at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics) inspired Jackie to pursue his interest in sports.[9][11][12]


At Muir Tech, Robinson played numerous sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track and field, and baseball.[5] He played shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and guard on the basketball team. With the track and field squad, he won awards in the broad jump. He was also a member of the tennis team.[13]


In 1936, Robinson won the junior boys singles championship in the annual Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament and earned a place on the Pomona annual baseball tournament all-star team, which included future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Lemon.[14] In late January 1937, the Pasadena Star-News newspaper reported that Robinson "for two years has been the outstanding athlete at Muir, starring in football, basketball, track, baseball, and tennis."[15]

Pasadena Junior College

After Muir, Robinson attended Pasadena Junior College (PJC), where he continued his athletic career by participating in basketball, football, baseball, and track.[16] On the football team, he played quarterback and safety. He was a shortstop and leadoff hitter for the baseball team,[5] and he broke an American junior college broad-jump record held by his brother Mack with a jump of 25 ft. 6+12 in. on May 7, 1938.[17] As at Muir High School, most of Jackie's teammates were white.[14] While playing football at PJC, Robinson suffered a fractured ankle, complications from which would eventually delay his deployment status while in the military.[18][19] In 1938, he was elected to the All-Southland Junior College Team for baseball and selected as the region's Most Valuable Player.[11][20]


That year, Robinson was one of 10 students named to the school's Order of the Mast and Dagger (Omicron Mu Delta), awarded to students performing "outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition."[21] Also while at PJC, he was elected to the Lancers, a student-run police organization responsible for patrolling various school activities.[22]


An incident at PJC illustrated Robinson's impatience with authority figures he perceived as racist—a character trait that would resurface repeatedly in his life. On January 25, 1938, he was arrested after vocally disputing the detention of a black friend by police.[23] Robinson received a two-year suspended sentence, but the incident—along with other rumored run-ins between Robinson and police—gave Robinson a reputation for combativeness in the face of racial antagonism.[24] While at PJC, he was motivated by a preacher (the Rev. Karl Downs) to attend church on a regular basis, and Downs became a confidant for Robinson, a Christian.[25] Toward the end of his PJC tenure, Frank Robinson (to whom Robinson felt closest among his three brothers) was killed in a motorcycle accident. The event motivated Jackie to pursue his athletic career at the nearby University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he could remain closer to Frank's family.[11][26]

Jackie Robinson

United States

1942–1944

Post-military

After his discharge, Robinson briefly returned to his old football club, the Los Angeles Bulldogs.[43] Robinson then accepted an offer from his old friend and pastor Rev. Karl Downs to be the athletic director at Samuel Huston College in Austin, then of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.[63] The job included coaching the school's basketball team for the 1944–45 season.[51] As it was a fledgling program, few students tried out for the basketball team, and Robinson even resorted to inserting himself into the lineup for exhibition games.[63][64] Although his teams were outmatched by opponents, Robinson was respected as a disciplinarian coach,[51] and drew the admiration of, among others, Langston University basketball player Marques Haynes, a future member of the Harlem Globetrotters.[65]

John Lafayette, in the 1978 television special "A Home Run for Love" (broadcast as an ABC Afterschool Special).[204]

ABC

in the 1981 Broadway production of the musical The First.[205][206][207]

David Alan Grier

Michael-David Gordon, in the 1989 production of the musical Play to Win.[208]

Off-Broadway

Sterling Macer Jr. in the 1989 play Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, a fictionalized version of the meeting in which Branch Rickey offered Robinson a major-league contract.[209]

Edward Schmidt

in the 1990 TNT television movie The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson.[210][211]

Andre Braugher

in the 1996 HBO television movie Soul of the Game.[212][213]

Blair Underwood

Antonio Todd in "Colors", a 2005 episode of the television series Cold Case.[214]

CBS

in the 2013 motion picture 42.[215][216]

Chadwick Boseman

Robert Hamilton in "Sundown", a 2020 episode of the television series Lovecraft Country.[217]

HBO

(including MLB Beacon Awards)

Civil Rights Game

DHL Hometown Heroes

List of African-American firsts

List of sports desegregation firsts

List of first black Major League Baseball players

List of Major League Baseball batting champions

List of Major League Baseball annual stolen base leaders

List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders

List of Major League Baseball career batting average leaders

List of Major League Baseball career on-base percentage leaders

List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise

List of Major League Baseball players to hit for the cycle

List of Major League Baseball retired numbers

List of NCAA major college football yearly rushing leaders

List of NCAA major college yearly punt and kickoff return leaders

List of Negro league baseball players who played in Major League Baseball

List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

Kahn, Roger (1972). . Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060883966.

The Boys of Summer

Robinson, Jackie; Tygiel, Jules (1997). . Dutton Penguin. ISBN 978-0525940968.

The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives on an American Hero

Kashatus, William C. (2014). . University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803246331.

Jackie & Campy: The Untold Story of Their Rocky Relationship and the Breaking of Baseball's Color Line

Kennedy, Kostya (2022). True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson. St. Martin's Press.  978-1250274045.

ISBN

Career statistics and player information from , or ESPN, or Baseball Reference, or Fangraphs, or Baseball Reference (Minors), or Retrosheet, or Seamheads

MLB

Official website

at the Baseball Hall of Fame

Jackie Robinson

at the SABR Baseball Biography Project

Jackie Robinson

at IMDb

Jackie Robinson