Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born the youngest of five children near Cairo, Georgia on January 31, 1919. Soon afterwards, his father left the family. His mother then moved the family to Pasadena, California to find work as a domestic.

Jackie Robinson excelled in four sports at Pasadena’s John Muir Technical High: football, basketball, baseball and track. He went on to Pasadena Junior College, where he set a National Junior Coll

Sam Lacy, the AFRO-American’s sports editor from 1944 through the present, confirms that while Jackie Robinson was not the most talented black player in the Negro Leagues, he was the best choice for integrating the Major Leagues. Like Brach Rickey, Mr. Lacy believed that Jackie’s early experiences playing and working with whites at UCLA and in the Army gave him an understanding many other black players did not have, as most had only lived and played in segregated arenas. Those early experiences showed Jackie that in America, race was the issue that defined the opportunities available to blacks. From his earliest experiences with his family in Pasadena, California, he quickly learned that he had to actively respond to racist ignorance. But, from his first game with the Montreal Royals in April 1946, Jackie was forced to passively respond to racist taunts and threats.

Jackie Robinson, over a 10-year major league career, had a lifetime batting average of .311. He appeared in six All-Star Games and six World Series with the Dodgers. At the 1972 World Series, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of his rookie season, a physically deteriorating but still crusading Robinson, a diabetic, said he hoped to live to see blacks in baseball management jobs. Nine days later, he died of a heart attack at the young age of 53.

ege record in the long jump of 25’ 6 ½” before accepting an athletic scholarship to UCLA. There, he became the first Bruin athlete to earn varsity letters in four sports. Robinson left UCLA in the spring of 1941 hoping to work to support his mother. Several months later, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and Jackie Robinson enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Jackie Robins

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