Robinson, Jackie (1919–1972)

Jackie (John) Roosevelt Robinson became the first African American to play for a major league baseball team, breaking the color line, and paving the way for the integration of professional sports in the United States. A Hall of Fame player, Robinson was an out-spoken critic of prejudice, and used his position as a professional athlete to advance the cause of racial equality.

A color line established in the 1880s excluded African Americans from the national pastime, professional baseball. Black players were restricted to the Negro Leagues, which competed in annual barnstorming seasons in stadiums owned by white teams while those teams were traveling. Although activists expressed hopes that baseball would be the first American institution to integrate, no attempt was successful until after World War II, when Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey quietly began a plan to bring a black player into the Dodgers franchise. Rickey understood that, in order for his experiment to succeed, the first player to break the color line would have to be an outstanding athlete, one who was capable of enduring racism and intense scrutiny. He found that player in Jackie Robinson and, in 1945, signed Robinson to a contract that would bring him into the major leagues in 1947, through the Dodger's minor league team, the Montreal Royals.

Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, and grew up in Pasadena, California. He excelled in sports in high school and at Pasadena Junior College before transferring to University of California, Los Angeles, in 1939, where he was best known for his running efforts on the football team. An accomplished track star, Robinson was expected to follow in the Olympic footsteps of his brother, Mack, a silver medalist at the Berlin games, but the 1940 games were cancelled at the outset of World War II.

During the war, Robinson was drafted into the army and became friends with a newly enlisted boxer, Joe Louis. In 1942, he became a cavalry officer at a time when the army was still heavily segregated, and most black soldiers were relegated to service units. While undertaking preparations in Texas, he was court martialed for an altercation provoked by his refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus. In 1945, shortly after leaving the army, he began playing with the Kansas City Monarchs, a leading team in the Negro Leagues.

Robinson put on a Dodgers uniform, number 42, in April 1947. As a professional player, Robinson excelled throughout his 10-year career. Throughout, he endured jeers from opposing crowds, abuse from opposing players, and discrimination in hotels and restaurants on the road. He received enormous support from African Americans, who packed segregated bleachers to see him play. He won the National League's Most Valuable Player award in 1949, after leading the league with a .342 batting average and 37 stolen bases.

Robinson's efforts pioneered racial integration in America. The armed services integrated in 1948, public schools in 1954, and, by 1959, every professional baseball team had signed a black player. Robinson viewed the integration of baseball as the beginning, rather than the conclusion, of the struggle for equality, and he was committed to imbedding a new image of blacks as proud and defiant in the minds of Americans. He died in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1972.

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