Breaking the Color Line of America's Pastime-Jackie Robinson

Major League Baseball has long been considered as America’s preeminent sport out of all the major sports in the country, and this was certainly true in 1947.  Much like America at the time period baseball represented the segregation that existed in the nation’s society by only allowing white players since 1889. On April 15, 1947, after nearly six decades of being segregated and years before Martin Luther King Jr. burst onto the scene advocating for racial equality, Jackie Robinson finally broke baseball’s color line.  

Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson was born as the youngest of five on January 31, 1919, to a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia. Given his middle name after former President Theodore Roosevelt only seemed to foreshadow the famous man he would become.  In 1920 his father left the family and his mother moved them to Pasedena, California. His older brothers recognizing his talent in sports pushed him to pursue his interest in them, and in high school he excelled in multiple sports. At Pasedena Junior College on January 25, 1938 he formed a reputation for combativeness in the face of racism after being arrested and later suspended for vocally disputing the detention of a black friend by police. This was just the first incident that would give Jackie a bad reputation for dealing with racial prejudice. After graduating from PJC he went on to UCLA, where he became the first black athlete to win varsity letters in four sports. In 1942 he was drafted into the army and on July 6, 1944, he once again stood up for his race by refusing to sit in the back of the bus. He was charged with multiple offenses, but was later acquitted and honorably discharged that year.

In 1945 Jackie joined the Negro Leagues, where he paid very little, so he decided to try out for Major League teams like the Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers. Before signing Jackie on October 23, 1945, Dodgers President and general manager, Branch Rickey, famously questioned Jackie about his prior incidents at PJC and in the military because he was afraid Jackie could not handle the racism he would face in baseball in which Jackie responded, “Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?” Rickey responded, “With guts enough to not fight back.” Jackie told him he “would turn the other cheek”, when faced with racial antagonism. This proved he had grown into a man able to deal with racial antagonism. In 1947, at the age of 28, he officially became the first man to break the color line in baseball. He would go on to play 10 successful seasons, in which he would have a decorated career that included a World Series title.

Jackie was later quoted as saying, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” And what an impact he had. He pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America, and showed that the civil rights movement extended beyond the political atmosphere. In 1997, Major League Baseball recognized his accomplishment by “universally” retiring his number, meaning no player on any team would ever again be allowed to wear the number 42. On April 15, 2004, the MLB also adopted the annual tradition of  “Jackie Robinson Day”, on which every player on every team wears his number on their jersey.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson

http://www.jackierobinson.com/about/bio.html