a biography of jackie robinson

Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson became the first Black athlete to play Major League Baseball, breaking the color barrier in 1947.

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Baseball player Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier as its first Black athlete. The infielder made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and went on to have a decade-long Hall of Fame career despite repeated threats and abuse from fans and opponents. Also a vocal civil rights activist , Robinson served on the board of the NAACP and advocated for greater racial integration in sports. He died in 1972 at age 53. MLB retired Robinson’s jersey, No. 42, in 1997, and the league celebrates his legacy and accomplishments annually on Jackie Robinson Day.

FULL NAME: Jack Roosevelt Robinson BORN: January 31, 1919 DIED: October 24, 1972 BIRTHPLACE: Cairo, Georgia SPOUSE: Rachel Robinson (1946-1972) CHILDREN: Jack Jr., Sharon, and David ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. The youngest of five children, he was raised in relative poverty by a single mother. His older brother, Matthew, inspired Robinson to pursue his talent and love of athletics. Matthew won a silver medal in the 200-meter dash—just behind Jesse Owens —at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Robinson attended John Muir High School in Pasadena, California, and Pasadena Junior College, where he was an excellent athlete and played four sports: football, basketball, track, and baseball. He was named the region’s MVP in baseball in 1938.

He continued his education at UCLA, where he became the university’s first student to win varsity letters in four sports. In 1941, despite his athletic success, Robinson was forced to leave UCLA just shy of graduation due to financial hardship.

After moving to Honolulu, Robinson he played football for the semi-professional Honolulu Bears. His season with the Bears was cut short when the United States entered into World War II.

From 1942 to 1944, Robinson served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. However, he never saw combat.

During boot camp at Fort Hood, Texas, Robinson was arrested and court-martialed in 1944 for refusing to give up his seat and move to the back of a segregated bus. Robinson’s excellent reputation—combined with the efforts of friends, the NAACP, and various Black newspapers—shed public light on the injustice.

Ultimately, he was acquitted of the charges and received an honorable discharge. His courage and moral objection to racial segregation were precursors to the impact Robinson would have in Major League Baseball.

After his discharge from the Army in 1944, Robinson began to play baseball professionally. At the time, the sport was segregated, with Black and white people playing in separate leagues.

Robinson began his pro career in the Negro Leagues with the Kansas City Monarchs, but he was soon chosen by Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey to integrate Major League Baseball. He joined the all-white Montreal Royals, a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1946. Robinson later moved to Florida to begin spring training with the Royals.

Rickey knew there would be difficult times ahead for the young athlete, so he made Robinson promise to not fight back when confronted with racism. Rickey also personally tested Robinson’s reactions to the racial slurs and insults he knew the player would endure.

Robinson played his first game at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, making history as the first Black athlete to play MLB.

From the beginning of his career with the Dodgers, Robinson’s will was tested. Some of his new teammates objected to having an African American on their team. People in the crowds sometimes jeered at Robinson, and he and his family received threats.

Despite the racial abuse, particularly at away games, Robinson had an outstanding start with the Royals, leading the International League with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage.

His successful year in the minors led to his promotion to the Dodgers. The harassment continued in the majors, however, most notably from the Philadelphia Phillies and their manager Ben Chapman. During one infamous game, Chapman and his team shouted derogatory terms at Robinson from their dugout.

Many players on opposing teams threatened not to play against the Dodgers. Even some of Robinson’s own teammates threatened to sit out. But Dodgers manager Leo Durocher informed them that he would sooner trade them than Robinson. His loyalty to the player set the tone for the rest of Robinson’s career with the team.

Others defended Robinson’s right to play in the major leagues, including National League President Ford Frick, Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler, Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg, as well as Dodgers shortstop and team captain Pee Wee Reese. In one incident, while fans harassed Robinson from the stands, Reese walked over and put his arm around his teammate, a gesture that has become legendary in baseball history.

Robinson succeeded in putting the prejudice and racial strife aside and showed everyone what a talented player he was. Although he predominantly played second base, Robinson was versatile enough to be positioned all over the infield. In his first year, he batted .297 with 12 home runs and helped the Dodgers win the National League pennant.

That year, Robinson led the National League in stolen bases and was selected as Rookie of the Year. He continued to wow fans and critics alike with impressive feats, such as an outstanding .342 batting average during the 1949 season. He led in stolen bases that year and earned the National League’s MVP Award.

Robinson soon became a hero of the sport, even among former critics, and was the subject of the popular song, “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” His success in the major leagues opened the door for other Black players, such as Satchel Paige , Willie Mays , and Hank Aaron .

An exceptional base runner, Robinson stole home 19 times in his career, setting a league record. Before he retired, he also became the highest-paid athlete in Dodgers history.

Over the course of his MLB career, from 1947 to 1956, Robinson had a .311 average over 4,877 at-bats and recorded the following stats:

• 137 home runs

• 1,518 hits

• 734 runs batted in

• 197 stolen bases

• .409 on-base percentage

• .883 on-base plus slugging

Robinson’s wins above replacement value, or WAR, was later calculated to be 63.8, according to Baseball Reference. This means, just with Robinson in their lineup, the Dodgers won almost 64 more games than they would have with a replacement-level player instead.

Other notable honors include being named Rookie of the Year in 1947 and National League MVP in 1949, as well as becoming a World Series champion in 1955.

In his decade-long career with the Dodgers, Robinson and his team won the National League pennant several times. Finally, in 1955, he helped them achieve the ultimate victory: winning the World Series. After failing before in four other series matchups, the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in seven games. Robinson helped the team win one more National League pennant the following season.

In December 1956, Robinson was traded to the New York Giants, but he never played a game for the team. He retired on January 5, 1957. Five years later, in 1962, Robinson became the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

After baseball, Robinson became active in business and continued his work as an activist. He worked as an executive for the Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee company and restaurant chain and helped establish Black-owned Freedom Bank.

In the early 1940s, Robinson met nurse-in-training Rachel Isum when they were both attending UCLA. The couple married on February 10, 1946.

As Robinson forged his career in the major leagues, the couple faced mounting racism, from insults to death threats. Later in life, both Jackie and Rachel became actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackie and Rachel had three children together: Jack Robinson Jr., Sharon, and David. Rachel said that she and Jackie went to great lengths to create a nurturing home that sheltered their kids from racism.

In 1971, the couple mourned the death of their oldest child, Jack, who was in a car accident. According to The New York Times , the 24-year-old was reportedly driving at high speed toward his parents’ home when he crashed into a fence and then an abutment on the parkway.

Jack had been the assistant regional director of Daytop Inc., a rehabilitation center he previously attended for two years after becoming addicted to drugs following his Vietnam War service. He suffered shrapnel injuries in combat while trying to rescue a friend that later died.

Robinson was a vocal champion for Black athletes, civil rights, and other social and political causes, serving on the board of the NAACP until 1967. In July 1949, he testified about discrimination before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In 1952, he publicly called out the New York Yankees as a racist organization for not having broken the color barrier five years after he began playing with the Dodgers. In his later years, Robinson continued to lobby for greater racial integration in sports.

Robinson was close friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and attended the March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Robinson and his wife, Rachel, also organized a jazz concert at their home to raise bail money for King and other activists arrested during protests.

Robinson collapsed in his Stamford, Connecticut, home from a heart attack in the early morning of October 24, 1972, and died shortly after. He was 53 years old.

Although the heart attack was ruled the immediate cause of death, Robinson had also suffered from type 2 diabetes complications for years. This heart attack was his third in a span of four years, and he had needed cardiology care for congestive heart failure.

Robinson also lost sight in one eye and was growing blind in the other. His blood pressure was abnormally high for years, and he suffered pain and burning sensations in his legs from diabetic nerve and artery damage.

Robinson’s funeral was held at the Riverside Church in New York City on October 27, 1972. Author Kostya Kennedy wrote about the service in his 2022 book True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson . Although the church’s official capacity was only 2,500 people, thousands more either squeezed into its doors or gathered along nearby streets to honor the baseball hero.

Among the pallbearers carrying Robinson’s casket were NBA legend Bill Russell , as well as teammates and peers like Pee Wee Reese, Larry Doby, and Ralph Branca. Other sports greats such as boxer Joe Louis and MLB stars Hank Greenberg, Hank Aaron , Ernie Banks, and Willie Stargell attended.

Reverend Jesse Jackson gave Robinson’s formal eulogy. “[Robinson] didn’t integrate baseball for himself,” Jackson said. “He infiltrated baseball for all of us, seeking and looking for more oxygen for Black survival, and looking for new possibility.”

Robinson was buried next to his son Jackie Jr. at Cypress Hills Cemetery, six miles from the site of his former home ballpark Ebbets Field.

Since his death, Robinson’s life has been memorialized in many ways. A New York City park in Harlem bears his name , Nike released released a shoe celebrating him called the Nike Dunk Low, and his jersey has been retired throughout the MLB. He also has a dedicated museum and an annual MLB honorary event, Jackie Robinson Day.

Jersey Retirement

The Dodgers were the first to retire Robinson’s jersey number of 42. They did so in 1972, the same year he died.

Decades later on the 50 th anniversary of Robinson’s historic debut—April 15, 1997—MLB executive Bud Selig retired No. 42 from the major leagues entirely. Hall of Fame New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera was the last player to wear the number full-time, as players who had it at the time of Selig’s decree were allowed to keep it until retirement.

Jackie Robinson Museum and Foundation

After Robinson’s death in 1972, his wife, Rachel, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation dedicated to honoring his life and work. The foundation helps young people in need by providing scholarships and mentoring programs.

In September 2022, the foundation debuted the Jackie Robinson Museum located in New York City. The museum possesses 4,500 artifacts from Robinson’s life and career, including many directly from the Robinson family. A few items displayed are his original plaque from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, trophies from throughout his career, vintage scorecards, ticket stubs, trading cards, and jerseys.

Jackie Robinson Day

In 2004, MLB began celebrating Jackie Robinson Day on April 15 to honor the legendary player’s accomplishments on the anniversary of when he broke baseball’s color barrier. Pre-game festivities were held to commemorate Robinson, with scholars from the Jackie Robinson Foundation throwing out the first pitch at every game.

Since 2009, all uniformed MLB personnel have worn 42 on Jackie Robinson Day as a tribute. On the 75 th anniversary of Robinson’s first game in 2022, all players, coaches, and umpires wore the number in famed Dodger blue.

In 1950, Robinson starred in The Jackie Robinson Story , a biographical movie directed by Alfred E. Green and co-starring Ruby Dee as Robinson’s wife.

Robinson’s book I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson initially published in October 1972 and delves into his life, baseball career, activism, and troubled relationship with his son Jack Jr. Numerous other books about Robinson’s career and effect on baseball have been written.

Robinson’s life was the subject of the acclaimed 2013 Brian Helgeland movie 42 , which starred Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey . The film helped turn Boseman into a bona fide Hollywood star.

In 2016, filmmaker Ken Burns premiered a documentary about the baseball legend on PBS simply titled Jackie Robinson .

• There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.
• The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.
• A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
• Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.
• Not being able to fight back is a form of severe punishment.
• A Black man, even after he has proven himself on and off the playing field, will still be denied his rights.
• I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest Black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.
• I had learned that I was in two wars: one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.
• I want to thank all of the people throughout this country who were just so wonderful during those trying days.
• I like friends just as much as other people. But if it comes down to the question of having a choice between the friendship of some of these writers and their respect, I’ll take their respect.
• I’m going to be tremendously pleased and more proud when I look at the third base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball.
• Black America has asked so little, but if you can’t see the anger that comes from rejection, you are treading a dangerous course.
• If I had to choose tomorrow between the Baseball Hall of Fame and full citizenship for my people, I would choose full citizenship time and again.
• The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.
• Above anything else, I hate to lose.
• I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

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Jackie Robinson

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Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson

Jackie Robinson's pioneering legacy still resonates throughout the game of baseball today.

About Jackie Robinson

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives,” Jackie Robinson once said.

The impact Robinson made on Major League Baseball is one that will be forever remembered. On April 15 each season, every team in the majors celebrates Jackie Robinson Day in honor of when he broke the color barrier in baseball, becoming the first African-American player in the 20th century to take the field in the American or National league. He opened the door for many others and will forever be honored for his contribution to the game.

Robinson stood up for equal rights even before he did so in baseball. He was arrested and court martialed during while he was serving in the Army for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus. He was eventually acquitted of the charges and received an honorable discharge. He then started his professional baseball career.

Originally a shortstop, Robinson played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues until Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey tabbed him as the player who would integrate the white major leagues. Rickey wanted Robinson not only for his talent and style of play, but also because of his demeanor. He knew Robinson would have to endure mental and physical abuse, and Rickey wanted him to handle it without fighting back. Robinson endured teammates and crowds who opposed his presence, and threats to himself and his family, with honor and grace.

Robinson joined the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers top farm team, in 1946 and led the International League with a .349 average and 40 stolen bases. He earned a promotion to the Dodgers and made his National League debut on April 15, 1947, as Brooklyn's first baseman.

“It was the most eagerly anticipated debut in the annals of the National Pastime,” authors Robert Lipsyte and Pete Levine wrote. “It represented both the dream and the fear of equal opportunity, and it would change forever the complexion of the game and the attitudes of Americans.”

At the end of his first season, Robinson was named the winner of the inaugural Baseball Writers' Association of America's Rookie of the Year Award. He was named the NL MVP just two years later in 1949, when he led the league in hitting with a .342 average and steals with 37, while also notching a career-high 124 RBI. The Dodgers won six pennants in Robinson’s 10 seasons and captured the 1955 World Series title.

Robinson retired with a .313 batting average, 972 runs scored, 1,563 hits and 200 stolen bases. He remained active in the game as an announcer, and also lent his support to many societal causes.

“Jackie Robinson made my success possible,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.”

Robinson was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962. He passed away on Oct. 24, 1972.

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Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson is perhaps the most historically significant baseball player ever, ranking with Babe Ruth in terms of his impact on the national pastime. Ruth changed the way baseball was played; Jackie Robinson changed the way Americans thought. When Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 , more than 60 years of racial segregation in major-league baseball came to an end. He was the first acknowledged black player to perform in the major leagues in the twentieth century and went on to be the first to win a batting title, the first to win the Most Valuable Player award, and the first to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He won major-league baseball’s first official Rookie of the Year award and was the first baseball player, black or white, to be featured on a United States postage stamp.

The raw statistics only scratch the surface in evaluating Jackie Robinson as a ballplayer. Because of institutionalized racism and World War II, he did not play his first big-league game until he was 28 years old, and therefore his major-league career spanned only 10 seasons. His lifetime batting average was a solid .311, but because of the brevity of his career, his cumulative statistics are relatively unimpressive by Hall of Fame standards.

But in what would be considered his prime years, ages 28 to 34, Robinson hit .319 and averaged more than 110 runs scored per season. He drove in an average of 85 runs, and his average of nearly 15 home runs per season was outstanding for a middle infielder of that era. And he averaged 24 stolen bases a season for a power-laden team that didn’t need him to run very often.

Colorfully described as a tiger in the field and a lion at bat, the right-handed-hitting Robinson crowded the plate and dared opposing hurlers to dust him off — a challenge they frequently accepted. He was an excellent bunter, good at the sacrifice and always a threat to lay one down for a hit. Not known as a home-run hitter, he displayed line-drive power to all fields, had a good eye for the strike zone, and rarely struck out. For his entire big-league career, he drew 740 walks and struck out only 291 times — an extremely impressive ratio.

Second base was Robinson’s best position. In a 1987 “Player’s Choice” survey, he was voted the greatest second baseman of his era despite having played there regularly for only five seasons. Though not a smooth glove man in the classic sense, he was sure-handed and possessed good range and instincts. He made up for an average arm by standing his ground on double plays and getting rid of the ball quickly. Robinson also displayed his versatility by playing regularly at first base, at third base, and in left field when the needs of the team dictated it.

It was running the bases, however, where Robinson’s star shined brightest. He was a dynamo on the basepaths — fast, clever, daring, and rough. He was the most dangerous base runner since Ty Cobb , embarrassing and intimidating the opposition into beating themselves with mental and physical errors. Former teammate and big-league manager Bobby Bragan , who initially objected to Jackie’s presence on the Dodgers, called him the best he ever saw at getting called safe after being caught in rundown situations. He created havoc by taking impossibly long leads, jockeying back and forth, and threatening to steal on every pitch. His mere presence on base was enough to upset the most steely-nerved veteran hurlers. 

Robinson revived the art of stealing home, successfully making it 19 times in his career — tied with Frankie Frisch for the most since World War I. At the age of 35 in 1954, he became the first National Leaguer to steal his way around the bases in 26 years, and a year later he became one of only 12 men to steal home in the World Series.

Throughout his career, Jackie Robinson was a fearless competitor. As Leo Durocher , first his manager and later an archrival, so elegantly phrased it, “You want a guy that comes to play. But (Robinson) didn’t just come to play. He came to beat you. He came to stuff the damn bat right up your ass.” 1

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, a sleepy Southern town near the Florida border. Jackie was the youngest of five children, four boys and a girl, born to impoverished sharecroppers Jerry and Mallie Robinson. Jerry Robinson deserted the family six months after Jackie was born. Mallie Robinson, a strong, devoutly religious woman, moved the struggling family across the country by rail to Pasadena, California, in 1920 when Jackie was 14 months old. She worked as a domestic to support her family; leftovers from the kitchens of families she worked for often constituted their daily diet.

With the help of a welfare agency, the Robinson family purchased a home in a predominantly white Pasadena neighborhood, where neighbors immediately petitioned to get rid of the newcomers and even offered to buy them out. When those ploys failed the family was harassed for several years. The Robinson boys often had to fight to defend themselves, and young Jackie was involved in his share of scrapes with white youths and had some run-ins with authorities.

Jackie’s athletic talent became evident at an early age. But he wasn’t the only gifted athlete in the family. His older brother Mack became a world-class track star, finishing second in the 200-yard dash to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. But after Olympic stardom and college, the only job Mack Robinson could find was janitorial work for the City of Pasadena. It was a position he soon lost. As in most of the country at that time, Jim Crow rules prevailed in Pasadena. Black citizens were permitted to use the city’s public swimming pool only one day a week. When a judge ordered full access to the pool for black citizens, the city fathers responded by firing black employees, including Mack Robinson.

After starring in baseball, football, basketball, and track at Muir Technical High School and Pasadena Junior College, Jackie declined many other offers to enroll at the University of California at Los Angeles, near his Pasadena home. Robinson gained national fame at UCLA in 1940 and 1941. He became the school’s first four-letter man and was called the “Jim Thorpe of his race” for his multisport skills. 2 Sharing rushing duties with Kenny Washington, who later became one of the first black men to play in the National Football League, Jackie averaged 11-plus yards per carry as a junior. Sports Weekly called him “the greatest ball carrier on the gridiron today.” 3 On the basketball court Jackie led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring as a junior and as a senior.

Although he wasn’t named to the first, second, or third all-conference teams, one coach called him “the best basketball player in the United States.” 4 Already the holder of the national junior college long-jump record, he captured the NCAA long-jump title and probably would have gone to the 1940 Olympics had they not been canceled by the war in Europe. In addition, he won swimming championships, reached the semifinals of the national Negro tennis tournament, and was the UCLA Bruins’ regular shortstop. Baseball was probably Robinson’s weakest sport at the university, although he’d been voted the most valuable player in Southern California junior college baseball.

Financial problems at home forced Robinson to drop out of college in his senior year a few credits short of graduation. He took a job as an athletic coach for the National Youth Administration and played semipro football for the Los Angeles Bulldogs. In the fall of 1941, he signed on to play professional football with the Honolulu Bears. Already a gate attraction and a hero in the black community, he got top billing as “the sensational all-American halfback.”

Upon returning home from Hawaii shortly after Pearl Harbor, Robinson was drafted into the Army in 1942. Stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, he was originally denied entry into Officer Candidate School despite his college background. Intervention by a fellow soldier, boxing great Joe Louis, who was also stationed at the base, managed to get the decision reversed. Yet, Jackie was not allowed to play on the segregated camp baseball team, which infuriated him so much that he refused to play on the football team even when superior officers pressured him to do so. After OCS, Robinson was appointed morale officer for the black troops at Fort Riley and won concessions for them that predictably angered a few higher-ups in command.

Reassigned to Ford Hood, Texas, Jackie continued to be controversial. On July 6, 1944 he defied a white bus driver’s orders to move to the back of the bus “where the coloreds belonged.” When the base provost marshal and military police supported the driver, Robinson objected vehemently and was subject to court-martial. Facing a dishonorable discharge, Jackie prevailed at the hearing. But the Army had had enough of the controversial young black lieutenant and quickly mustered him out with an honorable discharge.

It’s ironic that Jackie Robinson’s difficulties with white authority in the military led directly to his rise to the top of Branch Rickey ‘s list of candidates to break baseball’s color barrier. Rickey, the orchestrator of Organized Baseball’s desegregation, was the president, general manager, and a part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey’s scouts had been surreptitiously scouring the Negro Leagues for major-league talent for some time before tapping Robinson to break the unwritten, and diligently enforced, gentlemen’s agreement that banned blacks from participating in Organized Baseball. 

Rickey was looking for a black pioneer who — in addition to possessing the requisite talent — was educated, sober, and accustomed to competing with and against white athletes. Robinson met those conditions. He grew up in a racially mixed environment, attended school with white classmates, and matriculated at UCLA. He’d been an officer in the military. He was well-spoken, personable, and comfortable in front of crowds. He had experienced the glare of the spotlight and reveled in it. Also extremely important to the pious Rickey was the fact that Robinson was a nonsmoker and nondrinker. Nor was he a womanizer; he was planning to marry his college sweetheart, Rachel Annetta Isum . In addition, Jackie was a Methodist, as was Rickey, and he coincidentally shared a birthday with Branch Rickey Jr. Jackie and Rachel were married in Los Angeles on February 10, 1946.

Certainly there were other black ballplayers who possessed the qualifications Rickey sought. Monte Irvin and Larry Doby were two obvious candidates. But when Rickey sent his scouts to scour the nation for the best black player, Irvin and Doby were overseas, still in the armed forces. Robinson, though he was far from being considered the best player in Negro baseball, was available due to the early termination of his own military obligation.

After his discharge, Robinson had joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League for the 1945 season. The Monarchs, one of the most successful franchises in the Negro Leagues, had been ravaged by the manpower demands of the war, but their roster still included veteran stars Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe , Hilton Smith , and Satchel Paige . Flashy-fielding veteran Jesse Williams moved over to second base to make room for Jackie at shortstop. Though Robinson hit well over .300 and showed speed and power as a rookie, he disliked the nomadic and often boisterous barnstorming life and was incensed by the Jim Crow laws that the Monarchs often encountered on the road.

On October 23, 1945, it was announced to the world that Robinson had signed a contract to play baseball for the Montreal Royals of the International League, the top minor-league team in the Dodgers organization. Robinson had actually signed a few months earlier. In that now-legendary meeting, Rickey extracted a promise that Jackie would hold his sharp tongue and quick fists in exchange for the opportunity to break Organized Baseball’s color barrier.

The integration movement in general had picked up steam during World War II as black American soldiers fought and died beside whites. In fact, the decade leading up to Robinson’s signing had been marked by significant progress in efforts to gain equal rights for minorities in all facets of life. Yet the moguls running major-league baseball stubbornly resisted efforts to integrate the sport, refusing to consider black players even as the talent pool was depleted by the war and one-armed and one-legged players could be found among the old-timers, teenagers, and 4-Fs gracing big-league rosters. 

But in November 1944, longtime Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis , who was generally thought to be against integration, died of a heart attack. Landis’s passing was the break Branch Rickey needed to begin implementing his plan to integrate the Dodgers.

When Robinson’s signing was announced, the news was heralded in black newspapers and generally received positive reviews in national publications despite objections and attacks from predictable quarters. But Rickey and the Dodgers faced near-unanimous disapproval from the Organized Baseball establishment. After the initial furor died down, a campaign to downplay Robinson’s talent and the import of the event began. The New York Daily News rated Robinson’s chances of making the grade as 1,000 to 1. An editorial in The Sporting News deemed Robinson a player of Class C ability and predicted, “The waters of competition in the International League will flood far over his head.” 5 Star pitcher Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians said that Robinson had “football shoulders and couldn’t hit an inside pitch to save his neck.” 6

Muscularly built with a thick neck and wide shoulders, Robinson did look more like a halfback than an infielder. He suffered from rickets as a child and walked with a pigeon-toed gait, but on the diamond he moved with amazing quickness. He stood 5-feet-11 and weighed 190 to 195 pounds in his prime, although he thickened noticeably in the latter stages of his career. In the decades prior to Robinson’s entry into Organized Baseball, there were several major leaguers whose skin tone caused doubts about their racial background. There could be no doubt about ebony-skinned Jackie Robinson. Columnist John Crosby called him “the blackest black man, as well as one of the handsomest, I ever saw.” 7

Plagued by a sore arm during the Royals’ 1946 spring training camp, Jackie performed poorly, generating numerous “I told you so” claims. But when Montreal opened the season on April 18, 1946, against the Jersey City Giants at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, Robinson was playing second base and hitting second in the batting order.

The first twentieth-century appearance by an acknowledged black player in Organized Baseball was a preview of things to come. In front of a packed house, Jackie lashed out four hits and scored four times to lead Montreal to a 14–1 victory. After grounding out in his first at-bat, he blasted a three-run homer over the left-field wall in the third inning. In the fifth inning he bunted for a hit, stole second, and made a daring play to take third on a grounder to the third baseman. From third base he danced far off the bag, darting back and forth and bluffing a steal until the harried pitcher balked him home. Two innings later, he singled sharply to right field and stole second base again before scoring on a triple. In the eighth Jackie again bunted safely. He once again took an extra base, advancing from first to third on an infield single, and again scored by provoking a balk by the Jersey City hurler.

The next day, the headline in the Pittsburgh Courier read: “Jackie Stole the Show.” 8 According to Joe Bostic of New York City’s Amsterdam News , “He did everything but help the ushers seat the crowd.” 9

Baseball’s defense for keeping the game segregated hinged primarily on two points. The first was the contention that there just weren’t any black players good enough to merit a shot at the majors at the time. The second centered on financial concerns — the fear that white fans wouldn’t pay to watch Negro players and didn’t want to sit in the stands beside black fans. There was also much feigned concern about the financial impact on the established Negro Leagues. 

But Jackie Robinson’s first year in Organized Baseball emphatically dispelled those tired excuses. He was a sensation on the field, the Royals dominated the International League, and the turnstiles hummed. Thanks to Jackie, the Royals established a new attendance record in Montreal, and his impact on the road was even greater, as attendance at Royals games in other International League cities almost tripled over the previous year. More than a million people came to watch Robinson and the Royals perform that year, an amazing figure for the minor leagues at the time.

For the season Robinson led the International League with a .349 batting average and scored 113 runs in 124 games to pace the circuit in that department as well. His 40 stolen bases were the second highest total in the league and he led the league’s second basemen in fielding. Jackie led the Royals to the International League pennant, by a 19 1/2-game margin, and to victory in the Little World Series. After the Series, ecstatic fans wanted to hoist Jackie on their shoulders in celebration, but Jackie had a plane to catch. They chased him for three blocks, prompting a journalist to observe, “It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of hate on its mind.” 10

In preparation for the 1947 campaign the Brooklyn Dodgers and their top farm clubs set up spring training camp in Havana, Cuba . Based on his performance at Montreal it seemed a foregone conclusion that Robinson would get a chance with the parent team, but he was still listed on the Royals’ roster when the workouts started. Rickey chose Havana to avoid the racial attitudes of the spring training sites in the South. His plan was to allow the Dodgers’ veterans to gradually get used to having Jackie around and to see for themselves what an asset he would be to their pennant prospects. Three other black players, Roy Campanella , Don Newcombe , and Roy Partlow , were also on hand. Rickey scheduled a seven-game exhibition series between the Dodgers and the Royals to showcase Robinson’s skills, and Jackie dominated the contests with a .625 batting average.

One problem that Rickey and Robinson had to overcome was that the Dodgers had Eddie Stanky playing second base. Therefore it was determined that Robinson would make his major-league debut at first base, a strange position for a man who had always been involved in the action in the middle of the diamond. 

During training camp, a crisis arose when a core of Southerners on the team began to circulate a petition against Robinson. The dissenters were reportedly led by outfielder Dixie Walker , who initially dismissed the news of Robinson’s signing with the comment, “As long as he isn’t with the Dodgers, I’m not worried.” 11 Rickey and manager Leo Durocher promptly quashed the mini-rebellion. Shortly thereafter, Durocher, an avid Robinson supporter, received a one-year suspension from the commissioner’s office for associating with gamblers and other “unsavory” characters. Rickey deftly took advantage of the cover provided by the resulting clamor to quietly transfer Robinson to the Brooklyn roster.

Contrary to dire predictions, Robinson’s first season in the major leagues went fairly smoothly as the rookie steadfastly stuck by his promise to Rickey to turn the other cheek. Tension surrounding his first game was defused by a series of preseason exhibition contests against the Yankees in New York, and Jackie’s Opening Day debut against the Braves was actually somewhat anticlimactic. 

He received death threats when the club visited Cincinnati, but, in an oft-told but undocumented story, Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a native son of Kentucky, draped an arm over the shoulders of the nervous rookie infielder in a courageous public show of support. Later, a threatened strike by the St. Louis Cardinals was short-circuited by a show of force by league president Ford Frick .

Jackie’s worst experience came at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies. Led by manager Ben Chapman , the Phils baited Robinson so cruelly that he later admitted, “It brought me nearer to cracking up than I had ever been.” 12 But the Chapman episode actually served to strengthen support for Robinson and even converted some of his detractors. Stanky, who originally had opposed playing with Robinson, challenged the Phillies to pick on someone who could fight back. Public reaction against Chapman was so severe that he had to ask Robinson to pose for a photo with him to save his job. Jackie graciously complied.

For his rookie campaign, Robinson hit .297, led the league with 29 stolen bases, and finished second in the National League with 125 runs scored. In 151 games he lashed out 175 hits, including 12 home runs. Usually hitting second in the batting order, he walked 74 times and led the league in sacrifice hits. On defense, his 16 errors at first base were the second-highest total in the league, but his fielding was generally considered adequate. 

With Robinson the biggest addition to the lineup, the Dodgers captured the National League pennant. In the World Series, Jackie and his teammates lost to the powerful Yankees in a thrilling seven-game classic. The 1947 season was the first in which the full membership of the Baseball Writers Association of America selected a Rookie of the Year, and Robinson beat out 21-game winner Larry Jansen of the New York Giants for the award. In the National League Most Valuable Player voting, he finished fifth. At season’s end, Dixie Walker admitted that “(Robinson) is everything Branch Rickey said he was when he came up from Montreal.” 13

The integration of major-league baseball proceeded without critical incident. Though Robinson was scorned by some of his teammates, was harassed by enemy bench jockeys, and received a steady diet of fastballs close to his head; he faithfully abided by his promise to Rickey to turn the other cheek. Even when veteran outfielder Enos “Country” Slaughter of the Cardinals appeared to deliberately try to maim him with his spikes in an August 20 game at Ebbets Field , Jackie didn’t retaliate. 

In fact, baseball’s “Great Experiment” was a huge success. Despite the concerns of the owners, integration proved to be a financial windfall for major-league baseball. Robinson and the Dodgers eclipsed the home attendance record they had set the previous year. They also broke single-game attendance records in every National League ballpark they played in during the 1947 season, with the exception of Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, where the attendance record for the first major-league night game held up. Near the end of the season, Jackie was feted by fans with a day in his honor. At year’s end, he finished runner-up to crooner Bing Crosby in a national popularity poll. 

Before the 1948 season, Eddie Stanky was swapped to the Boston Braves to open up the Dodgers’ second-base slot for Robinson. Jackie reported to camp out of shape and got off to a poor start. He was shifted back to first base for 30 games while utilityman Eddie Miksis manned second for the Dodgers. Eventually, Gil Hodges emerged as the club’s regular first baseman, and Robinson returned to second. He finished strong at the plate, ending the year with a .296 batting mark and leading the league’s regular second basemen in fielding percentage. Spending more time in the power spots in the batting order, he drove in 85 runs, tops on the disappointing third-place squad. 

In 1949, Robinson enjoyed the best season of his career, establishing career highs in games played, hits, batting average, slugging, runs batted in, and stolen bases as the Dodgers captured the National League pennant by a single game. He won the batting title with a .342 mark and his major-league-leading 37 steals were the highest total in the National League in 19 years. He finished second in the league in runs batted in (124), hits (203), and on-base percentage (.432), and third in slugging average (.528), runs scored (122), doubles (38), and triples (12). His efforts were rewarded with his selection as the National League Most Valuable Player. 

Robinson enjoyed two more superb seasons in 1950 and 1951, batting .328 and .338 and finishing second and third respectively in the batting race. Both years the Dodgers lost the pennant on the last day of the season, although Jackie’s heroics kept them in the hunt until the bitter end. In 1951, his spectacular play forced the playoff with the Giants that would be decided by Bobby Thomson ‘s momentous home run . In the final regular-season contest against the Phillies, Robinson prevented the winning run from scoring in the ninth inning with a sensational diving catch, and blasted a game-winning homer in the 14th inning. 

The Dodgers returned to the top of the National League standings in 1952 as Robinson hit .308, scored 104 runs, stole 24 bases, and belted 19 homers. During the 1953 season, Jackie Robinson may have had his finest moment. He had worked hard to develop into a fine defensive second baseman. In 1951 he led National League second sackers in fielding and double plays, and had repeated as the double-play leader in 1952. But the Dodgers had a young black second baseman in their system, Jim Gilliam , who was ready for the big time. 

Jackie graciously agreed to move to another position to make room for the rookie. The 34 -year-old veteran played 76 games in the outfield, and appeared 44 times at third base, nine times at second, and six times at first base during the 1953 campaign. He even filled in at shortstop in one game, the only time he played his original position as a major leaguer. He hit .329, drove in 95 runs, and scored 109 times. Gilliam expertly filled the Dodgers’ leadoff spot and was selected the National League Rookie of the Year.

The 1954 campaign was Robinson’s last good season. Again shuttling between left field and third base, he batted .311, but age and accumulated injuries were starting to catch up with him. He stole only seven bases and missed 30 games.

In 1955, the year the Brooklyn Dodgers captured their first world championship , Robinson had the worst season statistically of his outstanding career. Sharing third base with light-hitting Don Hoak , he appeared in the field in fewer than 100 games and batted only .256. In the Dodgers’ epic World Series victory, Robinson was at third base for six of the seven contests and though he hit poorly, he scored five times, including his shocking Game One steal of home.

Jackie rallied to hit .275 in 1956, his final season, while sharing third base with newly acquired Randy Jackson and occasionally filling in at second. Though a mere shadow of his former self, the 37-year-old veteran was still a force at the plate and on the basepaths. In the Dodgers’ seven-game World Series loss to the Yankees, Jackie drew five walks, scored five times, and blasted a home run. He struck out in his last professional at-bat, but fittingly he went down fighting. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra had to throw him out at first base after dropping the third strike. 

Jackie’s last years with the Dodgers had not been harmonious. He disliked both manager Walt Alston and owner Walter O’Malley , whose power play forced Branch Rickey out of the Brooklyn front office in 1950. Though the Dodgers had captured the 1956 pennant, the once dominating nucleus was growing old. Robinson himself was no longer a top performer on the field and had become increasingly outspoken on racial issues both inside and outside of baseball. The Dodgers brass was hoping he’d step down gracefully, but Jackie refused to announce his retirement. Finally the club forced his hand by swapping him to the New York Giants on December 13, 1956, for journeyman hurler Dick Littlefield and $30,000 in cash.

On January 22, 1957 Robinson’s retirement from baseball was announced in an exclusive article in Look magazine, in which he took a few parting shots at the remaining segregated teams in the majors. Jackie had actually decided to retire before he was dealt to the Giants, but couldn’t say anything earlier because of his deal with Look . The Giants reportedly offered him $60,000 to stay, and the prospect of playing alongside Willie Mays definitely had some appeal. But when Brooklyn general manager Buzzy Bavasi publicly implied that Robinson was just trying to use the magazine article to get a better contract, he decided to prove the Dodgers wrong and declined the Giants’ offer. 

Though Robinson’s career as a major-league baseball player was over, he wasn’t about to retire from the spotlight. He joined the Chock Full o’Nuts coffee company as a vice president and served as the chairman of the Board of Freedom National Bank, founded to provide loans and banking services for minority members who were largely being ignored by establishment banks. He authored several autobiographical works, wrote a weekly newspaper column, and hosted a radio show. Earlier he even tried his hand at acting, starring in the movie The Jackie Robinson Story .

Robinson remained an unofficial spokesman for African Americans and a relentless crusader for civil rights. He became embroiled in politics. Though a strong supporter of Martin Luther King and the NAACP, he endorsed Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 because he felt Kennedy had not made it “his business to know colored people.” Reportedly it was an action that he later came to regret.

In 1962 Robinson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was inducted along with former Cleveland pitching great Bob Feller, who had once predicted that Jackie’s “football shoulders” would keep him from hitting big-league pitching. A few years after his retirement from baseball, Robinson acknowledged that he suffered from diabetes. His health declined under the ravages of the disease and at the age of 53 he suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. He died on October 24, 1972, only months after his number 42 was officially retired by the Dodgers. 

Although he always denied it, there’s evidence that Robinson may have been the first insulin-dependent diabetic to play major-league baseball, despite his claim that it hadn’t been diagnosed while he was an active player. But former tennis great Bill Talbert, a close friend of Robinson’s and the first famous athlete known to perform with diabetes, believed that Jackie became insulin-dependent in midcareer.  “I think Jackie felt it was a weakness. With all the publicity about blacks in baseball, he didn’t want another thing to talk about,” Talbert said after Robinson’s death. 14

More than two thousand people packed Riverside Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to hear the young Rev. Jesse Jackson deliver Jackie Robinson’s eulogy. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant to watch the passage of his mile-long funeral procession. Robinson is buried in Cyprus Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn, along with his mother-in-law Zellee Isum and his son Jack Roosevelt, Jr. He was survived by his wife Rachel, son David and daughter Sharon.

Shortly after his death Robinson’s ordeals and accomplishments were the subject of a Broadway musical, The First . In 1987, on the 40th anniversary of his breaking of color barrier, the Rookie of the Year Award was redesignated as the Jackie Robinson Award in honor of its first recipient. On the 50th anniversary of his debut, his number 42 was permanently retired by all major-league teams, although current major leaguers already wearing the number were allowed to keep it for the remainder of their careers.

Among the adjectives often used to describe Robinson’s personal makeup are fearless, courageous, dynamic, defiant, and proud. But the most frequently used descriptor is probably aggressive. It’s a word that defines his public life as a tireless campaigner against discrimination as well as his history making athletic career. Jackie, who was not known for self-deprecation, made the greatest understatement of his life in 1945 at the announcement of his signing. “Maybe I’m doing something for my race,” he ventured. 15

Former teammate Joe Black , speaking for generations of black ballplayers, later said, “When I look at my house. I say ‘Thank God for Jackie Robinson.’” 16

This biography is an adaptation from “The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues” by Rick Swaine (McFarland, 2006). It also appears in SABR’s “The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Lyle Spatz.

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Frommer, Harvey. Rickey & Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier (New York: Macmillan, 1982).

Marshall, William. Baseball’s Pivotal Era 1945-51 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999).

Moffi, Larry, and Jonathan Kronstadt. Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers 1947-1959 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1994).

Polner, Murray. Branch Rickey: A Biography (New York: Atheneum, 1982).

Rosenthal, Harold. The 10 Best Years of Baseball: An Informal History of the Fifties (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1979).

Shatzkin, Mike, and Jim Charlton. The Ballplayers: Baseball’s Ultimate Biographical Reference (New York: Arbor House, William Morrow, 1990).

Tygiel, Jules. Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, & Baseball History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

_____. The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives of an American Hero (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

Wilber, Cynthia J. For the Love of the Game: Baseball Memories From the Men Who Were There (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992).

Ardolino, Frank, “Jackie Robinson and the 1941 Honolulu Bears,” The National Pastime , SABR, 1995.

Jacobs, Bruce, Baseball Stars of 1953 (New York: Timely Comics, 1953).

Kirk, Al and Robert Bradley. “Jackie Robinson and the L.A. Red Devils.” http://www.apbr.org/reddevils.html

1 Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer , p. 358.

2 Vincent X. Flaherty – Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks per Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 60.

3 Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks, 60

4 Unattributed – Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks, 60.

5 The Sporting News , November 1, 1945.

6 Pittsburgh Courier , November 3, 1945.

7 John Crosby, Syracuse Herald , November 12, 1972.

8 Pittsburgh Courier , April 27, 1946.

9 Joe Bostic, Amsterdam News , April 27, 1946.

10 Sam Maltin, Pittsburgh Courier , October 12, 1946.

11 Brooklyn Eagle , October 24, 1945.

12 Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 64.

13 Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), 165.

14 Arnold Schechter, Sports Illustrated , April 22, 1985.

15 The Sporting News , November 1, 1945.

16 New York Daily News , July 20, 1972.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson

January 31, 1919 at Cairo, GA (USA)

October 24, 1972 at Stamford, CT (USA)

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Batting Champions · Hall of Fame · Most Valuable Player · Rookie of the Year · 1940s All-Stars · 1950s All-Stars · Famous Outside Baseball · Integration Pioneers · Negro Leaguers · 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers

Biographical information from the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database appears courtesy of Agate Type Research LLC.

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About jackie robinson.

Early Life and Gateway into Sports

Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of former slaves. Young Jackie grew up in Pasadena, California, raised by a single working mother of five. After graduating from Pasadena Junior College, Jackie attended the University of California Los Angeles. A star athlete, Jackie became the university's first four-sport letter winner, excelling in football, basketball, track and field, and baseball. After leaving UCLA, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, but was court marshalled and honorably discharged for standing up for his rights and refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus. In 1944, upon returning home from the military, Jackie Robinson set his sights on joining baseball's Negro Leagues and began playing shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1945, opportunity beckoned when Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, invited Robinson to become the first African American to play with the all-white Dodgers' farm team, the Montreal Royals. Anticipating the great adversity that Robinson would face as he integrated modern baseball, Rickey professed he needed a player who could bear the torment, famously telling Robinson he was "looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."

An Unprecedented Career in the Major League

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field for his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the beginning of an unparalleled career in baseball. At the end of his explosive nine years as a Dodger, his record included a .311 batting average, 137 home runs, 734 runs batted in, and 197 stolen bases. In 1955, he helped the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win their first World Series Championship. Robinson took home the Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, the Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, and in 1962 became the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Fight for First Class Citizenship for All

After integrating baseball, Robinson became a full-fledged leader in the Civil Rights movement. He used his celebrity status to further human rights and endeavored to change the landscape of race relations in the United States. Upon retiring from the game in 1957, Robinson was hired to serve as the Vice President for Personnel at Chock Full O’Nuts, the first African American to be named a Vice President of a major American company. He used his position at Chock Full O’ Nuts to improve working conditions for employees. An active member of the NAACP, Robinson was often a featured speaker at civil rights rallies including the famed March on Washington in 1963, and frequently participated in picket lines. As a nationally syndicated columnist for the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News, Robinson wrote passionately on social issues, sports, and family life, always encouraging people in his community to become active in politics and business. In 1964, Robinson co-founded Freedom National Bank of Harlem, a Black owned and operated bank created for the express purpose of financially aiding African American communities. In 1970, he founded the Jackie Robinson Construction Company, which sought to provide housing for low-income people. In 1972, just twenty-five years after the start of the “Great Experiment,” Jackie Robinson died following his decade long battle with diabetes.

“...Impact on Other Lives”

Following Robinson’s death, Rachel Robinson became President of the Jackie Robinson Construction Corporation and renamed the company the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation. The company, responsible for building 1,600 units, specialized in building low-to-moderate income housing.

In 1973, with the assistance of Martin L. Edelman, Charles Williams and Franklin H. Williams, Mrs. Robinson honored her husband's memory by establishing The Jackie Robinson Foundation (JRF). As Robinson’s living legacy, JRF provides four-year scholarships and a host of support services, including career guidance, internship placement, and leadership development opportunities to talented college students with limited financial resources. To date, 1,700 college scholars from 45 states who have attended 260 colleges and universities have benefitted from JRF’s Scholars Program. Jackie Robinson’s achievements have been honored by three Presidents: On March 26, 1984, President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom; during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's historic entry into baseball, President William J. Clinton led a ceremony with Major League Baseball to honor his number "42" in perpetuity; and on October 10, 2003, the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian award bestowed by Congress, was awarded posthumously to Jackie Robinson. President George W. Bush and the leadership of the United States Congress presented the award to Rachel Robinson during a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda on March 2, 2005.

Baseball Career Stats

1947 - rookie of the year award.

Jackie Robinson won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award during the trailblazing 1947 season in which he batted .297, scored 125 runs, hit 12 home runs and 31 doubles and led the league with 29 stolen bases while helping the Brooklyn Dodgers to the World Series. The Rookie of the Year Award was originally known as the J. Louis Comiskey Award and was a single award for the Major Leagues. In 1949, the award was expanded to include both the American League Rookie of the Year and the National League Rookie of the Year. In 1987, the award was renamed the Jackie Robinson Award.

1949 – Most Valuable Player Award

Robinson garnered 264 of 336 points from the Baseball Writer’s Association and was named the 1949 National League’s Most Valuable Player. A dominant figure on the field that year, he played all 156 games, and was the National League’s batting and base stealing champion; was second in hits (203) runs batted in (124), doubles (38), triples (12); and third in runs scored (122). He would lead the Dodgers to the World Series where they lost to the Yankees in five games.

1955 - World Series Champion

Jackie Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to six World Series, with the team eventually winning the championship in 1955 against their cross-town rivals, the New York Yankees. Appearing in six games, Robinson went 4-for-22 with one double, one triple, one RBI, two walks and famously stole home base during game one of the series.

1962 - Hall of Fame Induction

Five years after retiring from baseball Robinson was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He and his co-inductee Bob Feller were the first, first-ballot electees by the Baseball Writer’s Association since the inaugural class in 1936. Among his many accomplishments were his .311 batting average, 197 stolen bases, scoring more than 100 runs a year, six times and his six All Star game appearances.

1997 – Number “42” Retired

On April 15, 1997, to mark the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s barrier breaking feat, MLB Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Jr. joined by Rachel Robinson and President Bill Clinton, announced the retirement of Robinson’s number “42” throughout baseball in a nationally televised ceremony. Beginning in 2007, all MLB personnel wear the number “42” on April 15th to commemorate Robinson’s contributions to sport and society.

Plan your visit or become a member today! Mark your calendars for Jackie Robinson Day !

About Jackie Robinson

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era. He would later become the first African American named a vice president at a fortune 500 company; serve as an advisor to politicians; start a bank and a housing development company; and, was a key figure in advancing equal opportunity and first-class citizenship for all Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Hailed a “..freedom rider before freedom rides,” Robinson’s name has become synonymous with breaking barriers.

EARLY LIFE AND GATEWAY INTO SPORTS

Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of former slaves. Young Jackie grew up in Pasadena, California, raised by a single working mother of five. After graduating from Pasadena Junior College, Jackie attended the University of California Los Angeles. A star athlete, Jackie became the university’s first four-sport letter winner, excelling in football, basketball, track and field, and baseball. After leaving UCLA, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, but was court marshalled and honorably discharged for standing up for his rights and refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus.

Upon returning home from the military, Jackie Robinson set his sights on joining baseball’s Negro Leagues and began playing shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. Later that year, opportunity beckoned when Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, invited Robinson to become the first African American to play with the all-white Dodgers’ farm team, the Montreal Royals. Anticipating the great adversity that Robinson would face as he integrated modern baseball, Rickey professed he needed a player who could bear the torment, famously telling Robinson he was “looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”

AN UNPRECEDENTED CAREER IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field for his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the beginning of an unparalleled career in baseball. At the end of his explosive ten years as a Dodger, his record included a .311 batting average, 137 home runs, 734 runs batted in, and 197 stolen bases. In 1955, he helped the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win their first World Series Championship. Robinson took home the Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, the Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, and in 1962 became the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

THE FIGHT FOR FIRST CLASS CITIZENSHIP FOR ALL

After integrating baseball, Robinson became a full-fledged leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He used his celebrity status to further human rights and endeavored to change the landscape of race relations in the United States. Upon retiring from the game in 1957, Robinson was hired to serve as the Vice President for Personnel at Chock full o’ Nuts, the first African American to be named a Vice President of a major American company. He used his position at Chock full o’ Nuts to improve working conditions for employees.

An active member of the NAACP, Robinson was often a featured speaker at civil rights rallies including the famed March on Washington in 1963, and frequently participated in picket lines. As a nationally syndicated columnist for the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News, Robinson wrote passionately on social issues, sports, and family life, always encouraging people in his community to become active in politics and business.

In 1964, Robinson co-founded Freedom National Bank of Harlem, a Black owned and operated bank created for the express purpose of financially aiding African American communities. In 1970, he founded the Jackie Robinson Construction Company, which sought to provide housing for low-income people.

In 1972, just twenty-five years after the start of the “Great Experiment,” Jackie Robinson died following his decade long battle with diabetes.

An Enduring Legacy

1947 – Rookie of the Year Award

Honored by the Baseball Writers Association and the Sporting News, Jackie Robinson won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award for his trailblazing 1947 season. Robinson batted .297, scored 125 runs, hit 12 home runs, 31 doubles and led the National League with 29 stolen bases, taking the Brooklyn Dodgers to a World Series against the New York Yankees. Originally named the J. Louis Comiskey Memorial Rookie of the Year Award, it was renamed the Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award in 1987 to commemorate the 40 th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier.

1949 – Most Valuable Player Award

Robinson garnered 264 of 336 points from the Baseball Writer’s Association and was named the 1949 National League’s Most Valuable Player. A dominant figure on the field that year, he played all 156 games, and was the National League’s batting and base stealing champion; was second in hits (203) runs batted in (124), doubles (38), triples (12); and third in runs scored (122). He would lead the Dodgers to the World Series where they lost to the Yankees in five games.

1950 – The Jackie Robinson Story

“The Jackie Robinson Story” starring Jackie as himself and Ruby Dee as Rachel Robinson premiered May 16, 1950, beginning decades of depictions of Robinson on screen, on the stage, and in the popular culture. With Robinson starring as himself, the film attempted to capture a transformative moment, not only in baseball but in American history as it was happening. Robinson himself uses the film to open doors for African American actors, demanding that performers such as Bernie Hamilton, George Dockstader and Roy Glenn be written into the script.

1955 – World Series Champion

Jackie Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to six World Series, with the team eventually winning the championship in 1955 against their cross-town rivals, the New York Yankees. Appearing in six games, Robinson went 4-for-22 with one double, one triple, one RBI, two walks and famously stole home base during game one of the series.

1956 – NAACP Spingarn Medal

The Spingarn Medal awarded annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1915 for outstanding achievement by an African American.  Established June 29, 1914, it is named for Joel Elias Spingarn, a white writer, educator, and civil rights activist who served as the NAACP Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1913-1919 and as president from 1930-1939. Jackie was awarded the Spingarn Medal for “superb sportsmanship and for his singular role in athletics on December 8, 1956.

1962 – Hall of Fame Induction

Five years after retiring from baseball Robinson was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He and his co-inductee Bob Feller were the first, first-ballot electees by the Baseball Writer’s Association since the inaugural class in 1936. Among his many accomplishments were his .311 batting average, 197 stolen bases, scoring more than 100 runs a year, six times and his six All Star game appearances.

1963 – Afternoon of Jazz

In response to rising racial violence and the assassination of Medgar Evers, Rachel and Jackie begin strategizing their deepening involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, culminating in a fundraising concert, An Afternoon of Jazz, on their property in Stamford, Connecticut. The concert, the first in what would become an annual event, supports Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and features Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck. A second concert was held the first year to raise bail money for students participating in lunch counter sit-ins.

1997 – Number “42” Retired

A year-long celebration marks the 50 th anniversary of Robinson’s April 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the same year, the U.S. Postal Service releases a Jackie Robinson stamp, the U.S. Mint produces gold and silver Robinson coins, and Sharon and Rachel Robinson publish books in commemoration of Robinson’s legacy. Upon the initiative of Leonard S. Coleman Jr., former president of the National League and chairman of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, Major League Baseball retires the number 42 from baseball, the only number retired throughout the leagues.

1984 – Presidential Medal of Freedom

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian decoration awarded in the U.S. by a sitting president. Jackie Robinson was posthumously awarded the medal by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, who stated, “He bravely demonstrated to all that skill and sportsmanship, not race or ethnic background, are the qualities by which athletes should be judged. In doing so, he struck a mighty blow for equality, freedom, and the American way of life.”

2005 – Congressional Gold Medal

Jackie Robinson is posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush, the legislative branch’s highest honor. The medal was presented to Rachel Robinson on March 2, 2005, in a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda before congressional leaders and the commissioner of Major League Baseball. The award honors Robinson’s contributions on the field as a talented baseball player who faced unprecedented challenges in integrating Major League Baseball. Rachel recognized the award as a tribute to her husband’s unwavering courage and conviction as a “heroic role model for Americans who believe in justice and equality.”

2013 – “42” Film Premiere

The biographical film 42 by director Brian Helgeland is released in American movie theaters starring Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey on April 12, 2013. The movie tells the story Jackie Robinson’s racial integration of professional baseball and gives audiences a sense of how the legacy of Jackie Robinson has been remembered decades later.

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Jackie Robinson: A Biography

Arnold rampersad.

560 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1991

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Biography Online

Jackie Robinson Biography

“I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.” – Jackie Robinson.

Jackie was born in 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. His grandfather was a slave and his father a sharecropper. His father left the family when he was just one year old and his mother moved to Pasadena, California, where she brought up the family in relative poverty. As a teenager, Jackie was an outstanding athlete who excelled at baseball, basketball, athletics, tennis and American football. He attended Pasadena Junior College (PJC), and later the University of California in Los Angeles, where became the first student to be a letterman in four sports.

From an early age, Robinson became acutely aware of the racial discrimination in America, and his spirit sought to oppose instances of injustice.  In 1938, Robinson was arrested and given a two year suspended sentence for vocally opposing the detention of a black friend by police. It was a characteristic of Robinson that remained throughout his life – a willingness to stand up to authority over apparent racial discrimination.

In 1941, Robinson for a brief time pursued a career in football. He played as running back on a semi-professional basis for Honolulu Bears and Los Angeles Bulldogs.

In 1942, the US entered the Second World War and Robinson was drafted to a segregated black army unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. Robinson applied for the Officer school, and although in theory, black Americans were allowed, in practice, the authorities did not process Robinson’s application. However, after protests by Joe Louis – a world boxing champion, his application was processed and Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant and reassigned to the 671st “Black Panthers” tank battalion in Kansas.

In July 1944, Robinson boarded an army bus when the driver ordered him to sit at the back. The army buses were officially unsegregated, but drivers often continued an unofficial segregation as was normal in the south at the time. However, Robinson refused. The bus driver backed down but at the end of the line, he was arrested by the military police. Far from backing down Robinson complained to the investigating officer about the line of racist questioning and argued he did nothing wrong. The investigating officer was furious with Robinson and recommended he be court marshalled for insubordination. The commanding officer of Robinson’s of 761st – Paul Bates refused to sanction the court-marshall – siding with his officer Jackie Robinson. As a result, Robinson was transferred to another battalion where the commanding officer charged Robinson on trumped-up charges, including public drunkenness – even though Robinson was teetotal.

At his court marshall in August 1944, his lawyer claimed the charges had no evidence, and really it was about a few officers “working vengeance against an uppity black man.” The charges were reduced to insubordination during questioning and at trial Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of officers. As a result of a persistent ankle injury and his court-marshall, Robinson never saw action in the war though his battalion was the first black tank battalion to take part in military action.

In November 1944, he was given an honourable discharge for the army. He took up various coaching jobs, where he was admired for his disciplinarian approach. He continued to play a variety of sports, football, basketball and baseball.

In early 1945, he was given a contract for the Kansas City Monarchs, part of the all-black baseball league. Since 1884, major league baseball had implemented a strict colour bar – with no black players allowed in the national leagues. Black players had to compete in a parallel ‘black leagues’. Playing for Kansas City, he received a salary of $400 a month but was dissatisfied with the experience. He disliked the disorganisation, tough travel schedule and the close links to gambling interests.

At a meeting in August, Rickey asked Robinson whether he would be able to deal with the inevitable racial abuse when he started to play in the Major Leagues. In particular, Rickey wanted to sign a player who would not rise to the bait and fight back. This was not an intrinsic part of Robinson’s character and Robinson replied.

“Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?”

Ricky said he needed a Negro player who had the courage to turn the other cheek to racial antagonism. He said:

“Robinson, I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”

And Jackie Robinson said: “I’ve got two cheeks. Is that it, Mr. Rickey?”

Rickey asked Robinson to pledge to hold his temper for two years. After that, he was free to be his own man, and combat prejudice any way he saw fit.

On October 23, Robinson formally signed to play for the Dodgers in the 1946 season on a contract worth $600 a month. It made him the first black player in the Major Leagues since the 1880s. It became known as the “Nobel Experiment” and received substantial media coverage with opinion mixed about the ‘experiment.” In an interview in 1945, Robinson was asked about how he felt in becoming the first black player to sign. He said:

“Maybe I should buy a lot of cotton to stuff in my ears. I don’t think I’ll have to take anything I didn’t have to take before but maybe there’ll be more people ready to give it to me.” “I realize what I’m going into and I realise what it means to me and to my race and to baseball too. I’m very happy for this chance and I can only say that I’ll do my best to make the grade.” Jackie Robinson, as printed  in  “Yank – The Army Weekly” 23 Nov. 1945, vol 4, No.23.

In his first season, he played for the Dodgers’ feeder team The Montreal Royals. Even his presence at training camps raised racial animosity with the local police chief threatening to cancel games if Robinson remained training in Florida. After cancelled games and stadiums unexpectedly shut, the general manager of the Dodgers, Rickey lobbied extensively and arranged for an exhibition game for Robinson to make his debut. Thus on 17 March 1946, Robinson played for the first time in an exhibition game between the minor-league Montreal Royals and Major League Brooklyn Dodgers in Daytona Beach, Florida.

After a rocky start, Robinson’s performance improved and by the end of the seasons, he was named the League’s most valuable player – leading the batting average with .349. Robinson also became a star attraction generating a big boost to attendance. Over one million attended games with Robinson – a record for the minor leagues.

On 15 April 1947, he made his major league debut for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field, before a crowd of 26,623 spectators. It was another first the first player since 1884 to play in the major leagues.

Robinson’s arrival was welcomed by many in the press, but for many players brought up on segregation, old prejudices remained. Even from the dodgers dressing room, there were rumours that white players didn’t want to line up with Robinson – but the management made it clear they would back Robinson and if they didn’t like it, they would be traded out. It also helped that the management saw Robinson would help the Dodgers financially – to gain bigger attendance and win more games.

Still, the first few years were difficult for Robinson, he was the victim of racial insults both on and off the field. Spectators throw bottles at him, and opponents used aggressive physical play such as bumping into him or using their spikes to slide into Robinson’s leg. However, after being racially abused by the manager of Philadelphia Phillies manager, who called him a ‘nigger’ and ‘go back to the cotton fields’ – it helped unite the Dodgers team around Robinson. It also helped that Robinson had a successful first year, gaining the Major League rookie of the year award. Looking back at these years, Robinson said of the experience:

“Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.”

Not everyone was unwelcoming, after very hostile heckling from fans, Dodger captain Pee Wee Reese left his position in the field to put his arm around Robinson in a show of solidarity. The two became life-long friends. When later asked why he showed solidarity with Robinson, Reese said. “You can hate a man for many reasons; his color isn’t one of them. ” Robinson also maintained phone contact with Larry Doby, who was the first black baseball player in the American League (for Cleveland Indians). When travelling with the team in the south, Robinson had the indignity of having to use separate hotels and restaurants due to the Jim Crow laws on segregation.

During the 1950s, Robinson was a key player in the onfield success of the Brooklyn Dodgers; he led them to six national league pennants. In 1955, Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Series, beating the New York Yankees. Robinson was then 37 years old and passed his peak, but it was still a major achievement.

In 1956, Robinson retired from baseball and took an executive position at the company Chock full o’Nuts. This was another first – the first black executive in an American company.

1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C

After his retirement, Robinson struggled with the onset of diabetes, which affected his health. However, he strived to increase opportunities for black Americans -, especially in business and commerce. He helped found the Freedom National Bank, a black-owned bank in Harlem. In 1965, he worked as the first black sports announcer for ABC sports. Robinson was also politically active. He was conservative on many issues, such as the Vietnam War and he supported Republican candidates Nixon (1960) and Nelson Rockefellers 1964 bid for Republican nominee. However, he also praised John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert for their proposed civil rights changes. In 1961, he wrote a letter to the Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

“Your few months in office have been a real source of inspiration. I can only hope that you are allowed to continue your drive for equality among Americans.” (May 25, 1961 letter )

After 1964, he was more critical of the Republican party. He also served as a spokesperson for the NAACP helping to raise funds for their 1957 Freedom Drive, and on a few occasions, he appeared with Martin Luther King , he was always willing to speak on improving civil rights – as a means to make America a better country.

“Negroes aren’t seeking anything which is not good for the nation as well as ourselves. In order for America to be 100 percent strong — economically, defensively and morally — we cannot afford the waste of having second- and third-class citizens.”

He married Rachel Isum on 10 February 1946. They had three children. Johnson loved baseball, but he sought to make life more than just being a baseball player. He once said the real mark of a man was what he achieved when he retired from the game.

“When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball.”

On 24 October 1972, Robinson died of a heart attack at his home in North Stamford, Connecticut, aged just 53 years old. Nine days previously he had made a starring appearance at the World Series.

After his death, his wife founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation which offers scholarship awards in higher education to help bridge equal opportunities in America.

In April 1997, on the 50th anniversary of breaking the colour bar in baseball, the game retired jersey number 42 from Major League Baseball and every year on 15 April 1997, baseball marks Jackie Robinson Day.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Jackie Robinson Biography” , Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net, 18 July 2019. Last updated 18 July 2019.

Jackie Robinson: My Own Story

Jackie Robinson: My Own Story at Amazon.com

Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy at Amazon.com

Career Stats at a glance

• Games 1,382
• At bats 4,877
• Home runs 137
• Batting average 0.311
• Baseball hall of fame 1962.
• The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984) posthumously

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75 facts about Jackie Robinson, 75 years after he integrated Major League Baseball

This Friday marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball on April 15, 1947. There are very few figures from the last century who had as much of an impact, created the kind of conversation and claimed the amount of attention that Robinson did.

To celebrate,  The Athletic  combed through Robinson’s life to find 75 of the most interesting and, in some cases, lesser-known facts about him.

1. Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919, in Cairo, Ga.

2. In 1934, at age 15, he won the Pasadena (Ca.) City Ping-Pong tournament.

3. The John Muir High School baseball team in Pasadena, for which Robinson played three years of shortstop and one season at catcher from 1935-1938, became the first team with Black players invited and allowed to participate in the 1935 Pomona Tournament. This was a big deal at the time; Gov. Frank Merriam was in attendance, while comedian Joe E. Brown served as the guest speaker and Mickey Rooney tossed out the first pitch for the championship game. Every evening, however, Robinson had to return home to Pasadena, because hotels would not allow him to stay. He finished with a tournament-high 11 stolen bases.

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4. The first time Robinson played in the Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament, he reached the semifinals. A year later, in 1936, he took home the title for the junior boys singles championship.

5.  Robinson returned to the Pomona Annual Baseball Tournament again in 1936, but this time as an All-Star team member. Fellow Hall of Famers Ted Williams ( Boston Red Sox ) and Bob Lemon (Cleveland Indians) also played in that game. Robinson and Pasadena Muir faced off against Williams and his San Diego Hoover squad in the championship game, which included three hits and a stolen home base from Robinson, and a towering 450-foot home run from Williams , who helped lead Hoover to an 8-7 victory.

6.  The first time a newspaper mentioned Robinson’s pro prospects was in April 1936 following this game, according to historian Jim McConnell . In a recap of the game, the Pomona Progress-Bulletin’s David Meiklejohn noted how deserving the shortstop was of a major league deal, if the color of his skin had not been an impediment.

7.  During the summers in high school, Robinson played a litany of other sports, including golf. The first time he set foot on Pasadena’s Brookside Park Course, he shot 90 .

8.  Matthew “Mack” Robinson, Jackie’s older brother, not only raced in the same 200-meter sprint as Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, but finished second to the eventual gold medalist. Despite battling a heart condition throughout his athletic career, he finished with a 21.1-second time to earn the silver, 0.4 seconds behind Owens. In the long jump, four years later, Jackie would top his brother’s record, but whether he would’ve participated in the 1940 Summer Games,  we’ll never know, because it was canceled due to World War II.

9. After high school, Robinson enrolled at Pasadena Junior College to further pursue his interests in sports. In 1938, Robinson was voted the region’s Most Valuable Player and was named to the All-Southland Junior College Team for baseball.

10.  That same year, PJC’s Order of the Mast and Dagger — Omicron Mu Delta — which awards students for “outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition,” selected Robinson and nine other students to its 1938 class.

11.  One of the main motivations for Robinson to attend UCLA was to remain near his family after his older brother, Frank Robinson, died in a motorcycle accident in 1939. Robinson, 20, wanted to be close to Frank’s family so he could help them after his brother’s death.

12.  Robinson played on the most integrated team in college football as a member of the 1939 UCLA Bruins’ football team. He was one of four black players — Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett were the others — on that undefeated squad, which went 6-0-4.

13.  Washington, Robinson’s teammate in the backfield, broke the color barrier in the National Football League as the first African American to sign a contract with a team in the modern era. He signed with the Los Angeles Rams on March 21, 1946 — a little more than a year before Robinson debuted with the Dodgers . Strode was also signed by the Rams in 1946 and played for the team as well.

14.  In 1940, Robinson won the NCAA Championship in the long jump with a 24-foot 10+1⁄4 in (7.58 m) result.

15. Robinson had already established himself as a successful multi-sport athlete, and he took it a step further at UCLA, becoming the first player to earn varsity letters in four sports — football (1939 and 1940), basketball (1940 and 1941), track (1940) and baseball (1940) — in a single year. In addition to that, Robinson was All-Pac 10 on the gridiron, the West Coast Conference MVP in basketball and, of course, set the long jump record.

“The first player who I ever saw dunking as part of his game was Jackie Robinson,” former New York Renassaince player John Isaacs told the Sporting News .

16.  The first time Robinson played for the Bruins’ baseball team, he went 4-for-4 at the plate and stole home plate twice. He did all of this in the sport he was considered the worst at, and in that lone season he hit .097.

17.   Following his final game with UCLA, Robinson didn’t play organized baseball for five years. The prime years of his athletic career were interrupted, like those of many others, due to the war and his military service. The next time he played an organized game was when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945 for his one season in the Negro Leagues.

18.  Just before Robinson was set to graduate from UCLA, he decided to take a job as the assistant athletic director at the National Youth Administration. This was a part of the New Deal initiative started by the government, but it folded not that long after its inception due to the impending war.

19.  “After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.” — Robinson, from his autobiography, “I Never Had it Made.”

20.  Even though Robinson’s baseball career was on pause for five years, he didn’t step away from sports entirely. After the NYA ceased operations, Robinson traveled to Honolulu to play for the semi-professional and racially integrated Honolulu Bears football team on Sept. 1, 1941, and these were the first checks he ever cashed as a pro athlete. On the weekends, he’d play for the team, while during the week, Robinson worked construction near Naval Station Pearl Harbor . The 22-year-old returned to Los Angeles to play running back for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League on Dec. 5, 1941, two days before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

21.  Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and Robinson were both stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. The two met during basic training in 1942, and the Brown Bomber eventually used his good standing in the Army to help Robinson and other Black soldiers gain entrance to the Army’s Officer Candidate School. Initially, they were either denied or held in a holding pattern, but Louis’ insistence helped propel those applicants forward. This was the start of a long-term friendship between Robinson and Louis, who played golf together during their downtime. Ten years after Louis and Robinson met, in 1952, Louis broke the color barrier on the PGA Tour after being invited to play as an amateur on a sponsor’s exemption in the San Diego Open.

22.  Robinson never saw combat during WWII, because he was prohibited from being deployed while battling charges stemming from an incident on July 6, 1944. On that day, Robinson got on an unsegregated military bus, but the driver demanded he sit at the back of the bus. Robinson refused. When he reached the end of his ride, Robinson was arrested by military police after a duty officer requested their assistance, and subsequently asked for Robinson to be court-martialed.

23.  As it would turn out, Robinson’s former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion , became the first Black tank unit to see combat in World War II. The unit’s deployment preceded Robinson’s honorable discharge in November 1944, and the battalion ultimately suffered many casualties in the war effort .

24.  Following his acquittal, Robinson was assigned to Camp Breckinridge in Union County, Ky., where he worked as an athletics coach. It was during this period that Robinson reunited with baseball thanks to a chance encounter. During his time at the camp, Robinson met Ted Alexander, a fellow soldier and pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, who encouraged Robinson to try out. Robinson then promptly wrote to Thomas Baird, the Monarch’s co-owner, of his interest in joining the team.

25.  “I was walking across the camp recreation field when a baseball arched high into the sky and was carried toward me by a strong breeze. As it hit the ground and bounced toward me I leaned over and scooped it up with one hand. I saw a player running in my direction so I pegged a perfect strike to him. As it plopped into his glove he shouted, ‘Nice throw!’ …

“He said he had heard of me as a football player and a track man,” Robinson recalled, “but not as a baseball player. Then he explained that he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs … and that the team needed good players. He suggested that I write if I thought I could make the grade. I wrote.” — Robinson, from his 1960 autobiography, “Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson.”

26.  Rev. Karl Downs, the pastor at Scott United Methodist Church, where Robinson attended service at PJC, reached out to his mentee in late 1944 to offer him a job as Sam Huston College’s athletic director. Downs was the president of the school at the time, and wanted Robinson to come down to Austin, Texas, to help the Southwestern Athletic Conference school in its athletic endeavors, including its upstart basketball team. Robinson ended up playing in several exhibition games as a result of low numbers for the team’s tryout.

27.  In February 1945, Robinson’s team, though outmanned severely, played with heart against far-superior Southern University in a tournament. The Jaguars would pay down the line, however, for humiliating Robinson’s squad. Watching in the stands that day was Langston University’s Marques “The Dribbler” Haynes, the future Harlem Globetrotter. When it was the Lions’ turn to face the Jaguars in the tournament, not only did Langston embarrass Southern, but Haynes personally showed off . Up to that point, he had kept his ability as a virtuoso dribbler under wraps, but on that day, for more than two minutes to close out the game, he showed off all of his skills. This is how Haynes began his friendship with the coach he had met earlier in the tournament.

28.  That spring, Robinson finally received correspondence back from the Monarchs, who wrote to offer him a place on their team at shortstop. It came with a $400 per month deal, which Robinson accepted. He played a total of 47 games for Kansas City and recorded a batting average of .387, five home runs and 13 stolen bases.

29.  On April 16, 1945, the Boston Red Sox gave a tryout to Jackie Robinson, Sammy Jethroe and Marvin Williams. Jethroe was the Negro American League batting king, while Williams was a standout second baseman for the Philadelphia Stars. Boston councilman and anti-segregationist Isadore H. Y. Muchnick had worked with Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier to come up with the three candidates to present to Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins and Boston Braves general manager John Quinn. After giving the players, Smith and Muchnick the runaround on fulfilling their promise to hold a tryout, the councilman called both organizations out for their tactics. The tryout was only ever meant to appease Muchnick, who had the power to withhold a waiver allowing the Red Sox and Braves to play on Sundays. Even though the only people in attendance for the tryout were members of the Red Sox organization, the players were still subjected to racist barbs.

30.  “We can consider ourselves pioneers,” Robinson told Smith on April 21, 1945. “Even if they don’t accept us, we are at least doing our part and, if possible, making the way easier for those who follow. Some day, some Negro player or players will get a break. We want to help make that day a reality.”

31.  Selected for the 1945 East-West All-Star Game, held on July 29, Robinson did an excellent job in the field, according to multiple media outlets’ recaps of the game. But he had a poor showing at the plate, going 0-for-5.

32.  A little more than a month later, on Aug. 28, Robinson was sitting in the headquarters for the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club at 215 Montague St. This is where he met team president and general manager Branch Rickey to sign the deal that got the ball rolling for him to become the first African American in the majors. Today, the building is a TD Bank that has a plaque commemorating the historical landmark. For almost 20 years, from 1938 to 1957, this was the headquarters for Dodgers officials, until the team’s move to Los Angeles following the 1957 season.

33.  Experiencing racism from segregated Florida and future Brooklyn Dodgers teammates, some of whom threatened to sit out if they had to play with Robinson, the future big-league player gained a reprieve from civil rights activist, educator and Bethune-Cookman founder Mary McLeod Bethune. She agreed to host Robinson in Daytona, Fla., because multiple cities in Florida refused to have him. Robinson and his wife, Rachel, stayed at the home of Joe and Duff Harris during Robinson’s first spring training in 1946. Joe was a local pharmacist and Black leader in the community.

34.  When Robinson stepped up to the plate against the Dodgers at Daytona Beach’s City Island Ballpark on March 17, 1946, that made him the first African American   to play for a minor league team against a major league ballclub.

35.  His official minor-league debut wouldn’t happen until a month later on April 18, 1946, at Roosevelt Stadium, when the Montreal Royals faced off against the Jersey City Giants in the season opener. Robinson broke the color barrier in the minor leagues, too.

36. Robinson actually faced a familiar opponent that game in pitcher Warren Sandel. The pair played against one another when they lived in California. Sandel’s catcher, Dick Bouknight, wanted him to bean Robinson at the plate, but Sandel refused. Instead, the pitcher was able to force the rookie into a groundout, but it was the only trip to the plate where Robinson didn’t record a hit. In fact, his first hit was a three-run shot in the third inning, and by the day’s end, Robinson scored four runs, brought in three and stole two bases in a lopsided 14-1 win.

37. While it took some time for Robinson to openly admit to it, Rachel understood the mental and emotional toll of all the abuse her husband was taking. It even contributed to a slump he experienced while he was going through spring training. “Jack was very angry in Florida, but he had to restrain himself,” Rachel told Smithsonian Magazine in 2015 . “He also wasn’t eating or sleeping well, so we took time off. After he rested and reclaimed his faculties, he was fine for the rest of the season.”

38. After toiling through that slump, when Robinson did finally get a hit, which sparked a return to his usual form, Bethune sent Rachel food and other supplies to put together a celebratory dinner for Robinson.

39.  Unfortunately for Robinson, one of the cruelest fan bases involved a team up north he’d see on a regular basis, the Syracuse Chiefs. Racist episodes included the team trying to take the field in blackface, heckling from both the bench and fans and catcher Dick West telling the local Post-Standard newspaper that he said to Robinson, “I don’t feel sorry for you. You can go to hell.” But one of the more notable incidents involved the players throwing a black cat on the field, and exclaiming, “Hey Jackie, there’s your cousin.” Robinson would respond with both actions and words, hitting a double and then scoring, before retorting back, “I guess my cousin’s pretty happy now.”

40.  During that July game when West made the remark, Robinson displayed one of the skills for which he received less acclaim: his bunting ability. Pitcher Jim Prendergast was working on a no-hitter into the top of the ninth inning. With two outs and a man on third, Robinson stepped up to the same plate where West made his first remarks. The hitter pulled the rug from under the Chiefs defenders, who were expecting a big swing. Instead, Robinson laid down a bunt, and then showed off those exceptional track skills to quickly reach first base. West not only forgot to defend home plate against the man on third, but threw so far wide at first base that Robinson was easily able to round the bases and tag home to make it a 3-2 deficit. The Chiefs got the win, but Robinson clearly got the last laugh.

41.  Two months later, in September, Robinson signed with Chet Brewer’s Kansas City Royals , an all-Black postseason barnstorming team in the California Winter League.

42.  For a second consecutive offseason, Robinson did a barnstorming tour in South America. The year before, on Oct. 26, 1945, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Robinson would fly to Miami to join both his Black and White teammates before they did a two-month stint on the continent. Within that same announcement, Robinson revealed that in January 1946, he’d marry his college sweetheart, Rachel Isum, who he met as a freshman at UCLA.

43.  Also in the fall of 1946, Robinson returned back to Los Angeles to briefly play professional basketball for the independent Los Angeles Red Devils. The season started on Nov. 8, 1946, and in the Red Devils’ first two games, Robinson scored 28 points combined. On Nov. 15 and 16, Los Angeles welcomed the world champion Harlem Renaissance to Olympic Auditorium, and on a flyer advertising the event, Robinson was listed as a headliner. The Red Devils were one of the first integrated professional basketball teams. When Robinson left the team in January 1947, he received offers from several other pro basketball teams, including the Harlem Globetrotters. Their founder and owner, Abe Saperstein, reportedly offered Robinson a $10,000 contract, that included bonuses, to suit up for his squad. That would’ve been twice as much as what Robinson earned with the Dodgers — $5,000, the major-league rookie minimum — and yet, Robinson turned down the offer.

44.  Among his contemporaries, Robinson was not considered the best player in the Negro Leagues, and while Black players were happy to have that door finally open, the prevailing thought was that players like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige had overpaid their dues and deserved their chance. Both were upset that they didn’t get their shot to join the majors, even though their play clearly made them worthy candidates.

45.  Gibson didn’t even get to see the color barrier broken by Robinson, as he died almost three months before the historic day. Larry Doby, who broke the color line in the American League the same year as Robinson and was one of his close friends, said that “one of the things that was disappointing and disheartening to a lot of the black players at the time was that Jack was not the best player. The best was Josh Gibson. I think that’s one of the reasons why Josh died so early — he was heartbroken.”

46.  Robinson’s first hit when he joined the Dodgers a few months later was actually a bunt, and in his debut season he’d lead the majors with 28 sacrifice hits. In total, he finished with 46 bunts in 1947, and only four didn’t register as a base hit or sacrifice.

47.  There were more than 14,000 Black spectators in the stands when Robinson made his debut on April 15, 1947, at Ebbets Field. They were the majority of a reported attendance of 26,623.

48. His first season in the league, Robinson played exclusively at first base, because veteran Eddie Stanky held second base his first season. Robinson moved over to second the following season, after Stanky was moved to the Braves in March 1948.

49.  Following his rookie season, Robinson did a vaudeville tour down South, where he answered pre-planned questions about his life. The tour actually made him more money than he’d earned playing baseball, but all of that Southern hospitality did catch up with Robinson the following spring.

50.  Even though he was able to replicate his numbers from his first year, he reported to spring training 25 pounds overweight in 1948. Rachel told author Arnold Rampersad, “He used to put away a pint of ice cream at one sitting. That stopped, along with the pies and cakes.”

51.  “It is true that I had stored up a lot of hostility. I had been going home nights to Rachel and young Jackie, tense and irritable, keyed up because I hadn’t been able to speak out when I wanted to. In 1949 I wouldn’t have to do this. I could fight back when I wanted. That sounds as though I wanted to get even, and I’m sure that is partly true. I wouldn’t have been human otherwise. But, more than revenge, I wanted to be Jackie Robinson, and for the first time I would be justified because by 1949 the principle had been established: the major victory won. There were enough blacks on other teams to ensure that American baseball could never again turn its back on minority competitors.” -— Robinson, from his autobiography, “I Never Had it Made.”

52. Robinson returned to form the following season and came into the 1949 training camp not only in shape, but uninhibited, too, now that he didn’t have to quietly take the jeers. His batting average jumped from .296 to a career-high .342 and his 37 stolen bases also ended up being a personal best. By season’s end, he won the batting title, was voted the inaugural Most Valuable Player for the league and helped lead the Dodgers to another pennant.

53.  The FBI and Cincinnati police swarmed the buildings surrounding Crosley Field after the police and Cincinnati Enquirer were sent letters on May 19, 1951, from an author calling themselves the “Three Travelers.” In this letter, the writer said that before that day’s game, they’d be stationed in a nearby building and, with a scoped rifle, would shoot Robinson once he stepped foot on the field. The writer was never discovered, and Robinson blasted a shot out of center field that day.

“I don’t believe that a guy who intended to shoot me would write a letter to the police about it in advance,” Robinson told the New York Daily News on May 21, 1951. “Although, I don’t doubt that someday some screwball might try something.

“I told the boys not to get too close to me on the field today. … The fellows were kidding me about how they’d confuse the shooter by all wearing No. 42 today. I told them, they’d have to paint their faces, too.”

54.  If one looks closely at the picture following Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world,” from the final game of the three-game, 1951 National League championship series, they’ll see Robinson’s teammates all walking off the field with heads dropped. The one man standing to watch Thomson touch each base was Robinson , who was known for his extreme competitiveness.

55. In the final three years of Robinson’s career in the majors, he became more and more of a utility player year after year. Jim Gilliam, who won the 1953 Rookie of the Year award, displaced him at second base. From there, Robinson primarily split time between third base and left field, but over the course of those final years played every position except for pitcher, catcher and center field. In his final All-Star appearance, Robinson played in left field.

In the lone World Series that Robinson won, in 1955, he didn’t see the field at all in the pivotal Game 7.

56. Rampersad, author of “Jackie Robinson: A Biography,” wrote that Robinson learned he was diabetic “about the time of his retirement,” during a routine physical. “‘He left in high spirits,’ said his friend, Jack Gordon. ‘But when he came back … he was very quiet. He said that the doctor had told him that for someone who had played sports for so long and didn’t smoke or drink, he had never seen a body so badly deteriorated. Jack found out he had diabetes. It was very, very sad.’”

57.  With Branch Rickey no longer a part of the Dodgers as the general manager, Robinson was left without support in the front office of the organization. His final at-bat was a strikeout in the 1956 World Series, when he went 0-for-3 in Game 7, and the New York Yankees cruised to a 9-0 win. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who had called Robinson “Rickey’s prima donna,” was quick to deal the 37-year-old to the New York Giants for a pitcher and $30,000. The deal was voided, because Robinson refused to report, and instead elected to retire.

58. Unofficially, Robinson stole home 19 times. It makes him one of the all-time leaders, and he ranks first for players who debuted after 1920.

59.  Martin Luther King Jr. and Robinson were awarded degrees in the same class as one another, and there are even pictures of the ceremony. On June 7, 1957, both men were awarded honorary doctorates in law from Howard University .

Five years later in September 1962, Robinson spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Council at its annual Freedom Dinner in Birmingham, Ala., in which he levied tremendous praise on King: “People used to tell me a lot of things about Dr. King, that he was trying to take over the world, that he was making money on the civil rights issues. I didn’t believe them, of course. I knew this was a dedicated man and that he has made tremendous personal financial sacrifices in the cause. I sort of wondered why people would stoop to talk about him. Then I realized that the world has always talked against great men. The best way to keep from getting talked about is to do nothing.”

60.  Part of the reason Robinson was able to walk away from the game is that he had a job lined up with Chock Full o’Nuts to become the vice president of personnel. That made him the first Black person at the president level of an American company of that size.

61. Earning 77.5 percent of the vote during his first year of eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Robinson was inducted into Cooperstown in 1962, and he became the first Black player to enter the Hall.

62. “I never thought at all that I would have this wonderful honor coming to me so early in my lifetime. And to have the writers elect me on the first time is a thrill that I shall never forget. We have been up in cloud nine since the election. I don’t ever think I’ll come down. But I want to thank all of the people throughout this country who were just so wonderful during those trying days. I appreciate it at no end. It’s the greatest honor any person could have and I only hope that I’ll be able to live up to this tremendously fine honor. It’s something that I think those of us who are fortunate, again, must use in order to help others — because it’s such a tremendous honor that we should be able to go out and do things to help,” Jackie Robinson, Hall of Fame speech, July 23, 1962

63.  Alongside businessman Dunbar McLaurin, Robinson co-founded the Black-owned and operated Freedom National Bank in 1964. He was first chairman of the Harlem, N.Y. bank, and Rachel stepped into that role until the bank shuttered in 1990. In 1965, he made history again when he joined ABC-TV Sports as the nation’s first Black baseball announcer.

64.  “Jackie Robinson made my success possible. Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said shortly before his assassination in 1968.

65.  Ray Lamb, a pitcher called up from the minors in 1969, was the last Dodger to wear the No. 42 jersey, and expressed discomfort wearing it when he opted to give up the number at the end of the year.

66.  “As long as they keep digging down and hiring guys who have already failed in one city, I’m not encouraged,” Robinson told the Baltimore Afro-American on Sept. 16, 1972. This remark was made in regard to the Hall of Famer’s level of optimism that MLB would employ a Black manager anytime in the near future. Robinson grew weary and impatient with how the sport dragged its feet on not only creating opportunities for but giving chances to those who aspired to be a skipper of a big-league team.

67.  On the 25th anniversary of Robinson integrating baseball, MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn invited him to throw out the first pitch for Game 2 of the 1972 World Series. Robinson declined the offer, because he was severely disenchanted with the absence of African American managers and front office executives in the sport. Kuhn was able to talk Robinson into coming, promising that the league was working on the matter, but Robinson, as he always had, used his platform to speak out about the issue.

68.  American astronomer Schelte John Bus named an asteroid after Robinson, his favorite player growing up. Bus made the discovery of asteroid “4319 Jackierobinson” while working at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, on March 1, 1981.

69. Fifty years after Robinson integrated baseball, MLB retired his No. 42 jersey for the entire league, making it the first sports league to do so. At the time this was announced, there were 14 players sporting No. 42. The last player to wear the number? Yankees closer Mariano Rivera wore the jersey until he retired from the league in 2013. He told Barry Bloom, formerly of MLB.com: “I’m honored to wear it, to use it. It’s wonderful. As a minority, being the last one to use No. 42 is tremendous. I’m really, really proud and thankful to wear No. 42.”

The only other sport to retire a number across the league is the National Hockey League , which did so in 2000 with Wayne Gretzky’s No. 99.

70.  Sixteen months before Robinson died, his eldest son, Jackie Robinson Jr., died in a car accident en route to visit his parents. He lost control of his vehicle speeding through Norwalk, Conn., ran into a fence and then crashed into the abutment near Route 123 on the Merritt Parkway, The New York Times reported. Robinson was on his way to pick up Rachel, an assistant professor at Yale School of Nursing, from a conference in Massachusetts. David Robinson, Jackie Jr.’s younger brother, was the one who identified his body at the hospital on June 17, 1971. At the time, Jackie Jr. had turned his life around after a battle with drug addiction, becoming sober and then going on to help those who also struggled with addiction. He was 24.

71.  “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon,” Robinson, who died nine days later, said during the World Series before 53,224 people at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati in 1972, “but must admit, I am going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at the third-base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.” He went on to elaborate, “It is a shame baseball does not have a black manager. Frank Robinson has had managerial experience in the Caribbean. Jim Gilliam would make an ideal manager. There are Elston Howard and others.”

That was the final public appearance made by Robinson. He died on Oct. 24, 1972, in his Connecticut home.

72.  “They note that the white players get jobs in the power structure when they cannot hit or run any longer, but black players like George Crowe and Gene Baker and — yes — Jackie Robinson have been allowed to drift out of baseball never to return,” wrote George Vecsey of  The New York Times .  “If blacks are good enough to sweat, then surely some of them must be smart enough to scout or manage or administer. Paid well for their bodies, they want to be loved for their brains, too.”

73.  “I actually think it’s so revealing that it was Jackie Robinson calling them out, because it speaks to how Major League Baseball has and continues to rely on the symbols of racial progress in absence of racial progress,” said David J. Leonard , a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, in 2018. “So here we have Jackie Robinson pointing out the persistence of the color line in baseball, and he continues to be used by Major League Baseball as a symbol of change, yet he isn’t even heard. That his concerns and protests and demands weren’t heard over the last 46 years, I think it speaks to an investment in the symbolic change in absence of actual change or the embrace of a truly equitable playing field.”

“If baseball really wants to honor [Robinson], then it will look in the mirror and see how the absence of progress across the league in every aspect of its organizations needs to be rectified. What we see often is a refusal to confront this reality and excuse-making.”

74. “It was going to be part of our legacy as well,” Sharon Robinson, Jackie’s daughter, said in Biography.com’s Jackie Robinson — Last Words segment. “Baseball has a responsibility. They helped change America, now you just make sure that you remain active in that role and supportive in that role.”

75. “The fundamental questions that faced Jack in 1947 are abounding today,” Rachel wrote in an essay honoring her late husband . “We’ve got to go beyond celebrating the past and use our emotions, sentiments, ideas and analysis to move forward. This would be the greatest tribute to Jackie Robinson.”

(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Getty; Archive Photos, Bettmann)

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Jackie Robinson: His Life and Career in Pictures

By: Missy Sullivan

Updated: January 9, 2024 | Original: April 30, 2022

When Jackie Robinson  started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he not only integrated  Major League Baseball. He was signaling to the nation—on one of its biggest stages—that Black Americans would no longer accept second-class status. 

“Jackie Robinson gave all of us—not only black athletes, but every black person in this country—a sense of our own strength,” wrote slugger Hank Aaron in his introduction to Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had It Made.

Robinson's strength was not only as a gifted athlete and fierce competitor who earned Rookie of the Year, MVP and six-time All-Star status. His strength manifested itself as dogged perseverance in the face of a tidal wave of racism—from daily taunts and threats to broad institutional inequities. The pressure took an enormous toll.

Robinson's athletic brilliance and contributions to history earned all manner of accolades, from Baseball Hall of Fame induction to the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Major League Baseball  retiring his number “42” in 1997—a first for any athlete, in any sport. Shortly before the Hall of Fame ceremony, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr . paid tribute to Robinson's pioneering achievements this way: “Back in the days when integration wasn’t fashionable, he underwent the trauma and the humiliation and the loneliness that comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins , a freedom rider before freedom rides .” 

Robinson's effort—and sacrifice—spurred a cascade of civil rights advances. A year after he integrated pro baseball, Harry Truman ordered the U.S. military desegregated . Six years later, the Supreme Court decided, in Brown v. Board of Education , to desegregate public schools. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott soon followed. “His courage and bravery played a major role in the history of integration, both on the field and throughout American society,” wrote Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, “and no history of the civil rights movement would be complete without noting Robinson’s major role.” 

Below, a look at Robinson's extraordinary life and career in photos.

Jackie Robinson Was Born in Georgia

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born near Cairo, Georgia in 1919, the son of sharecroppers and the grandson of enslaved workers. After Jack’s philandering father abandoned the family, his mother Mallie took her five children and moved with other family members to start a new life in Pasadena, California. Jack, her youngest, wasn’t yet two years old.

In Pasadena, his mother worked as a maid for a white family, one of the few jobs available in the strictly segregated city. Together with her siblings, she bought a five-bedroom house at 121 Pepper Street, where Jack lived until he left home in 1941. For much of his childhood, Jack was cared for by his sister Willa Mae, just two years older, while his mother worked to support the family. 

The house had a shady yard with fruit trees, and Mallie grew vegetables and raised chickens, rabbits and more. But with few jobs open to Pasadena's Black citizens, the family struggled to keep food on the table, especially during the Depression . Despite persistent racism, Mallie gradually won over hostile neighbors trying to run the Robinsons off their block. According to biographer Arnold Rampersad, who was given full access to the Robinson family archive, she instilled in her children “the importance of family, education, optimism, self-discipline and, above all, God.”

A gifted athlete from childhood, Robinson became a dominant figure in Southern California sports. He stood out at Pasadena Junior College, and later at UCLA, as the only student to letter in four sports: football, basketball, baseball and track. He broke the NCAA long jump record in 1940, besting the high mark set by his brother Mack, an outstanding athlete who had earned a silver medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1940, Jack also led UCLA's football team in passing, rushing and scoring. 

During his college years, Jack met his future wife, a nursing student named Rachel Annetta Isum. In March 1941, a few months shy of graduation, he left school to help with family finances.

Robinson Had a Rocky Stint in the US Army

After receiving his military draft notice in March 1943, Robinson reported to Fort Riley, Kansas for basic training. After racism initially barred him and other Black recruits from Officer Candidate School—despite their clear eligibility—they were eventually accepted. But his time in the mostly segregated U.S. Army would prove deeply frustrating. It ended not long after an incident near Fort Hood, Texas where, 11 years before Rosa Parks' historic defiance, Robinson raised a ruckus by refusing to move to the back of a bus. Handcuffed, shackled and put under house arrest, he was ultimately court-martialed for disrespecting and disobeying a superior officer. Acquitted of all charges, he received an honorable discharge in 1944, having reached the rank of second lieutenant.

After a standout season with the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs, batting .345, Robinson was approached by a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He said the team’s president, Branch Rickey, wanted to talk to Jack about coming to play for the “Brooklyn Brown Dodgers,” an all-Black team he was starting. But that turned out to be a ruse.

Rickey, who was morally opposed to Jim Crow segregation (and had a portrait of Abraham Lincoln hanging in his office), was determined to integrate pro baseball, which had not fielded a Black player since the late 19th century. To that end, he had been scouting Negro League teams for someone with not only the athletic prowess, but with the fortitude and self-discipline to “turn the other cheek” when faced with the inevitable onslaught of racist taunts and threats.

In their first meeting, Rickey role-played the kind of insults, humiliations and vitriol Robinson would experience. He mimicked hotel clerks and waitresses who would refuse to serve him and channeled opponents who would bean him or spike him. Robinson, who had faced a lifetime of racism with a combination of defiance, pride and seething stoicism, promised Rickey he would keep his composure. On October 23, 1945, he signed an agreement that would change the course of baseball—and the course of the American civil rights movement. He would start by playing on the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers’ International League farm team.

LISTEN: Jackie Robinson Tries Out for the Majors on HISTORY This Week

When Rickey had first interviewed Robinson about joining the Dodgers, one of the first questions he asked was, “Do you have a woman?… You’ll need her.” Before reporting to spring training in the spring of 1946, Jack and Rachel returned to Los Angeles for a big church wedding on February 10. After meeting six years earlier at UCLA and enduring long separations during both wartime and his Negro League season, the two finally wed.

When training camp started in Florida a few weeks later, Rachel was the only player’s wife allowed to attend. With Jack barred from the team’s hotels and restaurants, and constantly in the spotlight, the couple deepened their bond as they together experienced the harsh Jim Crow realities and processed the immense stress. “Rachel’s understanding love,” Jack later recounted, “was a powerful antidote for being taunted by fans, sneered at by fellow players, and constantly mistreated because of my blackness.” They protected each other as they built their family: Jackie Jr. was born in November of that year, with siblings Sharon (b. 1950) and David (b. 1952) to follow. 

After one season with the Royals, where he hit .349, scored 113 runs and stole 40 bases in 124 games, Jackie was called up to the Dodgers in the spring of 1947. Under crushing pressure to represent his race as both an athlete and a paragon of virtue and endurance, Robinson went on to have a banner first season in Brooklyn, being named Rookie of the Year and helping the Dodgers win the National League pennant. Two years later, in 1949, he was named the league’s MVP, having hit .342, stolen 37 bases and batted in a career-high 124 runs. 

Known for his explosive speed and prowess at the plate (with a career batting average of .313), Robinson also was a canny bunter and tormented pitchers and infielders by constantly dancing off the base. Over his decade-long career in the majors, he scored 972 runs, made 1,563 hits and stole 200 bases—19 of which were home plate. Robinson earned All-Star status for six consecutive seasons from 1949 through 1954.

Robinson achieved all that while serving as a one-man lightning rod for America’s deep racial strife.

It started in the Dodgers’ clubhouse. In the spring of 1947, a core group of Southern veterans—including Dixie Walker, a hard-hitting fan favorite, and pitcher Kirby Higbe, who claimed to have built up his arm throwing rocks at neighborhood Black kids in his youth—reportedly circulated a petition to keep Robinson off the Brooklyn squad. Team manager Leo Durocher castigated Walker in front of the team, making clear the organization's stance: “I don’t care if he’s black or yellow or has stripes like a [expletive] zebra, I’m the manager of this team and I say he plays.” The Dodgers traded Higbe that May, and Walker after the 1947 season. In time, Robinson won over white teammates with his grace, humility, sportsmanship, grit and talent.

Around the league, other teams lost no time in expressing their displeasure about a Black player in their midst. Within six weeks of his historic debut, Robinson was hit by pitches six times—according to Rampersad, more than any player in the league had been hit in the entire previous season. Before batting helmets were instituted, Robinson's rookie-year cap had three protective metal plates sewn inside the lining to protect him from deliberate pitches to the head. 

In Philadelphia, team manager Ben Chapman famously unleashed a torrent of brutal racist taunts at the new player, while Philly players pointed bats at him as if they were machine guns. Robinson later called that the moment when he came closest to violating his agreement with Rickey not to lose his composure and retaliate. The behavior was so abhorrent that the city of Philadelphia formally apologized to the Robinson family seven decades later.

The American public, widely divided about integrating the nation's favorite pastime, deluged Robinson with fan mail, hate mail, autograph and appearance requests and death threats. Everyone wanted a piece of Jackie: Politicians wanted to stand in his reflective glow with Black voters. African Americans wanted to bask in his success—and the massive symbol of opportunity it represented. His time off the field was rarely his own. And his safety was never assured.

As a high-profile public figure, Robinson had a hard time not being drawn into the political sphere. Many people were eager to capitalize on his iconic status in the Black community to further their own agendas. 

In 1949, the House Un-American Activities Committee  called on Robinson to testify before Congress about Black loyalty to the nation. Concerned about communist organizing among minority groups, they wanted him to refute a controversial statement made earlier that year by Black performer and activist Paul Robeson, who had called it "unthinkable" that racially oppressed Blacks would go to war against the Soviet Union . 

Despite objections from civil rights leaders and others, Robinson went to  Capitol Hill . There, he expressed that Robeson, who he deeply respected, didn’t speak for all African Americans and that he was certain that people of his race would ​​"do their best to help their country win the war, against Russia or any other enemy that threatened us." He then used the spotlight to underscore the importance of fighting racial discrimination, saying, “We can win our fight without the communists and we don't want their help." After Joseph McCarthy turned HUAC into an overreaching vehicle for Cold War witch hunts, Robinson later expressed regret at accepting the committee's invitation.

When vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon met Robinson in 1952, the two native Southern Californians bonded after Nixon excitedly recounted, in remarkable detail, specific football plays he had seen Robinson make at UCLA. Robinson, a Republican, supported Nixon’s 1960 presidential candidacy against John F. Kennedy. But after his disappointments mounted regarding Nixon’s sincerity over civil rights issues, Robinson went on to support Nelson Rockefeller’s candidacy in 1964 and Hubert Humphrey ’s in 1968.

After Baseball, Robinson Split His Time Between Business, Activism and Service

Even before his career with the Dodgers finished, Robinson had many irons in the fire. By the early 1950s, he had begun engaging in business deals and using his fame and influence to advocate for Black Americans politically, socially and economically.

When Robinson left UCLA in 1941, he took a series of jobs focusing on coaching and youth development. It was a lifelong passion he would return to later in his career. In February 1952, while still employed with the Dodgers, Robinson signed a contract with NBC's flagship New York City TV stations to serve as a vice president and director of community activities. In addition to some on-air duties, his mission was to help develop youth programs in collaboration with groups such as the YMCA, the Police Athletic League, the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Youth Organization.

The private-sector job that seduced Robinson away from baseball for good came from the New York City coffee shop chain Chock Full O' Nuts. Known for treating employees well, and hiring from all races, the company offered Robinson the position of vice president in charge of personnel, which give him responsibility for more than 1,000 employees, many Black. His compensation included a $30,000 annual salary, a company car and stock options. He worked there until 1964.

In breaking baseball's color barrier, Robinson instantly became a national symbol of the pressing need for racial equality. So it was no stretch for him to engage in civil rights activism. In addition to fundraising for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he avidly worked his political connections, calling and writing Dwight Eisenhower , Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and others to press for concrete action. He became a financial activist as well, starting the Freedom National Bank, the largest black-owned bank in New York State, as well as a company that built low-income housing. The Jackie Robinson Foundation, launched by his widow after her husband's 1972 death, carried on his commitment to Black youth, offering scholarships, mentoring and leadership training.

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42: A Biography of Jack "Jackie" Robinson Paperback – August 20, 2012

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• Print length 74 pages
• Language English
• Publication date August 20, 2012
• Dimensions 5 x 0.15 x 7.99 inches
• ISBN-10 1479165107
• ISBN-13 978-1479165100
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 20, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 74 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1479165107
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1479165100
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.88 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.15 x 7.99 inches
• #3,648 in Baseball Biographies (Books)
• #12,877 in Black & African American Biographies

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Jackie Robinson

• Occupation: Baseball Player
• Born: January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia
• Died: October 24, 1972 in Stamford, Connecticut
• Best known for: The first African-American to play Major League Baseball

• His middle name was Roosevelt in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt .
• Robinson's grandparents grew up enslaved in Georgia.
• There have been several movies made about Robinson's life including the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story and the 2013 movie 42 .
• In 1997, Major League Baseball retired Robinson's jersey number, 42, for the entire league.
• April 15th is celebrated by baseball as Jackie Robinson Day. On this day all players and managers wear the number 42 in honor of Jackie.
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Jackie Robinson : a biography

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Spring training: MLB, Andre Dawson event adds to Dodgers historic legacy in Vero Beach

More history will be written this weekend at the former Navy air station turned into Dodgertown in 1948 as six teams face off in a spring training round robin, including a Friday doubleheader aired live on MLB Network.

Unlike professionals training down Interstate 95, this weekend’s teams will play for no money, but ― host Andre Dawson hopes — purely for the love of the game.

“(As my grandmother) would always say, baseball was recreation.” Dawson, a Miami native and Baseball Hall of Fame member, told me this week. “Your education was going to be the steppingstone in life and it was going to guide you through your life.”

FAMU Rattlers among teams to visit former Dodgertown

Hawk Talk: Andre Dawson talks more about HBCU baseball tournament, spring training, his career

History continues: How'd writer know March 31, 1948, would be 'biggest day' in Vero Beach history? Dodgers?

Tradition: 4 players remain from first Dodgers game in Vero Beach: What was Dodgertown like in 1948?

A new MLB era begins: Memories of Dodgertown show historic connection to Jackie Robinson Training Complex moniker

Such will be his message to the vast majority of players in MLB’s 16th annual showcase for Historically Black Colleges & Universities for the past six years named after Dawson, who walked onto the Florida A&M team in 1972. It will be the first time the event is played in Vero Beach.

Dawson went on to a 21-year MLB career, where he hit .278 with 438 home runs and was an eight-time Gold Glove winner and all-star with the Montreal Expos, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and Florida Marlins.

This weekend, the Rattlers will be the only Florida team playing, with others coming from Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas . Tickets are on sale at mlb.com. Find a full schedule at tinyurl.com/dawsonsked2024 .

The teams will play at what’s now called the Jackie Robinson Training Complex , where 76 years ago its namesake became the first Black player on a big-league roster to play in Florida (in what then was a segregated, sundown town ).

A year before, Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and became the National League rookie of the year with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1948, general manager Branch Rickey opened Dodgertown for two reasons. To create:

• A state-of-the-art baseball training facility to house 600 players on 26 teams.
• A racially integrated campus, with lodging, meals and entertainment, for the growing number of Black baseball players he was signing.

Growing up a Dodgers fan in Miami

Dodgers like Robinson, Roy Campanella (who played in that first game in 1948), Joe Black (who attended historically Black Morgan State University) and Don Newcombe blazed the trail for others and Dawson, who fell in love with baseball in the early 1960s, using busted broomsticks to hit rocks.

And while the New York Yankees and Mickey Mantle often were shown on the TV's baseball game of the week, Dawson idolized sluggers Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

The Dodgers, who by then had moved to Los Angeles, were his favorite team.

“I knew their lineup top to bottom,” Dawson said, rattling off names like Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Ron Perranoski, Ron Fairly, Willie Davis, Willie Crawford, “and I could go on and on.”

So by the time Dawson was drafted by the Montreal Expos, made the big-league team and started spring training in Daytona Beach in the late 1970s, traveling to Vero Beach and playing in Holman Stadium was “impressive.”

“I'm in spring training and I'm seeing stars of the LA Dodgers firsthand,” Dawson, National League rookie of the year 30 years after Robinson, said of the star-studded playoff teams that trained in Vero Beach.

Remembering a unique Holman Stadium

Dawson, who then played center field, remembers a hill — also called the berm or knoll ― that lined Holman Stadium's fenceless outfield.

“The fans (who sat on the berm), they were right on top of you,” said Dawson, who on March 27, 1983, hit a ball over their heads for a home run as part of a 3-0 Expos win.

 “You would walk out of the clubhouse and immediately be on the playing field, which was different,” he added, not mentioning the royal palms outfielders occasionally had to dodge near the berm.

Since MLB leased the complex from Indian River County in 2019 , the stadium and many facilities have been renovated. The complex has become the focal point of MLB’s youth programs, including those in inner cities for youngsters who might not otherwise have opportunities to play away from home.

Attracting Black children to baseball and softball has been important for MLB, which, despite its international diversity, has had Black players on rosters decline from 18% in 1991 to 6.3% in 2023, according to the University of Central Florida.

Such evolution is reflected in teams that will play this weekend.

Dawson, in middle school during integration, had an all-Black Rattlers team.   A 2019 New York Times article pointed out that things have changed dramatically.

Andre Dawson advice to students

In 2019, there were times Bethune-Cookman University , an HBCU that plays in Daytona Beach’s Jackie Robinson Stadium, did not start one Black player, the article said.

In fact, many HBCU baseball teams are loaded with white and Hispanic players. That’s, in part, due to the cost of travel baseball (which could cost thousands of dollars a year, plus a top aluminum bat for $325), the article said.

Dawson said part of the issue is athletic scholarships, which are limited in baseball compared to sports such as football. The Times article quoted Billy Hawkins, a University of Houston professor, who said young Black athletes and their parents “have an easier time envisioning success in football and basketball.”

Part of that is cultural, Hawkins was quoted as saying.

 “(The NBA and NFL) have prospered in attracting black players, but also having a blackness like you’d talk about in music or dress. For some reason, MLB hasn’t evolved similarly.”

From a business and consumer standpoint, it’s a market MLB must crack. Attracting as many fans as possible, regardless of race, is critical to its long-term success.

Dawson, one of the top FAMU baseball alums ( Hal McRae, Vince Coleman and Marquis Grissom are others), will offer sage advice to this weekend's attendees.

Part of it has to do with what to do after achieving a goal.

“I reached the major leagues,” he said, noting continuous improvement is the key. “Your work ethic has to be impeccable, because there are people coming and they want your job … there are no guarantees.”

Then there’s that adage about making an impression.

“There’s a hand-select few that are going to probably move on from this, but you never know who is watching, and you just want to make a good show,” he said of the streamed games with scouts in attendance. “Enjoy it and just make the most of it.”

Some of these players will be invited to the Swingman Classic , an HBCU showcase held in conjunction with MLB’s All-Star Week in July.

Chances are slim any will end up like Dawson, who, in his 2010 hall acceptance speech , offered other advice to youngsters.

“There are many of us up here who had nothing, who come from nothing, who wondered if nothing was all there ever was,” he said. “There is hope, but you can’t get here by skipping school, or disrespecting a parent or your teacher or your coaches. …

“Be thankful of your blessings before you receive them,” Dawson said of advice his grandmother gave him, which included telling him to take God on his journey. “You can get left behind or you can get on board.”

This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at [email protected], phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman .

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