Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in 1919 in the Deep South to a sharecropper family, the youngest of five children.\u00a0 After his father left the family when Jackie was a year old, the family moved to Pasadena.\u00a0 Jackie\u2019s mother worked a variety of jobs to support the family who took up residence at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena.\u00a0 Jackie attended John Muir High School and Pasadena Junior College.\u00a0 His older brother, Matthew Robinson \u201cMac\u201d who won a silver medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics for the 200 m dash, encouraged him to get involved in sports.\u00a0 Jackie played four sports in high school (football, basketball, track and baseball) and was named the region\u2019s Most Valuable Player for baseball in 1938.<\/p>\n
Jackie Robinson went to UCLA.\u00a0 He was the first student to win varsity letters in four sports:\u00a0 football, basketball, track and baseball.\u00a0 He met his future wife Rachel, a nursing student, while at UCLA.\u00a0 He was forced to leave UCLA shortly before completing his degree due to financial difficulties.\u00a0 He moved to Hawaii to play a short season of football for the Honolulu Bears.\u00a0 He returned to Los Angeles to play running back for the LA Bulldogs, but his football career was cut short with Pearl Harbor and the US entry into WWII.<\/p>\n
In 1942 Jackie Robinson was drafted into the US Army.\u00a0 He and several other black candidates applied to Officer Candidate School.\u00a0 Although the Army guidelines for OCS were race neutral, their applications were delayed as few black soldiers were admitted to OCS at that time.\u00a0 After protests by heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and intervention by civilian assistant aide to the Secretary of War Truman Gibson, the group was admitted to OCS.\u00a0 This resulted in a lifelong friendship between Robinson and Louis.\u00a0 Jackie Robinson was commissioned as a 2nd <\/sup>lieutenant in 1943.\u00a0 His military career was derailed in 1944 when he was court-martialed for refusing to sit at the back of an unsegregated Army bus line. During the inquiry into the incident, he challenged the investigating officer\u2019s racist line of questioning.\u00a0 The officer subsequently recommended that he be court-martialed.\u00a0 After his commanding officer refused to proceed with the court-martial, Jackie was transferred to a different unit whereupon the new commanding officer promptly proceeded with the court-martial adding additional charges including public drunkenness although he did not drink.\u00a0 He was eventually acquitted of all charges by an all white panel of nine officers. Although his unit saw combat, his court-martial barred him from being deployed overseas and he never saw combat action.<\/p>\n After the WWII, Jackie Robinson returned briefly to the LA Bulldogs.\u00a0 He accepted a position as Athletic Director at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas.\u00a0 While at Sam Huston College, Jackie received an offer to play baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League team.\u00a0 He played a season with the Monarchs all the while looking to the Major Leagues.\u00a0 He tried out unsuccessfully for the Boston Red Sox.\u00a0 He was interviewed for three hours by President and General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers Branch Rickey.\u00a0 Rickey was looking for the right black player to integrate the Major Leagues who had the temperament to withstand the racial pressures.\u00a0 On October 23, 1945 Jackie Robinson formally signed his contract to play for the Montreal Royals, a AAA International League farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1946 season with representatives from both the Royals and the Dodgers present.\u00a0 In 1946, Robinson moved to Florida to start spring training with the Montreal Royals.<\/p>\n Integration was difficult at best.\u00a0 The manager of the Royals had requested that Robinson be assigned to a different farm team.\u00a0 Rickey refused.\u00a0 Robinson was not allowed to stay at the hotel with the other players.\u00a0 He boarded with a local politician.\u00a0 Since the Dodgers did not yet own their own spring training facility, they were subject to the whims of local entities to allow the scheduling of games and training several of which turned down events that included Robinson.\u00a0 The stadium in Jacksonville was padlocked on game day allegedly due to lighting issues.\u00a0 As a result, Robinson was sent back to Daytona Beach.\u00a0 After pressure and lobbying by Rickey and other team officials, an exhibition game with the Brooklyn Dodgers was scheduled at the Daytona Beach\u2019s City Island Ballpark.\u00a0 On March 17, 1946 Jackie Robinson was the first black player to publicly play for a minor league team playing against a major league team.\u00a0 Jackie Robinson had a great year with the Royals with a .349 batting average and a .985 fielding percentage. As a result, he moved up to the Brooklyn Dodgers the following year.\u00a0 Robinson played his first game for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947 making him the first black athlete to play Major League baseball since 1880. Although the racial harassment continued, he was able to play past all of that and his extraordinary talent became apparent.\u00a0 He soon became baseball\u2019s darling.\u00a0 In 1949 he became the National League\u2019s Most Valuable Player.\u00a0 In 1955, Jackie Robinson helped the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series in a match up against the New York Yankees.\u00a0 He played one more year and retired in January, 1957 after being traded to the New York Giants.\u00a0 In 1962, Jackie Robinson became the first black player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.\u00a0 In 1972 the Dodgers retired his number \u201c42\u201d.<\/p>\n After leaving baseball, Robinson became an executive in the \u201cChock Full O\u2019 Nuts\u201d coffee chain as well as active in the business community promoting black-owned businesses and industries.\u00a0 He also participated in the establishment of the African-American owned Freedom Bank.\u00a0 He became a loud voice in the Civil Rights Movement challenging politicians from both sides of the aisle to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964<\/em>.\u00a0 Robinson continued to criticize major league teams who were slow to integrate minorities into management and staff positions.<\/p>\n Jackie Robinson became involved in politics during the 1964 Presidential campaign as Nelson Rockefeller unsuccessfully campaigned for the Republican nomination.\u00a0 Robinson was one of six National Directors for the Rockefeller campaign.\u00a0 Rockefeller was subsequently reelected Governor of New York and named Robinson \u201cSpecial Assistant for Community Affairs\u201d.<\/p>\n Jackie Robinson was posthumously awarded the \u201cPresidential Medal of Freedom\u201d by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and in 2005 President George W. Bush awarded him the \u201cCongressional Gold Medal\u201d.\u00a0 Jackie Robinson was a lifelong Republican.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photo via JackieRobinson.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in 1919 in the Deep South to a sharecropper family, the youngest of five children.\u00a0 After his father left the family when Jackie was a year old, the family moved to Pasadena.\u00a0 Jackie\u2019s mother worked a variety of jobs to support the family who took up residence at 121 Pepper…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"yoast_head":"\n