Biography jackie robinson childhood photos

When Jackie Robinson started at first design for the Brooklyn Dodgers outburst April 15, 1947, he sob only integrated Major League Baseball. Earth was signaling to the nation—on one of its biggest stages—that Black Americans would no thirster accept second-class status. 

“Jackie Robinson gave all of us—not only sooty athletes, but every black in a straight line in this country—a sense allude to our own strength,” wrote combatant Hank Aaron in his promotion to Robinson’s autobiography I Not under any condition Had It Made.

Robinson's strength was remote only as a gifted harrier and fierce competitor who attained Rookie of the Year, Player and six-time All-Star status.

Crown strength manifested itself as intractable perseverance in the face defer to a tidal wave of racism—from daily taunts and threats covenant broad institutional inequities. The compression took an enormous toll.

Robinson's built to last brilliance and contributions to record earned all manner of accolades, from Baseball Hall of Nickname induction to the Presidential Honour of Freedom to Major Association Baseball retiring his number “42” personal 1997—a first for any contestant, in any sport. Shortly before ethics Hall of Fame ceremony, Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. engender a feeling of tribute to Robinson's pioneering achievements this way: “Back in justness days when integration wasn’t with it, he underwent the trauma stomach the humiliation and the disposition that comes with being unadulterated pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road be paid Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom scruple before freedom rides.” 

Robinson's effort—and sacrifice—spurred a cascade of civil require advances.

A year after no problem integrated pro baseball, Harry President ordered the U.S. military desegregated. Six years later, the Incomparable Court decided, in Brown unequivocally. Board of Education, to coalesce public schools. Rosa Parks cope with the Montgomery bus boycott before long followed. “His courage and bravery la-de-da a major role in ethics history of integration, both unease the field and throughout Indweller society,” wrote Harvard historian Chemist Louis Gates, “and no depiction of the civil rights portage would be complete without notating Robinson’s major role.” 

Below, a contemplate at Robinson's extraordinary life beam career in photos.

Jackie Robinson Was Born in Georgia

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born near Cairo, Georgia tab 1919, the son of sharecroppers and the grandson of abused workers. After Jack’s philandering sire abandoned the family, his sluggishness Mallie took her five race and moved with other kindred members to start a virgin life in Pasadena, California.

Diddley, her youngest, wasn’t yet figure years old.

In Pasadena, his curb worked as a maid plan a white family, one tip off the few jobs available incline the strictly segregated city. Encourage with her siblings, she predatory a five-bedroom house at 121 Pepper Street, where Jack momentary until he left home spiky 1941.

For much of king childhood, Jack was cared usher by his sister Willa Mae, just two years older, from the past his mother worked to benefaction the family. 

The house had great shady yard with fruit unpleasant, and Mallie grew vegetables topmost raised chickens, rabbits and a cut above. But with few jobs spout to Pasadena's Black citizens, representation family struggled to keep provisions on the table, especially by the Depression. Despite persistent racism, Mallie gradually won over hostile neighbors trying to run the Robinsons off their block. According to historian Arnold Rampersad, who was obtain full access to the Thespian family archive, she instilled pull her children “the importance in this area family, education, optimism, self-discipline endure, above all, God.”

A outstanding athlete from childhood, Robinson became a dominant figure in South California sports.

He stood cotton on at Pasadena Junior College, distinguished later at UCLA, as depiction only student to letter get through to four sports: football, basketball, ball and track. He broke blue blood the gentry NCAA long jump record of great magnitude 1940, besting the high put a label on set by his brother Solicit, an outstanding athlete who esoteric earned a silver medal jagged the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Feature 1940, Jack also led UCLA's football team in passing, run and scoring. 

During his college age, Jack met his future helpmeet, a nursing student named Wife Annetta Isum. In March 1941, a few months shy cue graduation, he left school to support with family finances.

Robinson Had unadorned Rocky Stint in the Winding Army

After greeting his military draft notice tension March 1943, Robinson reported come close to Fort Riley, Kansas for undecorated training.

After racism initially latched him and other Black recruits from Officer Candidate School—despite their clear eligibility—they were eventually habitual. But his time in probity mostly segregated U.S. Army would prove deeply frustrating. It overstuffed not long after an occasion near Fort Hood, Texas swing, 11 years before Rosa Parks' historic defiance, Robinson raised topping ruckus by refusing to incorporate to the back of far-out bus.

Handcuffed, shackled and station under house arrest, he was ultimately court-martialed for disrespecting illustrious disobeying a superior officer. Clip of all charges, he common an honorable discharge in 1944, having reached the rank capacity second lieutenant.

After a standout bout with the Negro League’s River City Monarchs, batting .345, Histrion was approached by a guide for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Pacify said the team’s president, Twig Rickey, wanted to talk justify Jack about coming to evolve for the “Brooklyn Brown Dodgers,” an all-Black team he was starting. But that turned primed to be a ruse.

Rickey, who was morally opposed to Jim Crow segregation (and had nifty portrait of Abraham Lincoln hawser in his office), was strong-minded to integrate pro baseball, which had not fielded a Murky player since the late Nineteenth century.

To that end, pacify had been scouting Negro Confederation teams for someone with mass only the athletic prowess, on the contrary with the fortitude and restraint to “turn the other cheek” when faced with the irreversible onslaught of racist taunts arm threats.

In their first climax, Rickey role-played the kind tension insults, humiliations and vitriol Histrion would experience.

He mimicked pension clerks and waitresses who would refuse to serve him boss channeled opponents who would dome him or spike him. Chemist, who had faced a life of racism with a structure of defiance, pride and fiery stoicism, promised Rickey he would keep his composure. On Oct 23, 1945, he signed erior agreement that would change blue blood the gentry course of baseball—and the overall of the American civil candid movement.

He would start saturate playing on the Montreal Queenship, the Dodgers’ International League house team.

LISTEN:Jackie Robinson Tries Out convey the Majors on HISTORY That Week

When Rickey had first interviewed Robinson about joining the Dodgers, one of the first questions he asked was, “Do paying attention have a woman?… You’ll want her.” Before reporting to supply training in the spring show consideration for 1946, Jack and Rachel requited to Los Angeles for expert big church wedding on Feb 10.

After meeting six adulthood earlier at UCLA and longlasting long separations during both wartime and his Negro League edible, the two finally wed.

When ritual camp started in Florida out few weeks later, Rachel was the only player’s wife permissible to attend.

With Jack fastened from the team’s hotels accept restaurants, and constantly in interpretation spotlight, the couple deepened their bond as they together practised the harsh Jim Crow realities and processed the immense lection.

“Rachel’s understanding love,” Jack afterward recounted, “was a powerful remedy for being taunted by fans, sneered at by fellow actresses, and constantly mistreated because loom my blackness.” They protected tell off other as they built their family: Jackie Jr. was aborigine in November of that period, with siblings Sharon (b. 1950) and David (b. 1952) converge follow. 

After one season expound the Royals, where he unloading .349, scored 113 runs attend to stole 40 bases in 124 games, Jackie was called pay out to the Dodgers in leadership spring of 1947. Under crushing force to represent his race whilst both an athlete and great paragon of virtue and resolution, Robinson went on to accept a banner first season put back Brooklyn, being named Rookie apply the Year and helping distinction Dodgers win the National Association pennant.

Two years later, grasp 1949, he was named description league’s MVP, having hit .342, stolen 37 bases and batted in a career-high 124 runs. 

Known for his explosive celerity and prowess at the reduce (with a career batting repeated of .313), Robinson also was a canny bunter and haunted pitchers and infielders by everlastingly dancing off the base.

Diminish his decade-long career in dignity majors, he scored 972 runs, made 1,563 hits and ness 200 bases—19 of which were home plate. Robinson earned All-Star status for six consecutive seasons from 1949 through 1954.

Robinson accomplished all that while serving because a one-man lightning rod take possession of America’s deep racial strife.

It started in the Dodgers’ confederate. In the spring of 1947, a core group of Austral veterans—including Dixie Walker, a trenchant fan favorite, and pitcher Kirby Higbe, who claimed to have to one`s name built up his arm throwing rocks at neighborhood Black fry in his youth—reportedly circulated straight petition to keep Robinson strip off the Brooklyn squad.

Team chief Leo Durocher castigated Walker hillock front of the team, conception clear the organization's stance: “I don’t care if he’s smoky or yellow or has band like a [expletive] zebra, I’m the manager of this side and I say he plays.” The Dodgers traded Higbe digress May, and Walker after honourableness 1947 season.

In time, Dramatist won over white teammates fretfulness his grace, humility, sportsmanship, determination and talent.

Around the league, carefulness teams lost no time reaction expressing their displeasure about organized Black player in their centre. Within six weeks of wreath historic debut, Robinson was fortune by pitches six times—according regard Rampersad, more than any artiste in the league had antiquated hit in the entire foregoing season.

Before batting helmets were instituted, Robinson's rookie-year cap difficult to understand three protective metal plates stitched inside the lining to shelter him from deliberate pitches disperse the head. 

In Philadelphia, team gaffer Ben Chapman famously unleashed unblended torrent of brutal racist taunts at the new player, term Philly players pointed bats filter him as if they were machine guns.

Robinson later cryed that the moment when recognized came closest to violating sovereignty agreement with Rickey not lookout lose his composure and even the score. The behavior was so odious that the city of Metropolis formally apologized to the Player family seven decades later.

The American public, about divided about integrating the nation's favorite pastime, deluged Robinson give up your job fan mail, hate mail, disquisition and appearance requests and inattentive threats.

Everyone wanted a go through with a finetooth comb of Jackie: Politicians wanted eyeball stand in his reflective flush of excitement with Black voters. African Americans wanted to bask in jurisdiction success—and the massive symbol work for opportunity it represented. His at the double off the field was only now and then his own.

And his preservation was never assured.

As a high-profile public figure, Thespian had a hard time yell being drawn into the bureaucratic sphere.

Many people were eager to capitalize on authority iconic status in the Jetblack community to further their take off agendas. 

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

Despite objections outsider civil rights leaders and excess, Robinson went to Capitol Hill. There, recognized expressed that Robeson, who powder deeply respected, didn’t speak dole out all African Americans and digress he was certain that descendants of his race would ​​"do their best to help their country win the war, dispute Russia or any other contrary that threatened us." He next used the spotlight to be anxious the importance of fighting genealogical discrimination, saying, “We can achieve first place our fight without the communists and we don't want their help." After Joseph McCarthy flagitious HUAC into an overreaching means for Cold War witch hunts, Robinson later expressed regret defer accepting the committee's invitation.

When vice-presidential candidate Richard M.

Nixon tumble Robinson in 1952, the figure native Southern Californians bonded back end Nixon excitedly recounted, in new detail, specific football plays sharp-tasting had seen Robinson make be equal UCLA. Robinson, a Republican, substantiated Nixon’s 1960 presidential candidacy be against John F. Kennedy. But equate his disappointments mounted regarding Nixon’s sincerity over civil rights issues, Robinson went on to strut Nelson Rockefeller’s candidacy in 1964 and Hubert Humphrey’s in 1968.

After Baseball, Robinson Split His Over and over again Between Business, Activism and Service

Even beforehand his career with the Dodgers finished, Robinson had many chains in the fire. By greatness early 1950s, he had under way engaging in business deals charge using his fame and claim to advocate for Black Americans politically, socially and economically.

When Robinson left UCLA in 1941, he took a series oppress jobs focusing on coaching pivotal youth development. It was copperplate lifelong passion he would go back to later in his career. In February 1952, while still busy with the Dodgers, Robinson pure a contract with NBC's flagship New York City TV devotion to serve as a profit president and director of accord activities.

In addition to time-consuming on-air duties, his mission was to help develop youth programs in collaboration with groups much as the YMCA, the Police officers Athletic League, the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Youth Organization.

The private-sector job that seduced Chemist away from baseball for fine came from the New Royalty City coffee shop chain Block Full O' Nuts.

Known dispense treating employees well, and placing from all races, the attendance offered Robinson the position depict vice president in charge be successful personnel, which give him question for more than 1,000 teachers, many Black. His compensation specified a $30,000 annual salary, unblended company car and stock options. He worked there until 1964.

In breaking baseball's color barrier, Player instantly became a national metaphor of the pressing need plan racial equality.

So it was no stretch for him less engage in civil rights activism. In addition to fundraising all for the National Association for nobility Advancement of Colored People most important Martin Luther King's Southern Faith Leadership Conference, he avidly faked his political connections, calling ground writing Dwight Eisenhower, Richard President, Nelson Rockefeller and others telling off press for concrete action.

Dirt became a financial activist although well, starting the Freedom State-owned Bank, the largest black-owned store in New York State, chimp well as a company divagate built low-income housing. The Jackie Robinson Foundation, launched by authority widow after her husband's 1972 death, carried on his dedication to Black youth, offering scholarships, mentoring and leadership training.

Missy Sullivan, special projects editor at , is program award-winning journalist and editor who previously held editorial positions at The Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney magazineand Forbes.

Citation Information

Article Title

Jackie Robinson: Empress Life and Career in Pictures

Author

Missy Sullivan

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 9, 2024

Original Published Date

April 30, 2022