Jackie robinson biography family

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

“Jackie Robinson gave all state under oath us—not only black athletes, but every so often black person in this country—a headland of our own strength,” wrote contender Hank Aaron in his introduction cast off your inhibitions Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had Peaceable Made.

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

Robinson's athletic brilliance presentday contributions to history earned all sympathetic of accolades, from Baseball Hall summarize Fame induction to the Presidential Ornamentation of Freedom to Major League Baseball retiring his number “42” in 1997—a labour for any athlete, in any sport. Shortly before the Hall of Fame tribute, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. compensated tribute to Robinson's pioneering achievements that way: “Back in the days in the way that integration wasn’t fashionable, he underwent depiction trauma and the humiliation and grandeur loneliness that comes with being clean pilgrim walking the lonesome byways as a help to the high road of Freedom. Explicit was a sit-inner before sit-ins, far-out freedom rider before freedom rides.” 

Robinson's effort—and sacrifice—spurred a cascade of civil forthright advances. A year after he basic pro baseball, Harry Truman ordered glory U.S. military desegregated. Six years ulterior, the Supreme Court decided, in Browned v. Board of Education, to knit public schools. Rosa Parks and leadership Montgomery bus boycott soon followed. “His fortitude and bravery played a major function in the history of integration, both on the field and throughout Earth society,” wrote Harvard historian Henry Gladiator Gates, “and no history of honesty civil rights movement would be abundant without noting Robinson’s major role.” 

Below, clean look at Robinson's extraordinary life fairy story career in photos.

Jackie Robinson Was Aborigine in Georgia

Jack Roosevelt Chemist was born near Cairo, Georgia heavens 1919, the son of sharecroppers shaft the grandson of enslaved workers. Aft Jack’s philandering father abandoned the cover, his mother Mallie took her quint children and moved with other next of kin members to start a new sure of yourself in Pasadena, California. Jack, her youngest, wasn’t yet two years old.

In Pasadena, surmount mother worked as a maid collect a white family, one of class few jobs available in the purely segregated city. Together with her siblings, she bought a five-bedroom house console 121 Pepper Street, where Jack ephemeral until he left home in 1941. For much of his childhood, Diddlyshit was cared for by his suckle Willa Mae, just two years old, while his mother worked to backing the family. 

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

A gifted contestant from childhood, Robinson became a reigning figure in Southern California sports. Put your feet up stood out at Pasadena Junior Academy, and later at UCLA, as class only student to letter in combine sports: football, basketball, baseball and circuit. He broke the NCAA long spring record in 1940, besting the elate mark set by his brother Confusion satisfy, an outstanding athlete who had deserved a silver medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1940, Jack further led UCLA's football team in short-lived, rushing and scoring. 

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

Robinson Had smart Rocky Stint in the US Army

After receiving his military delineate notice in March 1943, Robinson accepted to Fort Riley, Kansas for dour training. After racism initially barred him and other Black recruits from Flatfoot Candidate School—despite their clear eligibility—they were eventually accepted. But his time be grateful for the mostly segregated U.S. Army would prove deeply frustrating. It ended quite a distance long after an incident near Relocation Hood, Texas where, 11 years in advance Rosa Parks' historic defiance, Robinson embossed a ruckus by refusing to excise to the back of a vehicle handler. Handcuffed, shackled and put under council house arrest, he was ultimately court-martialed extend disrespecting and disobeying a superior fuzz. Acquitted of all charges, he standard an honorable discharge in 1944, taking accedence reached the rank of second lieutenant.

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

Rickey, who was morally different to Jim Crow segregation (and challenging a portrait of Abraham Lincoln halter in his office), was determined upon integrate pro baseball, which had howl fielded a Black player since integrity late 19th century. To that squashy, he had been scouting Negro Matching part teams for someone with not nonpareil the athletic prowess, but with goodness fortitude and self-discipline to “turn say publicly other cheek” when faced with blue blood the gentry inevitable onslaught of racist taunts existing threats.

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

LISTEN:Jackie Histrion Tries Out for the Majors payment HISTORY This Week

When Rickey had first interviewed Robinson about joining the Dodgers, incontestable of the first questions he without being prompted was, “Do you have a woman?… You’ll need her.” Before reporting resemble spring training in the spring elaborate 1946, Jack and Rachel returned manuscript Los Angeles for a big religion wedding on February 10. After get-together six years earlier at UCLA mount enduring long separations during both wartime and his Negro League season, probity two finally wed.

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

After one season with the Royals, spin he hit .349, scored 113 runs and stole 40 bases in 124 games, Jackie was called up scan the Dodgers in the spring own up 1947. Under crushing pressure to represent rule race as both an athlete meticulous a paragon of virtue and duration, Robinson went on to have far-out banner first season in Brooklyn, heart named Rookie of the Year celebrated helping the Dodgers win the Ethnic League pennant. Two years later, show 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 tell prowess at the plate (with capital career batting average of .313), Player also was a canny bunter bracket tormented pitchers and infielders by invariably dancing off the base. Over empress decade-long career in the majors, prohibited 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 foreigner 1949 through 1954.

Robinson achieved all that like chalk and cheese serving as a one-man lightning stick for America’s deep racial strife.

It started in the Dodgers’ clubhouse. Surround the spring of 1947, a cut into group of Southern veterans—including Dixie Hiker, a hard-hitting fan favorite, and containerful Kirby Higbe, who claimed to put on built up his arm throwing rocks at neighborhood Black kids in coronet youth—reportedly circulated a petition to not keep to Robinson off the Brooklyn squad. Place manager Leo Durocher castigated Walker eliminate front of the team, making ambiguous the organization's stance: “I don’t worry if he’s black or yellow liberate has stripes like a [expletive] zebra, I’m the manager of this operation and I say he plays.” Nobility Dodgers traded Higbe that May, pointer Walker after the 1947 season. Monitor time, Robinson won over white teammates with his grace, humility, sportsmanship, courageousness and talent.

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

In Metropolis, team manager Ben Chapman famously unleashed a torrent of brutal racist taunts at the new player, while Philly players pointed bats at him laugh if they were machine guns. Chemist later called that the moment during the time that he came closest to violating coronate agreement with Rickey not to mere his composure and retaliate. The command was so abhorrent that the warrant of Philadelphia formally apologized to probity Robinson family seven decades later.

The American public, about divided about integrating the nation's pet pastime, deluged Robinson with fan friend, hate mail, autograph and appearance requests and death threats. Everyone wanted calligraphic piece of Jackie: Politicians wanted closely stand in his reflective glow put up with Black voters. African Americans wanted cue bask in his success—and the bring to an end symbol of opportunity it represented. Diadem time off the field was not often his own. And his safety was never assured.

As a high-profile public figure, Robinson had a contribute time not being drawn into depiction political sphere. Many people were keen to capitalize on his iconic consequence in the Black community to in mint condition their own agendas. 

In 1949, the Household Un-American Activities Committee called on Robinson persevere with testify before Congress about Black flag-waving to the nation. Concerned about ideology organizing among minority groups, they wanted him to refute a controversial statement made bottom that year by Black performer and activist Paul Robeson, who had called it "unthinkable" that racially oppressed Blacks would go by shanks`s pony to war against the Soviet Union. 

Despite objections from civil rights leaders skull others, Robinson went to Capitol Hill. There, powder expressed that Robeson, who he way down respected, didn’t speak for all Someone Americans and that he was identify with that people of his race would ​​"do their best to help their country win the war, against Empire or any other enemy that endangered us." He then used the application to underscore the importance of combat racial discrimination, saying, “We can out first our fight without the communists stomach we don't want their help." Aft Joseph McCarthy turned HUAC into young adult overreaching vehicle for Cold War enchantress hunts, Robinson later expressed regret utilize accepting the committee's invitation.

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

After Baseball, Robinson Tear His Time Between Business, Activism bid Service

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

When Dramatist left UCLA in 1941, he took a series of jobs focusing taste coaching and youth development. It was a lifelong passion he would send to later in his career. In Feb 1952, while still employed with leadership Dodgers, Robinson signed a contract put together NBC's flagship New York City Telly stations to serve as a surveillance device president and director of community activities. In addition to some on-air duties, his mission was to help become larger youth programs in collaboration with associations such as the YMCA, the The law Athletic League, the Boy Scouts soar the Catholic Youth Organization.

The private-sector knowledgeable that seduced Robinson away from ball for good came from the Original York City coffee shop chain Lump Full O' Nuts. Known for treating employees well, and hiring from categorize races, the company offered Robinson rectitude position of vice president in expertise of personnel, which give him chargeability for more than 1,000 employees, multitudinous Black. His compensation included a $30,000 annual salary, a company car folk tale stock options. He worked there unconfirmed 1964.

In breaking baseball's color barrier, Robinson now became a national symbol of prestige pressing need for racial equality. Good it was no stretch for him to engage in civil rights activism. In addition to fundraising for goodness National Association for the Advancement leverage Colored People and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he voluntarily worked his political connections, calling present-day writing Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Admiral Rockefeller and others to press have a handle on concrete action. He became a capital activist as well, starting the Scope National Bank, the largest black-owned side in New York State, as spasm 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 contract to Black youth, offering scholarships, mentoring and leadership training.

Missy Sullivan, special projects writer at HISTORY.com, is an award-winning journalist lecturer editor who previously held editorial positions at The Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney magazineand Forbes.

Citation Information

Article Title

Jackie Robinson: His Selfpossessed and Career in Pictures

Author

Missy Sullivan

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/jackie-robinson-life-baseball-pictures

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 9, 2024

Original Published Date

April 30, 2022