...42 is a number retired by all teams in the MLB. That's because it belonged to Jackie Robinson. He made history when he became the first African American to play major league baseball. Jackie Robinson was the youngest of 5 in a poor family. He was born in 1919 in Cairo,Georgia but moved to Pasadena, California. He was inspired by his brother Matthew to pursue his athletic career when Matthew won a silver medal in the Olymics in Berlin. When he was in high school he was called the best baseball player in his region. After high school he went to junior collage in Pasadena where he played baseball also then to UCLA. After that he joined the army where he got kicked out for not moving to the back of a segregated bus. Then started playing in the...
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...Batter Swing! Into the History of the legend Jackie Robinson. A hero to me is someone who goes above and beyond to help someone, or make a change. An example is Martin Luther King Jr. because he helped a lot with by giving a speech to help inspire people that just because someone has different colored skin doesn’t mean you should think different of that person. Jackie Robinson was a great example of a hero because of the symbolism he showed towards the Civil Rights Movement and his accomplishments as the first African American Major League Baseball Player. The early life of Jackie Robinson really opened a door for the man that he became. “Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia” ("Jackie Robinson" Encyclopedia...
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...Jackie Robinson Jackie Robinson, the best baseball player in the twentieth century, was the first African American to play in the Major League Baseball and opened up the generation for colored people to play baseball. He courageously changed and challenged the deeply rooted custom of racial segregation in both the north and the south. He also gave the African Americans a different focus for life then just stepping back and letting them get walked all over by the words form the whites. Jackie proved a lot from when he made major achievements in high school from a one parent family, to trying out for the Major Leagues. Then put in his will to create a foundation after he was deceased to help out teens that struggled through life like him. Jackie Robinson came from a hardworking single-parent family with the strength to shake the world. He attended John Muir High School and also Pasadena Junior College (Jackie Robinson Foundation). At UCLA, Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track (Official website). After he was turned away for wanting to play major league baseball, he put a lot of thought in to it and decided he needed to do something else first. He volunteered for the Army one year before war was declared and got sent on April 3rd (Mary 33). From 1942 to 1944, Robinson served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army in World War II, and was discharged from the Army in 1944 (The Biography)....
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...During 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play baseball. 1919 Jackie Robinson was born, and he was the youngest child in his family. He started playing baseball in 1947. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in New York City. The owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to break the color barrier of baseball. He was watching one of the Negro Leagues, and he saw Jackie Robinson performing very well. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, because he was the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball, he had to deal with the racism, and also he had to fight against segregation. Jackie Robinson had many racists said to him when he played baseball. “In light of his outstanding performance, it was clear that Robinson...
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...Jackie Robinson, Why Him? The story of Jackie Robinson has become one of America's most iconic and inspiring stories. Since 1947, American history has portrayed Jackie Robinson as a hero, and he has been idolized as a role model to the African American baseball community. It is an unarguable fact that he was the first to tear down the color barriers within professional baseball. The topic of Robinson’s role in integration has long been a point of discussion amongst baseball historians. Researchers have accumulated thousands of accredited documents and interviews with friends and team mates such as short stop, Pee Wee Reese, and team owner, Branch Rickey. However, few journalists have asked why Robinson was selected and what was Branch Rickey’s motivation? While Robinson was the first Negro player to break into the ranks of professional baseball, it can be argued that he was not the first to attempt the undertaking. In actuality, Jackie possibly was not even the first player the Brooklyn Dodgers’ organization considered for the job. The Warner Brothers film, 42, The Jackie Robinson Story (2013), highlights the accomplishments of Jackie and rightfully so, as he was an amazing man. The story actually starts prior to 1947 and ends years later in 1959, three years after his retirement in 1956. Early in his career at Ohio Wesleyan University, where Branch Rickey played and coached baseball, an incident occurred with one of his young black players, Charlie Thomas, which...
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...Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. He was the youngest of five children. Jackie’s father left the family shortly after he was born. Jackie never saw his father again. His mother raised him and his three brothers and one sister. About a year after Jackie was born, the family moved to Pasadena, California. There Jackie grew up watching is older brother excelling in sports. His brother became a track star who won a silver medal in the 200 meter dash the 1936 Olympics. Jackie loved to play sports. In high school he ran track like his older brother and also played other sports like football, baseball, tennis, and basketball. He was the quarterback of the football and the star player on the baseball team. Jackie had a deal to racism all through high school. Most of his teammates were white. Most of the white people would cheer him on the field. He was treated second class citizen off the field. After college, Robinson went to play professional football, but his career to a quick end with the start of World War II. He was drafted into the army. Jackie met the famous boxing champion Joe Lewis at basic training and they became friends. Joe helped Robinson get accepted into officer training. Once Jackie finished his officer...
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...The Integration of Baseball & its Effect on Social Movements The integration of baseball during 1947-1959 was a time period where barriers were broken resulting in positive social changes that would alleviate class conflicts. Social changes through integration of baseball helped the Civil Rights movements although its major impacts weren’t made until the late 1960s. Baseball players were praised within the sport of baseball; however, their social status still remained the same. What was the impact of the integration of baseball on the Civil Rights movement and the social status of African Americans? These players did great things to help change the game of baseball, but were not respected by majority of their peers. The challenges that did players had to face were ridiculous. Recognized as superstars on the field, baseball players like Jackie Robinson were looked down upon by society because of their skin color. Therefore, the effects of baseball integration on society was crucial for the Civils Rights movement, but its impact was limited at best for individual baseball players and for the collective African American society since their social status as a whole remained the same. This would lead to residual class conflicts. Even the process of baseball integration was not smooth as some teams embraced integration for various reasons such as competitive advantage or box office potential, but others such as the American League’s old guard faced public pressure to limit the integration...
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...Jackie Robinson Jackie robinson is a very well known baseball player best known for breaking the color bearer in baseball in 1947, but there are also many other things that made Jackie Robinson such a great person. Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo Georgia on January 31 1919. He was the youngest of five and was raised by his single mother living in poverty but making due with what they have. Jackie then went on to UCLA where he was a star athlete in baseball, basketball, football and track and field. Robinson won the regions most valuable player in baseball in 1938 while at UCLA. He played all sports for four years except in baseball where he only played three because he got sent home before graduating because of financial trouble and couldn't play tuition. After leaving college he left the mainland at went to honolulu hawaii to play semi-pro football for the honolulu bears. There he played running back and safety, scoring eight touchdowns and three interceptions over ten games. Mr. Robinson won player of the week three times with his one season with the bears. After his stint with the honolulu bears Jackie made the decision to enroll into the army....
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...30, 2014 Jackie Robinson Robinson, Jackie (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) baseball player, civil rights activist was born in Cairo, Georgia the youngest of five children. His parents were Jerry and Mallie Robinson. Mallie Robinson worked several different jobs after her husband Jerry left the family in 1920. At Muir Tech, Robinson played several sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track, and baseball. Robinson attended Pasadena Junior College (PJC), where he continued his athletic career by participating in basketball, football, baseball, and track. After graduating from PJC in spring 1939, Robinson transferred to UCLA, where he became the school's first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track. Robinson was one of four black football players on the UCLA Bruins football team. Robinson was also the 1940 NCAA Track and Field Champion in the long jump. Ironically baseball was Robinson worst sport at UCLA he only hit .098. While at UCLA, he met his future wife, Rachel Isum. Robinson's eligibility ended at the end of 1941, UCLA asked Robinson to stay and even offered financial support to him. He didn’t have much money, but he turned down the offer respectively. An interesting fact is Robinson never graduated from UCLA. Robinson then became an assistant athletic director with the government's National Youth Administration (NYA) in Atascadero, California. Robinson moved to Honolulu...
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...1700 Baseballs Great Experiment, Jules Tygiel 11/1/13 The book Baseballs Great Experiment shows how people under the right circumstances can change history in the making. Tygiel starts out the story by telling how baseball started out segregated which allowed the reader to see through the eyes of Jackie Robinson and experience his life and how he and Rickey Branch changed the game of baseball. Tygiel’s thesis in this book is that Jackie Robinson was the best example on how to produce a change in a society that has unfair prejudice by maintaining class and composure, never giving up in the face of racism and even harm to himself. Tygiel also refers to Robinson impact on the other African American baseball players who wanted to join the major league and African Americans as a whole to change the Jim Crow league. One of the strengths in Tygiel’s book is his attention to detail. The detail he put into this book had to have taken hours and hours of research to compile all the data he used. Tygiel tells the story the African American baseball leagues as well as Jackie Robinsons and even feeds information on how the leagues were formed and how the desegregation affected the players. One of the weaknesses of the book can be the long list of statistics. For a baseball fanatic who understands the game, the statistics may be a strength considering that the stats make sense for the book to go along. But for the average readers that might not know anything about baseball or the...
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...league baseball game. #2 Jackie Robison started his professional athletic career in football. in 1941 he played briefly with the Honolulu bears & the los Angeles. Both teams were part of the Pacific coast league during an area when black players were explicitly banned from NFL. #3 In 1945 Jackie Robison signed on with the Kansas city monarchs baseball team, the Negro American team. #4 sixty years ago Jackie Robinson became the first professional baseball player in North America to cross over from black to white baseball when he joined the Montreal Royals, a farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. A year later, Robinson was moved into the Dodger lineup at second base, a...
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...We have all heard of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. He is a household name among baseball fans, and even those who don’t favor the sport. Robinson shattered the color barrier in professional sports, and changed them in a way unimaginable. Born in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson was brought into a poor family. His mother worked several jobs, all low paying, and made barely enough to feed her family of six. With a father who ran off on the family, Robinson had only his older siblings to look up to. His brother had participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics and won a silver medal. Still, Robinson made bad choices. He joined a gang around age thirteen, but shortly left it after a friend persuaded him. With nothing filling up his life, Robinson decided to join high school football and baseball. Robinson was spectacular, demolishing records in both sports. He then joined track, and even played basketball for a short period of time. As baseball and football seasons ended, several colleges brought him offers to play for them....
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...first African American of the 20th century to play in major league baseball: Jackie Robinson Jackie Robinson was born January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. He was the first African American man to be on the American Major League Baseball team. After all his hard work and dedication to the sport of baseball, he became a hero to many. Although he broke through as the first African American to play major league baseball, many still thought it wasn’t right for him to be playing because of the color of his skin. Despite Jackie Robinson’s hard childhood, he put in the work to get to where he wanted to be. His long-lasting career and all his tough work put into baseball paid off through his statistics and even his induction into the Hall of Fame after his career ended. Jackie’s childhood...
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...There were many inspirational African Americans who changed the way of life for others. African Americans have broken down many barriers most would have thought to be impossible. However, one African American has broken down the wall to Major league baseball. Jackie Robinson was the first negro player in the major leagues. Jackie robinson was born on January 31st in Georgia. But he moved to Pasadena, California with his mother in 1920. He would later exceed in five sports at his high school and went on to play basketball, football and baseball at UCLA. Due to financial struggles he was forced to leave UCLA and decided to enlist in the army. Unfortunately Jackie was discharged because of racial discrimination in 1944. In 1945 jackie...
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...racism are three things that describe Jackie Robinson. Many people know that Jackie Robinson is a great baseball player, but he was so much more. As a well known colored baseball player, Jackie Robinson showed Americans that anyone can play in the major leagues. He left the lasting legacy for breaking the color barrier and more colored players play today. The early life of Jackie Robinson was very rough because his dad worked on a plantation and didn’t make much money. Then his dad abandoned the family and ran away with a neighbor, which is really messed up. (Robinson 4) Then shortly, the mom moved the whole family to Pasadena, and this messed with Jackie because he didn’t have a father or father figure to help him...
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