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Robinson, Jackie (1919–1972), athlete and autobiographer. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, and grew up in Pasadena, California. He was a star athlete in high school and junior college before becoming an athletic legend at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1939 to 1941, playing football, baseball, basketball, and competing in track and field. He joined the army in 1942 and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1945 after breaking a white bus driver's jaw in a disagreement about moving to the back of the bus.
Robinson was selected by Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to become the first African American to play Major League baseball in the twentieth century. Entering the big leagues in 1947, Robinson had to abide by an agreement he made with Rickey not to be provoked to retaliation by taunts from white players and fans. Robinson endured racial epithets shouted by opposing players and patrons, segregated hotel and restaurant accommodations, balls thrown at his head by opposing pitchers, spiking incidents by opposing runners, volumes of hate mail, and a threatened strike by some white players including several on his own team. Nontheless, he performed brilliantly in the field and earned Rookie-of-the-Year honors in 1947. During his nine years with the Dodgers, Robinson also won a Most Valuable Player award and a batting title. He was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962.
Robinson's influence can be most easily seen in the film persona of Sidney Poitier in the 1950s and 1960s, who tended to play black characters who were forced to function under great pressure and stress in the white world, maintaining his dignity and poise while pacifistically revealing his contempt when he is mistreated. Robinson's behavior in his first few years in the big leagues became the model, along with Gandhi, for the nonviolent civil rights marchers in the 1950s and 1960s. Robinson died in 1972 at the age of fifty-three. Many believe that what he endured in his days as a player took a dramatic toll on his health. Robinson coauthored several autobiographies including Breakthrough to the Big Leagues (with Alfred Duckett), published in 1965; Jackie Robinson: My Own Story (with black sportswriter Wendell Smith), published in 1948; and I Never Had It Made (with Alfred Duckett), published in 1974.
Gerald Early
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
