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• Born: 31 January 1919
• Birthplace: Cairo, Georgia
• Died: 24 October 1972 (diabetes)
• Best Known As: The man who broke baseball's color barrier

Jackie Robinson was the first African-American to play in baseball's major leagues in the modern era. Only white players were accepted in the major leagues until 1947, when Robinson was called up to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He made his first major league appearance on 15 April 1947. Robinson was named Rookie of the Year for 1947 and went on to appear in six World Series in ten seasons with the Dodgers (1947-56). Other major league teams soon followed Brooklyn's lead and hired black players of their own. Robinson's stellar play, and his role in breaking the color barrier, led to his 1962 induction as the first African-American in baseball's Hall of Fame. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Robinson's first year with the Dodgers, Major League Baseball permanently retired Robinson's uniform number, 42. He is the only baseball player ever to have been so honored. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Robinson was mainly a second baseman, though he also played at first and third... The Brooklyn Dodgers moved west and became the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 1957 season... Robinson attended UCLA, where he lettered in four sports: track, baseball, football and basketball... He served in the U.S. Army from 1941-44... According to the official site of Robinson's estate, "Jackie married Rachel Isum, a nursing student he met at UCLA, in 1946." They had three children: Jackie Jr., Sharon and David.

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

Jack Roosevelt Robinson (1919-1972) was the first African American of the 20th century to play major league baseball.

Jackie Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919, in Cairo, Ga., the son of a sharecropper. After his father deserted his mother, the family moved in 1920 to Los Angeles. Robinson attended Muir Technical High School, where his athletic feats opened college doors. At Pasadena Junior College and at the University of California at Los Angeles, he won acclaim in basketball, football, and baseball. In 1941, when family financial problems forced him to leave the University of California without a degree, he played professional football. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army and in 1943 was commissioned a second lieutenant. He served as a morale officer, and his opposition to racial discrimination led to a court-martial for insubordination, but he was acquitted.

In 1944 Robinson began a professional baseball career, playing with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Major League. His performance in the east-west championship games (1945) interested Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who was scouting black players. A baseball innovator, Rickey knew that civil rights laws would soon end segregation in major league baseball, and he chose Robinson as a test case for integrating the sport. In 1946 Robinson signed a Dodger contract and was assigned to the Montreal team of the International League. Cautioned to prove himself worthy because other black players' futures depended on his success, Robinson maintained a subdued posture. He achieved stardom with the Dodgers, a team he joined in 1947, and in 1949 won the National League's batting championship and its Most Valuable Player Award.

With the admission of other African Americans to baseball, Robinson began to aggressively advocate more honest integration. His exposés of racial prejudice in baseball helped better the lot of black players but also branded him a troublemaker. He retired from the sport in 1956 and went into business. His lifetime batting average of .311 and his leadership prompted sportswriters in 1962 to vote him membership in Baseball's Hall of Fame.

As a businessman, Robinson fought for increased civil rights and economic opportunity for African Americans. For his civil rights work he received the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1956. He died suddenly on Oct. 24, 1972, in Stamford, Conn.

Further Reading

Five semiautobiographies deal with Robinson's career, of which Carl. T. Rowan with Jackie Robinson, Wait till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson (1960), is a candid portrayal. With other sportswriters Robinson coauthored Jackie Robinson: My Own Story (1948); Jackie Robinson (1950); Baseball Has Done It, edited by Charles Dexter (1964); and Breakthrough to the Big League (1965). Rickey's role in Robinson's breakthrough is described in Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey: American in Action (1957), and Branch Rickey, The American Diamond (1965). Richard Bardolph, The Negro Vanguard (1959), places Robinson's contribution in the context of the black civil rights movement, and David Q. Voigt, American Baseball (2 vols., 1966-1970), places him in the general history of baseball.

baseball player

Personal Information

Born Jack Roosevelt Robinson, January 31, 1919, in Cairo, GA; died of a heart attack, October 24, 1972, in Stamford, CT; son of Jerry (a plantation laborer) and Mallie Robinson (a housekeeper); married Rachel Issum (a psychiatric nurse and educator), February 10, 1946; children: Jackie, Jr. (died, 1971), Sharon, David.
Education: Attended Pasadena Junior College, 1938-39, and University of California at Los Angeles, 1939-41.
Military/Wartime Service: Served in U.S. Army, 1942-45; became first lieutenant.

Career

First black player in major league baseball. Played football with Honolulu Bears, 1941; played on Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, Negro National League, 1945; signed with Montreal Royals, late 1945; professional baseball player with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947-56. Had career batting average of .311 with the Dodgers; compiled .333 batting average as National League All-Star; helped Dodgers win six National League pennants and one World Series. Served as executive for Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain, and insurance, food-franchising, and interracial construction firms, beginning in late-1950s. chairman of the board of Freedom National Bank in Harlem; member of the New York State Athletic Commission. Author of autobiography I Never Had It Made, 1972.

Life's Work

Jackie Robinson may have had more influence on the integration of sports than any other athlete in history. When he began playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, he broke the color line in professional baseball and paved the way for the entry of black players into all professional sports. Monte Irvin, a black baseball player who came into the major leagues soon after Robinson, was quoted in The New York Times Book of Sports Legends as saying, "Jackie Robinson opened the door of baseball to all men. He was the first to get the opportunity, but if he had not done such a great job, the path would have been so much more difficult."

The grandson of a slave, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the youngest of five children and spent his early years in Georgia. After his father deserted the family when Jackie was six months old, his mother, Mallie Robinson, moved the family to California in search of work. California also subjected blacks to segregation at that time, but to less of a degree than in the deep South. The young Jackie defused his anger over this prejudice by immersing himself in sports. He displayed extraordinary athletic skills in high school, excelling at football, basketball, baseball, and track. After helping Pasadena Junior College win the Junior College Football Championship, Robinson took his athletic prowess to the University of California at Los Angeles and became a top collegiate running back in 1939.

Robinson left college before graduating, having used up his athletic eligibility. Then he held a job with the National Youth Administration work camp until the camp was closed due to the onset of World War II. In the fall of 1941 he joined the Honolulu Bears professional football team, then was drafted onto a new "team" in 1942--the U.S. Army. While stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas with heavyweight champion Joe Louis, Robinson worked with Louis to eradicate unfair treatment of blacks in the military, but inequities would persist in the armed forces for decades to come. Robinson was discharged from the army in 1945 because his ankles had been weakened playing football.

Robinson joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League in 1945 for a reported $400 a month. Although he soon became one of the league's top players, he was not fond of the low pay and relentless traveling and apparently had no intention of making baseball a career. That attitude was changed due to the efforts of Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey. Starting in 1943, Rickey had been searching for a black player to bring into the major leagues, which were closed to blacks at the time. Dodger owner Walter O'Malley stated in Harvey Frommer's book Rickey & Robinson: "Branch wanted Jackie because he knew Jackie had absolutely fierce pride and determination."

On October 23, 1945, Robinson signed a contract with Rickey to play for one of the Dodgers' farm teams, the Montreal Royals in the International League. Many owners and sportswriters were against this integration, claiming that it would destroy major league baseball, but both Rickey and Robinson were confident of the move. According to Frommer, Robinson said, "I think I am the right man to pick for this test. There is no possible chance that I will flunk it or quit before the end for any other reason than that I am not a good enough ballplayer."

Spring training in Florida was rough for Robinson due to segregation laws. He was forced to ride in the back of buses, and some games in which he was scheduled to play were canceled due to his presence. Nevertheless, he proved his worth that season by leading the Royals to the championship in the Little World Series. His performance made it clear that he was ready for the major leagues, but not all of the Dodgers were supportive of moving Robinson up to the big time. Some players on the team circulated a petition saying that they wouldn't play with Robinson, but hardly anyone signed it. When Rickey brought Robinson up to the Dodgers, he made the player promise to rein in his temper when he was subjected to racial taunts on the playing field, at least for the first year. Robinson reluctantly agreed, but once a star he allowed his pride to resurface during disputes that were racially tinged.

Robinson's arrival on the major-league scene in 1947 prompted a slew of racially motivated actions. The St. Louis Cardinals threatened to go on strike, then backed down when National League president Ford Frick threatened to ban all strikers from professional baseball. Pitchers often threw the ball directly at Robinson, base runners tried to spike him, and he was subjected to a steady stream of racial insults. He received hate mail, death threats, and even warnings that his baby boy would be kidnapped. Through it all, though, Robinson held his tongue in deference to Rickey's wishes. As the much-maligned player stated in his autobiography I Never Had It Made, "I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect."

Robinson let his playing do the talking, and before long he was known as one of the most exciting players in baseball. Soon fans both black and white were filling ballparks to see him in action, and the Dodgers set new attendance records. Most of his fellow teammates fully supported him as they became convinced of Robinson's value to the club. Despite the adversity he faced, Robinson led the league in stolen bases and was named Rookie of the Year.

By the end of the following season, Robinson was no longer willing to hold his temper in check. He would often get into shouting matches with opponents, as well as umpires. His playing kept improving, reaching a peak in 1949 when his exploits earned him a batting title and the Most Valuable Player award. By this time Robinson was famous throughout the world. He had a string of six consecutive seasons batting over .300 and became renowned for his daring steals of home. His success had opened the door to a string of other great black players such as Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Junior Gilliam. In 1950 Robinson was paid an annual salary of $35,000, tops in Dodger history, and a movie about his life opened in theaters.

As his fame grew, Robinson became more fervent in his protests against racist attitudes, and he offered more support for civil rights causes. His status on the team, however, changed in the 1951 season due to Rickey being replaced as president of the Dodgers by Walter O'Malley. A tremendous admirer of Rickey, Robinson was greatly disappointed by the changing of the guard, especially since O'Malley was less tolerant than Rickey of his speaking out on racial issues. Nevertheless, Robinson continued offering support for black causes and advice to black players in particular, including those on opposing teams.

Robinson's glory years as a player were coming to an end by the mid-1950s. He had developed a bad relationship with manager Walter Alston, and his average fell to .256 in 1955 during an injury-plagued season. After being sold in December of 1956 to the New York Giants, Robinson announced his retirement in the January 1957 issue of Look magazine. In the article, Robinson claimed that his body had passed its prime and could no longer perform at the major league level. He finished with a .311 career average and 19 career steals of home--the most by any player in the post-World War II era. Soon after his playing days were over, Robinson's health declined dramatically. He had to begin receiving insulin shots for diabetes and at one point went into a diabetic coma. In his later years the diabetic condition would take away his sight in one eye and significantly reduce his sight in the other.

After his retirement Robinson became a successful businessman and active supporter of political causes, devoting many of his efforts to the pursuit of a better life for African Americans. He became a vice president in the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain, whose restaurants employed many blacks. He also worked with the Harlem YMCA in New York City and was made chairman of the board of the Freedom National Bank, a project in black capitalism. He later became the head of a construction company that built housing for black families and was involved in other ventures that stimulated black participation in business. Refusing to compromise his values, Robinson rejected an offer of membership in a private golf club when he learned that some members had objected to accepting an African American member. Despite his fame, he pursued his golf game at public courses.

In the political arena, Robinson campaigned for Senator Hubert Humphrey's bid for nomination on the Democratic presidential ticket in 1960. Then, despite objections from fellow Democrats, he switched parties to work for Richard Nixon in the presidential campaign because he felt that Nixon had helped support civil rights causes. Continuing to plot his own course, Robinson resigned his position as special assistant for community affairs on Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller's staff in 1968 to once against campaign for presidential-hopeful Hubert Humphrey.

Robinson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility. Even then he was surrounded by controversy, as fellow electee Bob Feller said that he didn't want to enter the Hall at the same time as Robinson. At his induction, Robinson called up three people from the audience to stand with him as he accepted the honor: his mother, his wife, and Branch Rickey. Robinson's respect and admiration for Rickey had never waned. He knew how important Rickey had been at helping blacks enter mainstream sports in the United States. When Rickey died in 1965, Robinson complained about the low number of blacks who had come to the funeral. According to The New York Times Book of Sport Legends, Robinson said, "I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known."

Perhaps the cruelest blow to Robinson occurred in 1971, when his son, Jackie Jr., died in a car accident. Three years earlier, the younger Robinson had been arrested for heroin possession due to an addiction he had developed--and later kicked--after being wounded in Vietnam. Jackie Sr. remained active in national campaigns against drug addiction right up to his own death.

By the early 1970s Robinson was still pressing for more integration in sports, and most of all wanted to see a black manager in professional baseball. (In 1974 Frank Robinson became the first black major league manager, taking over the reins of the Cleveland Indians.) Robinson was specially honored in 1972, when he was asked to throw out the ball to open the second game of the 75th World Series at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Although still in his early 50s, Robinson was in shaky physical health by this time. He had survived one heart attack, and his body had suffered from years of diabetes and high blood pressure. Less than two weeks after his ceremonial toss at the World Series, he collapsed at his home in Connecticut and died later that day. His funeral at Riverside Church in New York City attracted more than 2,500 people, including many celebrities and political dignitaries. Thousands lined the streets as Robinson's body was taken to Brooklyn for burial.

Jackie Robinson always went his own way, answering to his own instincts and refusing to be swayed by those who objected to his choices. He never took for granted his role as a trailblazer in the integration of sports and the opening of opportunities for blacks in the United States. As Frommer wrote, "Just as Robinson had placed his stamp on baseball, his historic role in baseball had stamped him." By being a man with incredible physical skills, mental fortitude, and competitive fire who arrived in the right place and at the right time in history, Robinson had a major impact on the black struggle for equality in the twentieth century.

Awards

National junior college record in long jump; first student at UCLA to earn four varsity letters in one year; leading ground gainer in college football, 1939; International League Batting Title, 1946; voted National League Rookie of the Year, 1947; led league in stolen bases, 1947 and 1949; National League MVP, 1949; National League Batting Title, 1949; made National League All-Star Team, 1949-54; NAACP Spingarn Medal, 1956; elected to Baseball Hall of Fame, 1962.

Further Reading

Books

• Connor, Anthony J., Baseball for the Love of It: Hall of Famers Tell It Like It Was, Macmillan, 1982, pp. 127, 211.
• Frommer, Harvey, Rickey & Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier, Macmillan, 1982.
• Golenbock, Peter, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Putnam, 1984.
• Kahn, Roger, The Boys of Summer, Harper & Row, 1971.
• The New York Times Book of Sports Legends, edited by Joseph J.
• Vecchione, Times Books, 1991, pp. 252-259.
• Robinson, Jackie, I Never Had It Made, Putnam, 1972.

Periodicals

• New York Times, October 25, 1972, pp. 1, 56.

— Ed Decker

For more information on Jackie Robinson, visit Britannica.com.

(1919-1972), professional baseball player with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1947-1956); first African-American to play in major league baseball in the twentieth century. Intensely proud of his talents and his blackness in a white-dominated world, Robinson created drama throughout his life. He fought racism viscerally--in his California childhood, at college, and in the army, where he faced a court-martial for defying illegal segregation on an army bus.

When general manager Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers offered Robinson the chance to break organized baseball's powerful but unwritten color line, the fiery ballplayer not only accepted, he also agreed to Rickey's condition: that he not respond to the abuse he would face.

Jackie Robinson's debut in organized baseball is a legend (April 18, 1946, with the Montreal Royals of the International League, the Dodgers' best farm club). In five at-bats he hit a three-run homer and three singles, stole two bases, and scored four times, twice by forcing the pitcher to balk. Promoted to the Dodgers the following spring, Robinson thrived on the pressure and established himself as the most exciting player in baseball. His playing style combined traditional elements of black sports--the opportunistic risk taking known as "tricky baseball" in the Negro Leagues--with an aggressiveness asserting his right to be at the plate or on the basepaths. According to his manager Leo Durocher, "This guy didn't just come to play. He come to beat ya."

In their response to Jackie Robinson, African-Americans rejected "separate but equal" status and embraced integration. Robinson's presence in baseball electrified them, and they flocked to see the Dodgers in huge numbers and from great distances. African-American sportswriters, many of whom had advocated baseball integration for years, focused their attentions on Robinson and the black players who followed him. His success encouraged the integration of professional football, basketball, and tennis, while the Negro Leagues, which in a sense depended on segregation, began an irreversible decline, losing ballplayers, spectators, and reporters.

During his first two years with the Dodgers, Robinson kept his word to Rickey and endured astonishing abuse amid national scrutiny without fighting back. His dignified courage in the face of virulent racism--from jeers and insults to beanballs, hate mail, and death threats--commanded the admiration of whites as well as blacks and foreshadowed the tactics that the 1960s civil rights movement would develop into the theory and practice of nonviolence.

Robinson, however, finally broke his emotional and political silence in 1949, becoming an outspoken and controversial opponent of racial discrimination. He criticized the slow pace of baseball integration and objected to the Jim Crow practices in the southern states where most clubs conducted spring training. Robinson led other ballplayers in urging baseball to use its economic power to desegregate southern towns, hotels, and ballparks. Because most baseball teams integrated relatively calmly, the "Jackie Robinson experiment" provided an important example of successful desegregation to ambivalent white southern political and business leaders.

Having watched baseball integrate through a combination of individual black achievements, white goodwill, economic persuasion, and public outspokenness, Robinson, when he retired from baseball in 1957, sought to bring the same tactics to bear on increasing African-American employment opportunities.

His lifelong struggle continued to his last public appearance nine days before he died: he told television viewers of an Old-Timers' Game, "I'd like to live to see a black manager." Fittingly, his eulogy was delivered by the outstanding advocate of African-American self-help and employment opportunity--the Reverend Jesse Jackson. "When Jackie took the field," Jackson declared, "something reminded us of our birthright to be free."

Bibliography:

Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (1984).

Author:

Warren Goldstein

See also Baseball; Racial Desegregation; Rickey, Branch; Spectator Sports.

(Jack Roosevelt Robinson), 1919–72, American baseball player, the first African-American player in the modern major leagues, b. Cairo, Ga. He grew up in Pasadena, Calif., where he became an outstanding athlete in high school and junior college. While attending (1939–41) the Univ. of California at Los Angeles, he established a wide reputation in baseball, basketball, football, and track.

Robinson left college to support his mother, but in 1941 played professional football with the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast League. He entered the army in World War II and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1945. In Oct., 1945, Branch Rickey, then president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Robinson to play for the Montreal Royals, a Brooklyn farm club in the International League. Despite several incidents in spring training in the South and many inconveniences during the season, Robinson—the first African-American ballplayer in that league—excelled as a second baseman and won the league batting crown.

In 1947 precedent was shattered when Robinson was brought up to the Brooklyn club. African Americans had not played in big-league competition in the 20th cent., but resistance dwindled as Robinson excelled. In 1949 he won the National League batting crown, hitting .342, and was named the NL's most valuable player. Robinson played his entire career (1947–56) with Brooklyn, where he set fielding and batting records and gained a reputation for base stealing. Other African Americans began playing in the major leagues soon after his debut. In 1962 Robinson became the first African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1972); J. Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment (1983) and Extra Bases (2002); A. Rampersad, Jackie Robinson (1997); S. Simon, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball (2002).

An African-American athlete of the twentieth century. In 1947, he became the first black person to play baseball in the major leagues.