Jackie Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919.  He grew up in a small farmhouse in Cairo, Georgia.  Jackie had a family of 4 brothers and 1 sister.  Jackie’s father, Jerry Robinson, was a sharecropper and worked on a farm that someone else owned.  Soon after Jackie was born, his father decided to stop farming.  He told his family that he might go as far as Texas to look for a different job.  He left his family on July 1919 for Florida and never came back.  Jackie never saw his father, Jerry Robinson, again.  Without his father farming they had to leave.  In May 1920, Jackie’s family carrying all their things headed West.  Mallie, Jackie’s mother, called a train to take their family to California.  Jackie was just sixteen months old.  When they first came to California, they lived with Mallie’s brother and family.  It was a really crowded three-room apartment.  This was a bad apartment.  A few years later, they moved to a house on 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena, California.

Jackie really loved to play outside.  His mom made a ball for him.  He practiced tossing and catching and hitting it.  In his school, there were two baseball teams and they both wanted Jackie.  Jackie chose the team that would share their lunch with him and he saved his mom some money.  Jackie went to John Muir High School and he was an average student but a great athlete.  He was on the baseball, basketball, football, and track racing teams.  Opposing players and coaches tried to stop Robinson by making racial comments but they only made Jackie more determined to win.  Most times Frank, Jackie’s brother, was in the stands watching, cheering, and yelling advice.  Frank was his biggest fan.  After Jackie graduated high school, he went to a local school, Pasadena Junior College.  Jackie wasn’t the only one in the family that went there; his brother Mack went there too.  In college, Jackie was a star in sports.  He played football, basketball, track racing, and baseball.  Jackie was voted the college’s most valuable player.  Jackie’s baseball team won the league championship. 

After Jackie graduated from Pasadena Junior College, he went to UCLA.  Jackie was the first student to win a letter in four sports.  In college, Jackie played the same sports he did in junior college.  In 1941, before Jackie could finish school, he left school.  On December 7, 1941, after Jackie was in Hawaii playing football, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Jackie was already on a ship home.  Jackie joined the Army in 1942 and became a second lieutenant.  The Army honorably discharged him in 1945.
On April 1945 Jackie joined the Kansas City Monarchs and he played shortstop.  There was a lot of segregation in baseball and Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, decided to end segregation in baseball.  Branch Rickey was also looking for a player with guts to be the first black major league player.  Branch wanted a player that was angry about racial comments but wouldn’t fight back.  He chose Jackie Robinson.  Jackie signed a contract to join the Montreal Royals for a year and then play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.   On February 10, 1946, Jackie was married to a girl named Rachel Isum.  People would call him ugly names and baseball games would be cancelled because it was against the law for black people to play with whites in some States back then.  But Jackie Robinson did not fight back against these people who called him names or the States that banned him.  In November 1946 Rachel and Jackie had their first child and it was a boy.   Later after Jackie Jr. was born, they had two more children in 1952.   In April 10, 1947, Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.  He considered it a great honor to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers at the time.  1947 was the best year in baseball for Jackie as a player.  He had 175 hits and he scored 125 times.  Also, he stole 40 bases and his batting average was 0.342.  Jackie Robinson was voted the Most Valuable Player of the Year out of 200 players in 1947.  The Brooklyn Dodgers won six pennants intotal 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956 respectively.  After Jackie’s baseball career was over his new job was to work at the Chock Full O’Nuts restaurants.  He was an active civil rights leader and made speeches, spoke with political leaders and worked hard to gain equal rights for blacks.   Jackie Robinson was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.  Jackie Robinson died on October 24, 1972 from a heart attack at the age of 53.

Bibliography

Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, 1956.
Editors of TIME for kids with Denise Lewis Patrick. (2005) Jackie Robinson Strong Instide and Out
David A. Adler. (1989) Jackie Robinson He Was the First, A First Biography