Jackie Robinson — People — Black-History.com

Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on 15 April 1947, ending more than six decades in which Black players had been shut out of the major leagues. Already tested by a wartime court-martial for refusing to accept bus segregation, he played ten seasons at a Hall of Fame level under relentless abuse, then spent the rest of his life in business and in the civil rights movement, insisting that the integration of baseball was a beginning rather than an end.

At a Glance

Born: 31 January 1919, Cairo, Georgia
Died: 24 October 1972, Stamford, Connecticut
Birth name: Jack Roosevelt Robinson
Known for: Major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 15 April 1947; 1947 Rookie of the Year and 1949 National League MVP; acquittal at court-martial for refusing bus segregation (1944); autobiography I Never Had It Made (1972)
Fields: Sport · Civil Rights · Enterprise
Era: Letters, Arts & Sciences

Early Life

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on 31 January 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, the youngest of five children of Jerry and Mallie Robinson, sharecroppers. His father left the family soon after Jackie’s birth, and in 1920 Mallie Robinson moved her children to Pasadena, California, where she supported them by domestic work. The family was one of few Black households on its street and faced hostility from white neighbors.

Robinson attended Muir Technical High School and Pasadena Junior College, where he set a national junior college record in the long jump. His older brother Mack was also a gifted athlete and won the silver medal in the 200 meters behind Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. At the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1939 to 1941, Jackie became the school’s first athlete to letter in four sports — football, basketball, track, and baseball — and won the NCAA long-jump title. He left UCLA shortly before graduating.

Life and Work

Robinson was drafted into the Army in 1942. Stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, he was initially kept out of Officer Candidate School; after protests in which the heavyweight champion Joe Louis intervened, he was admitted, commissioned a second lieutenant, and appointed a morale officer. On 6 July 1944, while assigned to the 761st Tank Battalion at Camp Hood, Texas, he refused a bus driver’s order to move to the back of an Army bus, even though the War Department had ordered buses on its posts desegregated. He was charged, and at a general court-martial on 2 August 1944 a panel of nine officers acquitted him of all charges. He was later honorably discharged.

In 1945 Robinson played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. That October Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed him to the organization, and in 1946 he played for the Dodgers’ top minor league club, the Montreal Royals of the International League, batting .349, scoring 113 runs, and leading the Royals to the International League pennant and victory in the Little World Series. On 15 April 1947 he made his debut at first base for Brooklyn at Ebbets Field, becoming the first Black player in the major leagues in the twentieth century. Before the signing, Rickey extracted a promise that Robinson would hold his tongue and his fists in the face of provocation.

Robinson faced beanballs, spikings, threats, and racial abuse from opponents and fans, and some teammates initially resisted playing with him; he kept his promise to Rickey and did not retaliate publicly. He won the first Rookie of the Year award in 1947 and the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1949, when he led the league with a .342 batting average. He was selected to six consecutive All-Star teams from 1949 to 1954 and helped Brooklyn win National League pennants in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956 and the 1955 World Series. Over ten seasons, all with the Dodgers, he batted .311 with 137 home runs and 197 stolen bases.

After the 1956 season the Dodgers arranged to trade him to the rival New York Giants; rather than report, Robinson announced his retirement in January 1957. He became vice president for personnel at the Chock full o’Nuts coffee company, among the first Black vice presidents of a major American corporation, and devoted increasing time to civil rights. He worked with the NAACP, supported Martin Luther King Jr., wrote a weekly newspaper column, and in 1964 co-founded Freedom National Bank in Harlem to provide loans to Black borrowers. Politically independent, he endorsed Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in 1960. In 1962, in his first year of eligibility, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the first Black player so honored.

Legacy

Robinson suffered from diabetes and heart disease in his last years. He published his autobiography, I Never Had It Made, in 1972 and died of a heart attack at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, on 24 October 1972, at the age of fifty-three. In 1973 his widow, Rachel Robinson, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation to support students in higher education, and the Jackie Robinson Museum in New York now documents his life.

President Ronald Reagan awarded Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984, and on 2 March 2005 President George W. Bush presented his family with the Congressional Gold Medal in the Capitol Rotunda. In 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of his debut, Major League Baseball retired his number 42 for every team. Historians of the civil rights movement treat his 1947 debut as one of the first highly visible breaches of Jim Crow in national life, coming seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, and his later activism as evidence that he saw his baseball career as part of a longer political struggle.

For Educators

Jackie Robinson’s integration of Major League Baseball was a highly visible breach of Jim Crow, and he treated it as the start of a longer struggle for civil rights. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

31 January 1919 Born in Cairo, Georgia.
1939–1941 Letters in four sports at UCLA.
2 August 1944 Acquitted at court-martial after refusing to move to the back of an Army bus at Camp Hood, Texas.
October 1945 Signed by Branch Rickey to the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.
15 April 1947 Debuts with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
1949 Named National League Most Valuable Player.
1955 Wins the World Series with Brooklyn.
1962 Elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
1964 Co-founds Freedom National Bank in Harlem.
24 October 1972 Dies in Stamford, Connecticut.

Sources and Further Reading

Society for American Baseball Research, “Jackie Robinson,” SABR Biography Project. Link
The National WWII Museum, “United States v. 2LT Jack R. Robinson.” Link
Jackie Robinson Museum, “Jackie Robinson.” Link
The White House, “President Honors Jackie Robinson at Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony,” 2 March 2005. Link
Jackie Robinson, as told to Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972).
Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

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Editorial Note

By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.