Jackie Robinson is known as a legendary professional baseball player. He is most famous for becoming the first black athlete to play Major League Baseball.

Fame

Background and Education

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. The most youthful of five children, Robinson was brought up in a poor background by a single parent. He went to John Muir High School and Pasadena Junior College, where he was an incredible sports competitor and played four different spots. He was great in football, basketball, track and baseball. He was named the area's Most Valuable Player in baseball in 1938.

Robinson's older sibling, Matthew Robinson, pushed Jackie to pursue his ability and love of sports. Matthew won a silver medal in the 200-meter dash simply behind Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Career

Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and was named Rookie of the Year that year. He won the National League MVP in 1949 and became a World Series champ in 1955.

After his release from the Army in 1944, Robinson started to play baseball as a pro. At the time, the game was segregated, and African-Americans and whites played in independent leagues. Robinson started playing in the Negro Leagues, yet he was before long picked by Branch Rickey, leader of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to help integrate Major League Baseball and get rid of segregation.

He joined the all-white Montreal Royals, a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1946 and started his path to changing the game forever.

Personal Life

Family

In the mid 1940s, Jackie Robinson met a nurse in training named Rachel Isum Robinson when they were both going to the University of California in Los Angeles. The couple was married on February 10, 1946. As Jackie made rose in his baseball career, the couple confronted mounting prejudice, from insults to death threats. Further down the road, both Jackie and Rachel turned out to be effectively engaged with the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackie and Rachel Robinson had three children together named Jack, Sharon and David. Rachel said that she and Jackie put forth an admirable attempt to make a supporting home that protected their children from bigotry. In 1971, the couple's oldest child, Jack Robinson Jr., passed away at at 24 years old in an auto accident. Their middle child, Sharon Robinson, is an author and consultant for Major League Baseball, while their youngest kid, David Robinson, is coffee rancher in Tanzania.