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Jackie Robinson And The Civil Rights Movement

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Since 1839, baseball was a white man’s game. That would all change when Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1942. This would be a major victory for African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. Before Robinson entered the league, African Americans played in the National Negro League and Whites played in the MLB(Major League Baseball). At this time in history blacks were still fighting for equality every single day. They were segregated by going to different schools than whites, drinking from different water fountains than whites, sitting in the back of the bus, etc. Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player in a white league and one of the greatest athletes of all time. He was able to achieve this despite …show more content…

Jackie eventually stayed out of trouble when Karl Downs and Carl Anderson came into his life. Throughout his teen years, Jackie looked up to Carl Anderson, a car mechanic and a local black scout leader (Schutz,pg.8). He also looked up to pastor Karl Downs (Schutz,pg.8). When Jackie was in high school he was the star of the football, baseball, basketball, and track team but he got no scholarship offers because of his skin color except for the local Pasadena Junior College (Schutz,pg.9). In basketball he was the conference’s player of the year and in baseball he led the team to a conference championship (Schutz,pg.9). In 1938, Robinson set the national junior college Amateur Athletic Union Broad Jump record. The former record holder was his brother Mack Robinson (Schutz,pg.9). In 1936, Mack competed in the Olympics when Jesse Owens won four gold medals, Mack won a silver medal (Schutz,pg.9). After his two years at Pasadena Junior College, Jackie attended the University of California in Los Angeles(Schutz,pg.9). At UCLA, Robinson was phenomenal; he led the conference in scoring in basketball, he won the national broad jump title in track but in baseball he had a rough batting average of .097(Schutz,pg.12). At UCLA, he met his wife Rachel Isum. Rachel and Jackie got married February 10, 1946. In March 1941, Robinson moved on from college sports and was offered to play football for the Honolulu Bears in Hawaii(pg.12). He would get paid 100 dollars per football game

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