Jackie Robinson in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, 1950. NARA ID 6802718.
JACKIE ROBINSON BROKE COLORBARRIER#OTD 1947
Athlete and Civil Rights Advocate
“Life is not a spectator sport… . If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re escaping your life.” – Jackie Robinson, 1964
Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke the MLB color barrier 74 years ago today. As the first Black to play in the major leagues, he became the target of vicious racial abuse. He established a “reputation as a black man who never tolerated affronts to his dignity,” but found it increasingly challenging not to respond. In the ballpark, he answered the people he called “haters” with the perfect eloquence of a base hit. In 1949, his best year, Robinson was named the MLB’s MVP, and in 1962 was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
He continued to champion the cause of civil rights after he retired from baseball. He believed that racial integration in every facet of American society would enrich the nation, just as surely as it had enriched baseball. Every American President who held office between 1956 and 1972 received letters from Jackie Robinson expressing varying levels of rebuke for not going far enough to advance the cause of civil rights.
Letterto Eisenhower about ittle Rock, 5/13/1958. NARA ID 186627.
Telegramto LBJ about the horrific events in Selma, 3/9/1965.
Letter from Jackie Robinson to Nixon Deputy Special Assistant Roland Elliott, 4/20/1972.
Jackie Robinson—Freedom Fighter Featured Document display, East Rotunda Gallery, National Archives Museum, DC, through April 20, 2022.
Jackie Robinson refused to move to the back of the bus Drafted into the Army during World War II, 2nd Lt. Jack R. Robinson was stationed at Camp Hood, Texas, in 1944. Riding a military shuttle, Lieutenant Robinson was ordered to move to the rear by the civilian driver. Robinson explained that the War Department had recently desegregated military buses. But this was the Jim Crow South. The driver called the military police. A crowd gathered. Things escalated. Robinson was charged with insubordination and conduct disrespectful to his superior officer.
See Letter from Lt. Jack Robinson to Truman K. Gibson, NARA ID 159703346.
Today is Jackie Robinson Day. On April 15, 1947, Robinson became the first black player in Major League Baseball. His team: the Dodgers. So, to honor him, every Dodger will be No. 42 – Robinson’s number, which has since been retired from the league.
Over the years, he’s been honored and memorialized across Los Angeles, as the photos above show. After all, Jackie Robinson was a hometown guy, raised in Pasadena. He went to John Muir High School and earned an athletic scholarship to UCLA.
Baseball wasn’t his only sport. Jackie Robinson excelled in football, basketball and track as well. He was the national long jump champ in 1940, a football All-America in 1941 and the basketball team’s highest scorer. He became the first student athlete in UCLA history to letter in four sports.
After serving three years in World War II as a cavalry lieutenant and returned to sign with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League.
Back then, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, N.Y. Team president Branch Rickey chose Robinson off the roster of the Kansas City Monarchs, warning him that it wouldn’t be easy.
“I want a man with guts enough not to fight back,” Rickey said.
“I’ve got two cheeks – is that what you want to hear?“ Robinson replied.
During his rookie season with the Dodgers, Robinson had plenty of opportunities to turn the other cheek. Over time, through his dignity and restraint, the taunts, the slurs, turned to praise.
And though he didn’t say much that first year, he was vocal during the rest of his career.
“I’m a human being,” he said. “I have a right to my opinions. I have a right to talk.”
He died in 1972. In his obit in the L.A. Times (which you can read here), he was described as “the grandson of a slave, a man who emerged from a small house on Pepper Street in Pasadena to become one of the nation’s greatest athletes and a symbol of hope for Black America.”
Just outside Pasadena’s city hall, you can visit a memorial to two great city sons – Olympian Mack Robinson and his younger brother, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson.
