Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson was the first African-American baseball player to participate in Major League Baseball in the United States. He played professionally for the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke down the color barrier in baseball. Major League Baseball commemorates Jackie Robinson every year on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day.
==Youth and Education==
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia on January 31, 1919, to a sharecropping family. Jerry Robinson and Mallie McGriff bore four children before him, including Edgar, Matthew, Frank, and Willa Mae. In 1920, Jerry Robinson left the family and they moved to Pasadena, California.
Robinson’s mother worked odd jobs, but the family remained extremely poor, and Jackie briefly joined a gang.Rampersad, 1997 He studied at John Muir High School, where played several varsity level sports and lettered in four. He also played on the Pomona All-Star Baseball team in 1936 with the likes of Bob Lemon and Ted Williams.Robinson & Duckett, 2003
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Jackie Robinson continued to pursue sports at Pasadena Junior College. He played on the All-Southland Junior College Baseball Team as their Most Valuable Player in 1938. On January 25, 1938, police arrested Robinson when he protested the unnecessary detention of one of his African-American friends. After his brother Frank died, he transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) to be near Frank’s family.Rampersad,