Breaking the Color Barrier Have you ever wondered how you were going to overcome that difficulty in life? Even though life comes with difficulties, Jackie Robinson had to learn to persevere through them. With racism, and segregation standing in his way, he pulled through and broke the color barrier in major league baseball. Jackie Robinson was the first African American baseball player to make it to the big leagues. He was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, and died on October 24, 1972, in Stamford, Connecticut. In his early years he was an “outstanding all round athlete at Pasadena Junior College” (Britanica). After that he joined UCLA and excelled in football, basketball, track, and especially baseball. Following going to college he went to the …show more content…
This was an example of Jackie standing up for what is right. (Britanica.com) After his military career was over, he played ball baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Jackie, playing for the Negro League, caught the attention of the president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey. “Rickey had been planning an attempt to integrate baseball, all he just needed was the perfect candidate.”(Britannica) Since Jackie was so calm he would be great for the job but he feared he would not be able to handle the racism and abuse without responding in a way that would hurt the chance of integration happening. During a meeting, Rickey shouts insults at Robinson just to make sure he would be able to handle it because these were the things that Robinson was going to have to learn to preserve. This was Jackie's chance to finally integrate baseball. “On October 23, 1945, Rickey signed Robinson to play on a Dodgers farm team, the Montreal Royals of the International League.” (Britanica) Robinson led that league in his batting average. Since his batting average was so good he was brought up to play for the Brooklyn in