How Is Jackie Robinson Related To The Civil Rights Movement

To answer this question one must know about the history of both Jackie Robinson and the Civil Rights Movement. Jackie Robinson was born January 31, of 1919. He grew up being raised by a single mother of five including him. His family was the only black family on the block and the prejudice that they encountered only made their bond as a family that much stronger. From this humble beginning would grow the first baseball player to break Major League Baseball's color barrier that segregated the sport for more than 50 years. Growing up in a large, single-parent family, Jackie showed promise at a young age in all sports and always knew how to make his own way in life. At UCLA, Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports:

Jackie's army career was cut short when he was court-martialed in connection to his objections with incidents of racial discrimination. Jackie left the Army with an honorable discharge. In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League with the Kansas City Monarchs. But greater challenges and achievements were in store for him. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America. By breaking the color barrier in baseball, the nation's preeminent sport, he courageously challenged the deeply rooted custom of racial segregation in both the North and the South.At the end of Robinson's rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had become National League Rookie of the Year with twelve homers, a league-leading twenty nine steals, and a .297 average. In 1949, he was selected as the NL's Most Valuable player of the Year and also won the batting title with a .342 average that same year. As a result of his great success, Jackie was eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in

When someone thinks of the civil rights movement the first subject to come to mind is Dr. Martin Luther King jr. Dr. King was a baptist minister and social activist who was as well of utmost importance in the civil rights movement in the period from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Dr. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia in January of the year 1929. He grew up being fathered by Martin Luther King sr. a former schoolteacher. He had two siblings, an older sister named Christine King Farris(born 1927), and a younger brother named Alfred Daniels Williams King(1930-1969). Dr. King was an extremely fine student and displayed utmost maturity in his years in segregated public schools. At the age of fifteen he was admitted into his father and grandfather’s alma mater Morehouse College where he studied medicine and law. After changing his major to follow his father’s footsteps and become a minister MLK jr. arrived in Crozer Theological Seminary where he succeeded to receive a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a esteemed fellowship award and was elected president of his mainly white senior class. After all of this King continued into a graduate program at Boston, University, accomplishing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While attending the University of