Jackie Robinson American Dream Essay

Baseball aficionados will argue the Jackie Robison achieved the American Dream through his hard work. He made it to major league ball, integrated baseball, became a business man, and continued afterward promoting desegregation in politics prompting their view of his successful life. The book Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business defines the American dream as a “belief that people can rise above their origins, however humble, and through hard work, honesty, and thrift achieve positions of power” (Livesay, 1). Although he claimed an incredible status among many, Jackie Robison was not fully able to reach the highest “positions of power” in each field due to hindrance from segregation during his baseball, business, and political career.

Jackie Robinson was introduced to business when he became “vice- president of Chock Full O’Nuts” after his time with the NAACP (183, Robinson). During his time there, he realized how little he and “black people” knew about money (183, Robinson). “The first time a black man’s picture had been featured” in the financial section of the New York Times was of Robinson (183, Robinson). This was the first time America was seeing an African American man as a prominent business leader. Robinson soon became part of a group who planned to reopen the Freedom National Bank. This was an interracial bank that had been previously run by white executives but failed. Robinson was recruited by Dunbar McLaurin to help with the reopening (185, Robinson). There was a problem with MacLaurin being the president like planned since he was white and it was targeting African Americans. So, the search for an African American president began yielding William R. Hudgins, a successful business and real estate executive (186, Robinson). Once running, the bank became extremely successful in helping African American’s get loans and learn about how to manage money. But, problems soon began to arise when Jackie Robinson noticed that they were giving out loans too freely, yet the white outside executives giving advice would tell him that everything was alright giving a “false sense of security” (192, Robinson). Jackie Robinson fought for the bank through an internal investigation he ran and ended up leaving after that. This was the finale of Jackie Robinson’s business career and left before ever seeing a “position of power” that gave him the full capacity to have the American