Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia to Mallie and Jerry Robinson. Jackie was the youngest of five kids. His parents were sharecroppers, which meant that they farmed a section of land owned by whites with a share of the profit from the crops. Sharecropping was a very stressful and frustrating job. Jerry Robinson had enough of it and left his family. Mallie couldn’t run a farm by herself, so she took a very risk full choice and moved her family to Pasadena, California by train, to live with her brother.
While in Pasadena, Jackie went to Cleveland and Washington Elementary schools. His peers were black and they were taught by white school teachers. Jackie got average grades and loved playing sports. His competitive started when he was young. Once Mallie got enough…show more content… Jackie was the quarterback on the football team and was a star player on the baseball team. Jackie had to deal with racism all through high school. Most of his teammates were white and he was treated fairly on the field but off the field it was a different story.
Jackie went to UCLA and became the first student to earn four letters in one year. He played baseball, football, basketball, and track at UCLA. After three years in college Jackie left to help him mother at home. He was then drafted into the US Army. During his service, he refused to sit at the back of a bus. He was threatened with a court-martial, but the charges were dropped and he was given an honorable discharge in 1945.
Jackie then played baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro National League. While playing, Jackie caught the eye of Branch Rickey, a scout and the team president of the Brooklyn Dodgers. During that time, black players weren’t allowed to play Major League Baseball. Rickey thought that black players should be able to play and he believed that it was
