Jackie Robinson
Baseball player who broke the colour barrier in American professional sport
Born 1919 · Died 1972
Photo: Harry Warnecke / Frank Livia / Robert F. Cranston / William Klein · CC0
«A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.»
Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball in 1947, enduring sustained abuse under an agreement not to respond. His success ended segregation in American professional sport and made him a central figure of the civil rights era.
Key achievements
- First UCLA athlete to letter in four sports in one year
- Baseball Hall of Fame, 1962
Universities
Los Angeles, California
Attended from 1939 and became the first student to win varsity letters in four sports, leaving shortly before graduating.
Facts
- At UCLA he played baseball, basketball, American football and athletics, and baseball was said to be his weakest sport.
- As an army officer he was court-martialled and acquitted for refusing to move to the back of a military bus, eleven years before Rosa Parks.
- His number 42 is retired across every team in Major League Baseball, the only such honour in the sport.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.