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2.

A Hard Early Life

Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in a small town in Georgia about 200 miles south of Atlanta. He had three older brothers and a sister. Like many African Americans of his time, he was the grandson of slaves. Even though the American Civil War ended slavery more than fifty years before, when Jackie was a baby his family lived in what he called a kind of slavery. His father, who could not read or write, worked on a plantation for about three dollars a week. That equals seventy-five dollars a week by today’s standards. Not long after Jackie was born his father left. Jackie never saw him again.

Jackie later wrote a book about his life, titled I Never Had It Made. In it, he said that the man who owned the plantation blamed Jackie’s mother for his father not working for him anymore. He told her she had to leave. She decided she no longer wanted to live in the South. She moved the family to California. They settled in Pasadena. There, they were still very poor. Jackie’s mother earned a little money cleaning houses but it was often not enough. In his book, Jackie says that on some days the family ate only because his mother brought home leftover food from the people she worked for. In an article he wrote for the Washington Post, he said, “We would get to school so hungry we could hardly stand up.” To help his family, Jackie worked to earn extra money. He delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, sold hot dogs at a football stadium, and worked other odd jobs.

Poverty was not the only hardship he endured as a boy. Even though the family was no longer in the South, they still faced bias because of their race. The Robinsons lived in a neighborhood made up mostly of white families. Some of them shouted an ugly name at Jackie and his siblings that referred to his race. Some called the police with silly complaints. Once it was because they said Jackie’s brother’s roller skates made too much noise on the sidewalk. One day, someone burned a cross on their lawn. Burning a cross is something the Ku Klux Klan does to frighten black people. None of these things worked to force Jackie’s mother to move, and the family stayed in the neighborhood.

What saved Jackie’s life was sports, especially after he got to high school. His interest partly came from his older brother Mack, who was a track-and-field champion. Mack was good enough that he won the silver medal in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Olympics. Years later, Jackie wrote in the Washington Post article, “My brother Mack had more to do with my athletic career than any one else. He’ll always be a real hero with me. I remember going to track meets with him and watching him run and listening to the crowd yell.”

Those cheers for his brother were important for Jackie.

He wrote, “Without him and his encouragement I don’t think there ever would have been a Jackie Robinson, baseball player.”

Almost from the moment he started high school, Jackie had his own athletic success. He starred on his school’s football, baseball, and basketball teams and won tennis championships. He was so good and so fast, one newspaper called him black lightning. In college, he became even better. He first went to Pasadena Junior College, where he played football, basketball, and baseball and competed in track. In football, he was the quarterback. The Los Angeles Times said he was the “most brilliant ball carrier ever developed” in the area. Sometimes 50,000 people came to one of his team’s games. The Los Angeles Times said that ninety-nine percent of those people were there because they wanted to see Jackie play. In track, he set the school record in the long jump. In baseball, he was the Southern California junior college most valuable player.

Because of his success, when he decided to move on to a university, the Los Angeles Times said he was the “juiciest plum of the 1939 crop of college-bound athletes.” He chose the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) because he wanted to stay near his home.

He was just as successful at the university as he was in high school and junior college. In his two years of football there he led all college players in the country in punt return average. In basketball, he led the conference in scoring in 1939 and 1940. In track, he won the national college broad jump championship. Many predicted he would win the gold medal in that event in the 1940 Olympics. Sadly, the games were canceled when World War II spread through Europe.

Jackie left UCLA early in 1941 and played professional football in Hawaii and California before joining the army as a lieutenant after the United States entered the war. There, he ran into more examples of racism.

Before joining the army, he had a weak ankle because it broke twice while playing football. In the army, he hurt it again in training. The doctors found he had bone spurs and arthritis and sent him to therapy. One day, riding a bus to the hospital for treatment, he sat in the middle of the bus instead of the back where black people were supposed to sit. He sat beside the wife of a friend. She was black but light-skinned. The bus driver ordered Jackie to move to the back of the bus. He accused Jackie of speaking to a white woman, something many thought black men should not do.

The bus driver reported Jackie to the military police. They arrested him and brought him to an officer for questioning. The officer decided that Jackie was disrespectful. Jackie said he was not and that the officer had treated him badly because he was African American. The army put him on trial. In the end, Jackie was found not guilty. Soon after, the army discharged him, saying that his bad ankle meant he was not healthy enough to serve.