Josh

Jackie Robinson

After learning that I was going to do a Woodmen Speech Contest a light came on and I thought of all the people I could do, but after some thinking I saw a larger light come around the corner. One man, a man who loved baseball and had that dream of being in the professional baseball League but couldn't because he was African American. Who was that man? Jackie Robinson. Robinson was a man who wanted to change the way we look at African Americans. He knew he had one shot and one shot only...

Robinson was the youngest of 5, and he was born in Cairo, Georgia He spent most of his early years there. After his dad disappeared, Robinson moved with his family to Pasadena, California. Soon, being the youngest of 5 children and raised by a single mom was beginning to take its toll on Robinson. He knew his brothers and sisters weren't going to help their mother in daily work, so Jackie took the job of man of the house. Jackie Robinson could see the religious beliefs in his mother and the determination that not many children could have seen. "He always knew best and kept his mind fixed on what was best for the family,' Jackie's mom said to a reporter after one of Robinson's big games. Not only could Robinson see those ideal life skills but he developed those and that would help shape him into the great man that he became. So what else happened during the rest of his life?

Aftter gradiuating in 1935 from Dakota Junior High, Jackie enrolled in Washington Junior and Muir Technical High School. He lettered in football, basketball, track, and baseball. After high school he decided to stay in Pasadena, California and attend Pasadena Junior College. He continued to excel in sports. Then he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles, (UCLA)**.** There he became the first athlete to win varsity letters in 4 sports. Robinson withdrew from UCLA in 1941. Then he was able to get a job with the Governments' National Youth Administration. He whanted to help the country even more, so he joined the U.S. army in 1944. He was assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas. Robinson found out that he could not attend the officer's training school because he was black. This troubled Jackie, and he felt like he just hit a large brick wall in his mission to get blacks the same rights as whites. He knew he would have to work even harder. His former unit, the the 761st Tank Batallion, became the first African American unit to see battle. He helped lead his group to victory. Soon after, he decided to return to his baseball career and get back to what his favorite life was, on the field.

So Jackie joined the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. Soon some Major league scouts, including Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, began to see Robinson. Rickey could see that Jackie was a great man on and off the field, so he moved him to a higher division to the Montreal Royals. Rickey said he knew Robinson could restrain himself from all the racial hate mail and teasing that would come when he would bring him to the Dodgers. Then in 1946 he played his first game with the Royals where he became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues since 1889. In his first game of the1947 season Jackie broke the color barrier and became the first African American to do so since 1887. Because of this, many other color barriers fell all across the world. In his first game with the Dodgers he began to encounter racism from almost everyone. The pitcher would aim at his head and players would kick, shove, and tackle him in games. His own team would gripe and say they would rather sit on the bench than play with Jackie. In a game with the Phillies a player said. "Go back to the cotton fields." This didn't trouble Jackie. He knew that this career would have its ups and downs so that little comment meant nothing. All it did was get him to work harder. In a statement to Sport Magazine Robinson said, "I didn't expect to see the color barrier to fall completely, I knew it would take another war." Then in 1949 he exploded and came out and won the MVP award, and took his team to the World ,but lost to the Yankees.

Growing up and your dad disappears, you move, you have a single mom and 4 brothers and sisters. Then you become one of the best baseball players ever, and when you think that your dream has come true, you get racial hatred from players and fans. Then an idea spurts: what if I could do something that could change how we look at the world? So a man, decided to do that: to change baseball, with a dream to play in the pros. That is when a man took on a wounderous thing that people of color have only dreamed of doing. That was a one human, and that person was Jackie Robinson.