Life Story of Jackie Robinson, the First Black Player in Major League Baseball

　 

 

Written by  Cynthia Kirk 

Welcome to PEOPLE IN AMERICA, a program in Special English on the Voice of America. Today Shirley Griffith and Rich Kleinfeldt tell about a man who changed professional baseball in the United States.  Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was the first black man to play in modern major league baseball.

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VOICE ONE:

After World War Two, many Americans still believed that people of different races should not mix.  In some parts of the country, blacks and whites lived in separate areas and went to separate schools.  Blacks who tried to change the system risked being beaten or killed.

Blacks were not permitted to play on professional baseball teams or in any other major league sport.  No black man had played for a major league baseball team since Eighteen-Eighty-Four.  In that year, American baseball organizations agreed to bar blacks.  That began changing when Jackie Robinson played his first game for New York's Brooklyn Dodgers on April Fifteenth, Nineteen-Forty-Seven.

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VOICE TWO: 

Jackie Robinson grew up in a family of five children in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles.  His father had left.  His mother did not earn much money, so Jackie Robinson learned to make his own way in life.  It was in California that Jackie Robinson first learned the ugliness of racial hatred.  White families who did not want to live near them repeatedly tried to force them to move away. 

Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson established himself early as an athlete.  He was a star player while attending the University of California at Los Angeles.

Jackie won honors in baseball, basketball, football and track. He was named to the All-American football team.  He was considered the best athlete on America's west coast. 

Jackie Robinson left college early because of financial problems. He joined the United States Army in Nineteen-Forty-One, during the second World War.  He became a lieutenant after boxing champion Joe Louis pushed for Robinson to be trained as an officer.  However, after three years, Robinson was dismissed from the army because he objected to a racial order.  He refused to move to the back of a bus. 

VOICE ONE:

In Nineteen-Forty-Five, there were not many jobs open to a black man, even someone who had attended college.  Robinson wanted to play professional baseball.  Blacks, however, were not permitted to play in the major leagues.  So, he decided to play with the Negro Baseball League.  The Negro League teams were started in the Nineteen-Twenties to give black people a place to play baseball.

Many of the best baseball players in the United States played in the Negro Leagues before white professional teams began accepting black players.  The skills and records of black ball players were as good as major league white players.  It was a hard life for Negro League players.  They took long trips by bus.  They changed clothes in farmhouses and shared bath water with teammates.  Many eating places did not serve food to blacks.  They had to eat outside or on the road.  And they were not permitted to sleep at hotels for whites.  Many players slept on the bus. 

VOICE TWO: 

Jackie Robinson played for the Kansas City Monarchs.  It was one of the most famous baseball teams in the Negro League.  But, he was unhappy in the Negro League because of the difficult life there.  In a statement from the book “The History of Baseball, Nineteen-Oh-Seven,” actor Ossie Davis expresses hope for change in the sport.

OSSIE DAVIS: "Baseball should be taken seriously by the colored player -- and in this effort of his great ability will open the avenue in the near future wherein he may walk hand in hand with the opposite race in the greatest of all American games -- baseball."

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VOICE ONE:

In Nineteen-Forty-Five, Jackie Robinson signed an agreement with Branch Rickey to play for the Dodgers.  Rickey was president of the team.  He wanted to find a black player who could deal with the insults and racial pressure he would face in the league.  He wanted a black player who would show restraint at all times. Rickey thought Jackie Robinson was good enough as a player and strong enough as a person to succeed.  He made Robinson promise that he would never show his anger on the baseball field.  Jackie Robinson accepted that condition. He said: 

JACKIE ROBINSON: "I knew that I was going to be somewhat out front and perhaps, I would have to take a lot of abuse. I knew that this was bigger than any one individual and I would have to do whatever I possibly could to control myself."

VOICE TWO: 

Some observers said that Jackie Robinson was not the best player in the Negro Leagues.  Others said that he was chosen for his communications skills and educational level and because he was an established sports star. 

VOICE TWO: 

David Faulkner wrote a book about Robinson's life.  It is called “Great Time Coming: The Life o