Jackie Robinson and The Integration Of The United States Essay

Jackie Robinson athlete, accessible activist, hero. These are just some of the words people use to describe Jackie. Robinson was the first somebody to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, at the time officially designated a white mans sport. The blacks and whites played in separate leagues but Branch Rickey, vice president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, wanted to integrate Major League Baseball. At this time in the 1940s the Unites States was still discriminate and the Jim Crow Laws still reigned heavily in the south. Integration didnt start until 1948 when Truman signed Executive Order 9981 which integrated the military. This didnt occur until after Robinson took the stadium as the first African-American to play in the major leagues. Once Robinson started playing, whites saw that he could do anything as well as they could, which started a social revolution within the United States. If it hadnt been for Branch Rickey trying to integrate the major leagues, who knows how lon g it would overhear been before the U.S. and the major leagues started to integrate. Jackie Robinson grew up with sports all roughly him. Jackies older brother Matthew was an Olympic sprinter in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin he came in second in the 200 meter dash behind Jesse Owens. Matthew providential Jackie to pursue his talent and love for athletics (Robinson). Jackie continued his love for sports at the University of California, Los Angeles. Robinson became the universitys first four sport letterman. He excelled in track, baseball, football and basketball. If it was not for his brother Robinson might not have continued his love for sports, thus never playing in the major leagues and the integration of the United States might have taken longer. He was easi... ...play in the major leagues and Robinson broke baseballs color barrier and people started realizing the questionable practices of segregation wanting the United States to dislodge and accept blacks into everyday life . Works CitedJackie Robinson. 2010. Biography.com 2010. Web 14 Nov 2010. Breaking the Color Line 1940-1946 memory.loc.gov 2010. Web 13 Nov 2010.Brunner, Borgna, and Elissa Haney. Civil Rights Timeline. Infoplease.com 2007. Web. 13 Nov 2010.Dawson, George, and Richard Glaubman. Life Is So Good. unseasoned York Penguin, 2001. Print. Carroll, Brian. Early Twentieth-Century Heroes Coverage of Negro League Baseball in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender. Journalism History 32.1(2006) 34-43. Web. 14 Nov 2010. Mackenzie, Dewitt. Branch Rickey picks a player. The South eastern hemisphere Missourian. 14 Apr, 1947. Web. 29 Nov, 2010.