Jackie Robinson essays

Jackie Robinson essays In 1947 Jackie Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and was the first black to do so. Before that there were separate leagues. Segregation was a big issue and Jackie made it even bigger by calling for it to stop and letting every one have a chance to show their talent. He led the path for a less difficult life for blacks, but that path had hate, misery, and pain as obstacles and only a special person like Robinson could overcome those obstacles. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in a small farmhouse near Cairo, Georgia. He had a tough up bringing and did not have good housing. "Jackie and his family lived on a white owned farm and his father worked on the farm"(Falkner 22). Jackie did not have a clear path to the right future. "The overriding reality of Robinson's early years was that, for black youth, the future was closed. Simple as that. It didn't take sociologist or a Jim Crow sign to tell him that schools, jobs, opportunities, careers were severely limited"(Falkner 28). Jackie had his eyes opened to prejudice at a very young age. "Everyday prejudice was Robinson's silent companion wherever he went, to and from school, to the neighborhood parks, to the segregated movie theaters, to the curbside markets where the Bond- Bread truck, the vegetable truck, the milk truck, sold their wares because most local food merchants refused to welcome nonwhites in their stores" (Falkner 30). Jackie grew up in the e ra of segregation. "During the period of segregation in the United States racial controversies were, of course, serious issues that often held deadly consequences. Lynchings were common. And each time blacks attempted to expand their limited citizenship, the response was usually accompanied with violence"(Dorinson 159). For Jackie to take all the horrible injustices that he saw an had done to him is an extraordinary sign of what kind of man Jackie was. When Jackie was young he and his friends used to s ...