Jackie Robinson and The Integration Of The United States Essay

Jackie Robinson: athlete, social activist, hero. These are just some of the words people use to describe Jackie. Robinson was the first person to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, at the time officially designated a white man’s 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 segregated and the Jim Crow Laws still reigned heavily in the south. Integration didn’t start until 1948 when Truman signed Executive Order 9981 which integrated the military. This didn’t occur until after Robinson took the field 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 hadn’t been for Branch Rickey trying to integrate the major league s, who knows how long it would have been before the U.S. and the major leagues started to integrate. Jackie Robinson grew up with sports all around him. Jackie’s 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. â€Å"Matthew inspired 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 university’s 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 baseball’s color barrier and people started realizing the questionable practices of segregation wanting the United States to change and accept blacks into everyday life. Works Cited â€Å"Jackie Robinson.† 2010. Biography.com 2010. Web 14 Nov 2010. â€Å"Breaking the Color Line: 1940-1946† memory.loc.gov 2010. Web 13 Nov 2010. Brunner, Borgna, and Elissa Haney. â€Å"Civil Rights Timeline.† Infoplease.com 2007. Web. 13 Nov 2010. Dawson, George, and Richard Glaubman. â€Å"Life Is So Good.† New York; Penguin, 2001. Print. Carroll, Brian. â€Å"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. â€Å"Branch Rickey picks a player.† The South East Missourian. 14 Apr, 1947. Web. 29 Nov, 2010.