Born to a family of sharecroppers who soon moved to Pasadena, California, Jack Roosevelt Robinson excelled at four sports at UCLA before Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey selected him in 1945 to integrate Major League Baseball. Robinson's debut on April 15, 1947 shattered a color line unbroken since the 1880s, and his courage under relentless abuse made him an enduring symbol of the civil rights struggle.
Robinson grew up in a segregated California, one of five children raised by a single mother who cleaned houses to support them. At UCLA he became the university's first athlete to letter in four varsity sports, baseball, basketball, football, and track, though baseball was arguably his weakest game at the time. After Army service, during which he was court-martialed and acquitted for refusing to move to the back of a bus, he played in the Negro Leagues before Branch Rickey scouted him.
Rickey chose Robinson not only for his talent but for a temperament he judged capable of enduring abuse without retaliating, at least at first. He famously asked Robinson, 'Do you have the guts to not fight back?' Robinson agreed to a period of turning the other cheek, absorbing beanballs, slurs, and even threats from opposing players and fans, while his own Dodgers teammates initially petitioned against playing with him.
His 1947 rookie season, in which he won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award, opened the door for other Black players and became one of the twentieth century's pivotal civil rights moments, occurring a full seven years before Brown v. Board of Education.