Mrs.+Layton's++Book+Report+on+Jackie+Robinson+second+page.

  Jack Robinson By: Susan Muaddi Darraj Shannon Read

Before 1947 professional baseball, which was called the national pasttime, was as segretegated as the rest of the American Society. During the summer of 1939, Jackie Robinson played softball, not baseball but softball. He was in the physical prime of his life. In Pasadena Junior College he played many sports from football to baseball to track. PLaying softball in the summer was a good way to ease his stress, worries, and sorrows. One of his worries was his decision to attend ULCA. He also wanted to go to Stanford University. The only problem with this is that Stanford didn't allow black students. There were no exceptions even for a played as well as "Jack Rabbit" Robinson as he was called for his speed. USC was a possible choice because they did have black players on the team, but Robinson found out these players were called "token players. " This means that they were not offered to play. What Jackie wanted more than anything was to play. All sports had provided him with a form of therapy when his older brother Frank died that summer. On the 10th of July Frank was killed when riding his motorcycle he had collided head on with a car and he flew into the air and slammed into a parked car hard enough to dent it. Frank hadalways been there for him and cheered him on at games. Once he was driving home with his buddies and a white man pulled up next to him and called them racial slurs. The man was going to get out of the car and comfront Jackie when forty to fifty other black people saw what happened and he hesitated. Then a cop pulled up and tried to find out what was going on and thought that they were harassing the white man. He tried to arrest several of them but they escaped. Robinson had known in the past blacks had been killed and hurt by predujust police. Jackie was very lucky in many ways, to grow up in Pasadena, not just because of Georgia's harsh ways, (because of their harsh racial ways) but because they offer was heavily inested in sports. On February 1, 1937, Jackie enrolled at Pasadena Junior College. He was only one in seventy african americans in the college. Although he was a verstitile athlete he liked baseball the most. Discrimination was still at play, the Most Valuable Player award that year was given to a white man. Jackie worked for the National Youth Association for some time. They provided jobs, job training, and relief to people ages sixteen to twenty-five. The Negro Leagues came around a few years after a descisionin 1868 to ban all ball clubs that included african americans. On October 23, 1945 Robinson had signed a contract to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would recieve a 3500 dollar signing bonus and a salary of 600.00$ a month. He had married Rachel Isum on February 10, 1946. His start with the Montreal Royals had been a negative start. When he was up to bat pitchers had thrown at his head many times. He very many firsts in his life like being the first African American Baseball player. On the 13th of January in 1950 Rachel Robinson had given birth to their second child, a girl named Sharon. Jackie had won many world series and made it to the play-offs many times.in 1997major league baseball retires his number.