Jackie Robinson Influence On African American Sports

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Sports are one of the most important activities and part of American culture today. Today, children get to pick whatever sport they want to pursue, and most kids have a good time pursuing these sports in activities. There are equal playing fields for all kids despite the color of their skin, sexuality, and gender. Kids are judged based on the quality of their play and their sportsmanship instead of other qualities not pertaining to the sport. Where today it seems blasphemous to exclude someone based on the color of their skin in sports, this was not always the case. It used to be the norm to do this. Jackie Robinson helped break this color barrier in professional sports. He was fairly quiet throughout his early years, but that didn’t stop him from making a difference in the world. Jackie Robinson held a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement and helped open up the field of professional sports to all, while portraying a good image of the African …show more content…
When Robinson’s closest brother, Frank, passed away, he decided to go to UCLA since it was closer to Frank’s family. Jackie Robinson was UCLA’s first athlete to play four varsity sports, which were football, basketball, baseball, and track, and it is said that baseball was his worst sport. Although it may seem that sports were the most important part to his college experience, it happens to be meeting his wife, Rachel Isum (Robinson, I Never Had it Made: An Autobiography). After UCLA, Jackie wanted to pursue football professionally, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was drafted into the military, putting his professional athletic career on pause. Robinson’s military career was also brief; after refusing to move to the back of an Army bus, and after the legal repercussions, he was sent to be an army athletic coach where he found the idea to contact Negro League teams for a tryout