July 3 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 3.

Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

He was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.

After demonstrating exceptional athletic ability during high school and junior college, he excelled at baseball, football, basketball, and track at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

He left UCLA in 1941 and briefly played professional football before being drafted into the U.S. Army. During his service, he refused to sit at the back of a bus and was threatened with a court-martial, but the charges were dropped and he was given an honorable discharge in 1945.

Robinson made his major league debut in April 1947. The chief problem he had to overcome was controlling his fiery temper in the face of continual racial slurs from the crowds and other ballplayers, including some of his own teammates.

After retiring from baseball early in 1957, Robinson engaged in business and in civil rights activism. He was a spokesperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and made appearances with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Robinson's major league debut brought an end to approximately sixty years of segregation in professional baseball, known as the baseball color line.

Robinson's character, his use of nonviolence, and his talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation that had then marked many other aspects of American life.

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