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Jackie Robinson Breaking the Color Barrier

Introduction

Racism is a hot topic; specifically, now the world is awakening to the type of treatment that people of colour go through in their lives. However, this does not mean racial segregation is new; it started as early as the 1600s when the American imported black people and used them for free and forced labour; from that moment, matters of equality between the white and the black has never been the same. The problem of racism existed in different fields, such as education, trade, and predominantly in the sports sector. Some of these key instances in the sports sector were termed as 'Strangerhood and Racism in Sports.’ "The history of the modern sport with such world-embracing festivals as the Olympic Games, … demonstrates how athletes … with different skin colours… compete against each other” (Alkemeyer & Bernd 30). This instance implies that people of colour were considered to have some limitations as far as specific games like basketball were concerned. One of the famous sportsmen who transformed the racial landscape in the sporting sector is Jackie Robinson.

Detailed Background Information

Jackie Robinson was born of a family of five children in 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. Initially, his family practised sharecropping; a nature of farming where people rent small pieces of land, do farming and pay landowners with a portion of their harvest. However, his family set-up did not remain the same for long because one year after he was born, his father abandoned them, forcing the mother to move to Pasadena, California and work multiple jobs to sustain her family. At the time, the region of Pasadena was quite affluent with a few black people in the community; however, lives for the black was not always the same as that of their white counterparts. Jackie and his mother were always excluded from recreational activities.

In 1935, Jackie Robinson joined the John Muir High School. At that time, his brother Mack was a famous person in sport (had won the silver medal in track and field Olympics in Berlin) and persuaded Jackie to engage in the sporting sector, which he had a clear interest in. During his time in high school, Jackie Robinson was issued with many university letters in basketball, baseball, football, as well as track. He later joined a local college at Pasadena Junior College and studies for two years. However, Jackie Robinson was hit by a brow when his older brother died in a motorcycle accident, an event...