Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. He influenced the culture of and contributed significantly to the civil rights movement. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1972.
About Jackie Robinson in brief
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, MLB retired his uniform number 42 across all major league teams. 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. He influenced the culture of and contributed significantly to the civil rights movement. After his death in 1972, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his achievements on and off the field. He is buried in New York City’s Mount Sinai Cemetery, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity and served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. His son, Jack Robinson Jr., was a professional baseball player who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1960s and ’70s. He died in a car crash in Los Angeles, California, in 1998. He has been remembered as one of the greatest baseball players of the 20th century and a pioneer in the field of African-American sports. He also helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African- American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York, in the early 1960s. His daughter, Rosie Robinson, is a former MLB All-Star and the first black woman to be a major league baseball player. She is also the daughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born.
Robinson is the grandfather of the current MLB commissioner, Robinson Robison. She was the granddaughter of former MLB Commissioner Paul O’Neill and the great-great-grandmother of the late Joe Torre, who played in the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants. She has a son, Jackie Robinson III, and a daughter, Rose Robinson, who plays for the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco 49ers. She also is the mother of two-year-old son, David Robinson, a baseball player and the grandson of former Major League baseball player Jack Robinson, Jr. The couple have three children, David, Jr., a junior high and high school football player, and daughter-in-law, Rose, a junior college tennis player. Robinson was also the father of two sons, David and David, who is now a senior at Loyola Marymount University in San Francisco. Robinson also has two step-granddaughters, Victoria and Victoria Robinson, both of whom are active members of the California Air National Guard and the California National Guard. He had a son named David Robinson who is a professional golfer and the son of former NFL player David Robinson. Robinson has a grandson, Michael Robinson, and an adult son, Chris Robinson, also a pro-athlete who played baseball for the San Diego Padres and the Oakland Athletics. Robinson played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series championship. He won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award in 1947.