This Day in Black Sports History: February 4, 1952

When Jack Roosevelt Robinson made his major league debut on April 15, 1947 in front of 26,623 spectators at Ebbets Field, including more than 14,000 black patrons, he became the first African-American player to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier, which segregated the sport for more than 55 years.

But before his life and legacy were sewn into the fabric of American history, Robinson was born in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia, where his mother single-handedly raised Robinson and his four older siblings.

After moving to Pasadena, California, Robinson’s family lived in relative poverty while Jackie came to learn about discrimination, racism and segregation at an early age, often denied recreational opportunities because of his skin color.

Inspired by his older brothers, Frank and Mack, Robinson would excel nonetheless, winning varsity letters in four sports—baseball, basketball, football and track—at John Muir High School. He went on to play those same sports at UCLA, becoming that school's first athlete to earn four varsity letters.

Due to financial difficulties, Robinson was forced to leave college in 1941. He decided to enlist in the United States Army, rising to the rank of second lieutenant before he was court-martialed for objecting to incidents of racial discrimination.

Robinson was honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1943.

Two years later, Robinson signed a contract to play for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Baseball League and traveled all over the Midwest with the team for a full season.

One season in the Negro Leagues was all Robinson would need to garner tremendous interest from Branch Rickey, club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who approached Robinson about joining the organization in 1947.

Then, when he stepped onto Ebbets Field in a Dodgers uniform, Robinson pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America and courageously challenged the deeply-rooted custom of racial segregation in both the North and the South.

In addition, Robinson would go on to have a 10-year Hall of Fame career, batting .311 with 137 home runs, 734 RBI, 197 stolen bases and 1,518 hits.

Along the way, Robinson was a six-time All-Star, winning the 1947 Rookie of the Year Award, the 1949 National League Most Valuable Player Award and a World Series championship (1955) in the process.

During his playing days, Robinson’s impact was also felt off the field. On February 4, 1952, he was hired as the Director of Community Activities for a radio station, WNBC, and the television station WNBT.

Thus, Robinson became the first African-American executive of a major radio and television station.

“It also gives us a chance to combat communist propaganda by showing there are plenty of opportunities for Negroes in this country,” Robinson once said about his new position.

Robinson retired from baseball on January 5, 1957, and in 1962, his first year of eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Robinson was elected, becoming the first African-American player to be inducted into Cooperstown.

Since his death on October 24, 1972, Major League Baseball has honored Robinson many times.

In 1987, the American and National League Rookie of the Year Awards were both renamed the "Jackie Robinson Award" in honor of the first recipient (Robinson's Major League Rookie of the Year Award in 1947 encompassed both leagues).

On April 15, 1997, Robinson's jersey number (42) was retired throughout the league, the first time any jersey number had been retired throughout one of the four major American sporting leagues.

Robinson’s profound impact on the game of baseball is absolutely unquestioned, and his courage and strength can also be viewed as the genesis of the Civil Rights Movement in America.

Click here to read the original article at SportsHaze.com.

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Why Color Will Never Be Blind In American Sports

1947 will always be known as the year that barriers were broken in sports.

Jackie Robinson ran out onto Ebbets Field in mid-April of that year and covered first base as the first player of color to play in the Major Leagues.

A little over a few months later, in the inaugural draft for the BAA league (which later became the NBA), the New York Knicks picked Japanese American Wataru Misaka. He became the first player of non-white descent to be drafted into the league.

It is now 63 years later, and the issue of race and color continues to blemish the world of sports and appears in no way of ever fading away.

In an interview with CNN, new Miami Heat star Lebron James discusses the backlash of his decision and spins it upon the concept of race.



While the validity of James’ comments would be difficult to assess, there is a bigger issue that remains a plague in American sports: that race will always be a hot topic in all of sports.

On one hand, sports have the luxury of being able to break the quintessential issues concerning race. Players from all walks of life can participate in sports with no focus on the color of their skin.

NBA games feature players from a variety of backgrounds such as Yao Ming, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard and Leandro Barbosa. NFL fans flock to stadiums to watch Brett Favre, Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu and Tony Gonzalez play one another. MLB players like Pablo Sandoval, Ichiro Suzuki, David Price and Roy Halladay face each other everyday.

No other industry or medium in America have the diversity that these sports leagues showcase daily to the public.

Despite the variety of color on the baseball diamonds, hardwood courts and grassy fields, race swims freely in other areas of sports.

In the 1999 movie “Any Given Sunday”, Jamie Foxx plays an eccentric, loose-cannon African American quarterback named Willie Beamen. At one point in the movie, Beamen is being interviewed about the issue of diversity in sports. He answers by comparing race both on and off the field.

“How many black football players are there? A lot,” he answers his own question with a serious look on his usual playful face. “But how many black owners do we have? Very few.”

As fictional as the film is, there is truth to the character’s viewpoint regarding racial diversity among sports in ownership.

According to the 2009 racial and gender report card study by the University of Central Florida, people of color represent less than five percent of majority owners in all three major sports.

Latin American Arturo Moreno is the majority owner of the Angels and Michael Jordan is the only owner of color in the NBA (he owns the Bobcats). The NFL currently doesn’t have an owner of color.

Going down the sliding scale of power in sports, there is still a discrepancy with race among coaches in sports. The study reports that the NBA has the highest percentage with coaches of color at 40%, while the MLB comes in at 26% and the NFL follows after at 19%.

All these numbers pale in comparison to the percentages with the players of color in all three sports. While the MLB has the lowest percentage (less than 40%) of colored players, other professional sports have a majority (the NBA has over 80% and the NFL at nearly 70%) of colored athletes.

With owners and coaches of color the minority and players of color the majority, racial tension will always be hovering around sports.

There is a sad underlying concept with James’ interview on CNN is that although athletes of color have benefited from what Robinson and Misaka were able to accomplish, racial tension will always be prominent in sports. James has made that obvious with his feelings on the aftermath of his decision.

While race may or may not have been a big influence on the backlash of his decision, it will forever remain in a concern in sports that will never be blind.

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