Born in Cairo, Georgia, January 31, 1919. Jerry
Robinson, a plantation farm worker, and Mallie, a domestic worker.
There were five children in the Robinson family: Edgar, Frank, Mack,
Willa Mae, and Jackie. His Lifestyle as a child was difficult
because
of Racial people.
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Robinson's first competitive
game took place when his fourth grade soccer team played the sixth
graders. Then came football, tennis, basketball, the track team,
and table tennis. In athletics he had more freedom to relate to
people on equal terms, with less emphasis on race and more on body
development, coordination, and performance level.
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1942, Robinson was drafted into
the U.S. Army and sent to a segregated unit in Fort Riley, Kansas,
where under existing policy he could not enter Officer's Candidate
School. A racially charged incident at Fort Hood, Texas,
threatened to discredit Robinson's service record, when in defiance of
a bus driver's command to go to the rear of the bus, he refused to
leave his seat. The team won the league title and Robinson
finished with a .297 batting average, a league leading 29 stolen bases,
and the title of Major League Rookie of the Year.
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Jackie
Robinson's last public appearance was on October 15, 1972, at
Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, when he threw out the first ball in
the 1972 World Series. Nine days later, rescuers were unable to revive
him from what would be the fatal heart attack that struck when he was
53-years old in his Stamford home on October 24, 1972.
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