Jackie Robinson: His Life and Career in Pictures

When Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he not only integrated Major League Baseball. He was signaling to the nation—on one of its biggest stages—that Black Americans would no longer accept second-class status.

“Jackie Robinson gave all of us—not only black athletes, but every black person in this country—a sense of our own strength,” wrote slugger Hank Aaron in his introduction to Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had It Made.

Robinson’s strength was not only as a gifted athlete and fierce competitor who earned Rookie of the Year, MVP and six-time All-Star status. His strength manifested itself as dogged perseverance in the face of a tidal wave of racism—from daily taunts and threats to broad institutional inequities. The pressure took an enormous toll.

Robinson’s athletic brilliance and contributions to history earned all manner of accolades, from Baseball Hall of Fame induction to the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Major League Baseball retiring his number “42” in 1997—a first for any athlete, in any sport. Shortly before the Hall of Fame ceremony, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. paid tribute to Robinson’s pioneering achievements this way: “Back in the days when integration wasn’t fashionable, he underwent the trauma and the humiliation and the loneliness that comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”