DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Humble Beginnings to Baseball Hero and Civil Rights Champion

Imagine This: You’re a young black man who wants to play professional baseball, but it’s 1944 and there are no African Americans playing on any of the major league teams. So what do you do? Do you give up your dream?

 You’re born in a small farmhouse in Cairo, Georgia, the youngest of five children, the grandson of a slave, and the son of a sharecropper. When you’re only six months old, your father takes off for Florida and is never hard from again. Without your father to work the farm, you and your family have to leave the farm.

 In an effort to escape the discrimination problems of the Deep South, your mother moves your family to Pasadena, California, where you share a small apartment with your uncle. Your mother takes in washing to pay her way, and you often eat day-old-bread dipped in milk and sugar for supper.

 Somehow your mother manages to save enough money to buy a small house, but as the only black family on your street, you encounter a lot of prejudice. Some of your white neighbors call you names and even start a petition to get your family thrown out of the neighborhood.

 Your mother refuses to give in to the neighborhood pressure, however, and refuses to move. She works six days a week cleaning other people’s houses, and after school, you haul junk, shine shoes, and sell newspapers to earn money.

 You’re a good student, but your heart is more into sports  than in your schoolwork. You love all sports and become a four-sport star at your high school-—earning letters in football, track, baseball, and basketball. And at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), you become the university’s first student to earn varsity letters in four sports.

 In 1942, you’re drafted into the army where you encounter the same discrimination you encountered in your neighborhood. After your discharge from the army in 1944, you want to play professional baseball, but there are no African Americans playing on any of the major league teams.

 You join the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League team, where you encounter as much racial discrimination as in the army. Many hotels and restaurants refuse to serve black people, so you and your teammates often sleep and eat on the bus.

 But your luck is about to change! Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, has decided it’s time to end segregation in baseball, and he believes that you are the man to do it.

 You join the all-white Montreal Royals, the Dodgers’ top minor league team, and though taunted by fans, you never lose your cool. Rickey decides it’s time to move you up to the major leagues and April 15, 1947, is a historic day for major league baseball and for the entire nation.

 When the major league baseball season opens that day, you’re there in the Dodger lineup, the first African American to play baseball for a major league team.

 In the beginning, your white teammates try to ignore you, but as the fans and opposing players abuse you with catcalls and racial taunts, your teammates unite behind you.

 You rise above the harassment and answer the abuse with your bat and your feet. Your .297 batting average helps the Dodgers win the National League pennant and you’re named Rookie of the Year. In 1949, you’re named the league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) and you also star in a movie about your life.

 In your ten seasons with the Dodgers, they win six National League pennants. You retire from baseball in 1956 with an impressive career batting average of .311 and in 1962, you’re inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the first black man to receive baseball’s highest honor.

 Branch Rickey chose well when he chose you to be the man to end segregation in baseball, and your life and legacy will be remembered as one of the most important in American history.

                                 “The first freedom for all people is freedom of choice.”

                                                  Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

 For More about Jackie Robinson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILIA20AqA5I

 Giving Back:  In the 1950s, you become a civil rights activist and a strong supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

 Did You Know that in April 1997 Major League baseball honored Jackie Robinson by retiring his jersey number 42 and that he was the first player to be so honored?

 Something to Think about:  Why do you think Jackie Robinson was able to tolerate all the verbal abuse he received during the initial phase of his professional baseball career without ever retaliating?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!