SHANEEN KNOWS

For more than 50 years Major League Baseball was a segregated sport until Mr. Jackie Robinson came along and changed the game. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers, he was one of five children. He and his family lived where no one else looked like them, they were the only black family on a block when racial prejudice was prevalent. In spite of growing up in a single-parent home, Jackie excelled at an early age. Sports was his thing and while attending school at UCLA Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, football, track and basketball. He was even named to the All-American football team in 1941. Jackie's college career was cut short when financial difficulties forced him to leave college, so he decided to try out the U.S. Army. There he became one of the first Blacks to attend Officer Candidate School and he graduated second lieutenant after only two years. Jackie's Army career