The HBCU Swingman Classic presented by T-Mobile & powered by the MLB-MLBPA Youth Development Foundation is an annual All-Star experience for baseball student-athletes from Division-I programs at Historically Black Colleges & Universities. The philanthropic & educational event will be held on Friday, July 12 during MLB All-Star Week.

Born in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson was raised in Pasadena, California. A four-sport student athlete at Pasadena Junior College and the University of California, Los Angeles, he was better known for football than he was for baseball, becoming a star college player with the UCLA Bruins football team. Following his college career, Robinson was drafted for service during World War II but was court martialed for refusing to sit at the back of a segregated Army bus, eventually being honorably discharged. Afterwards, he signed with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues from where he caught the eye of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who thought he would be the perfect candidate for breaking the color line in Major League Baseball.

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Robinson's character, his use of nonviolence, and his talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation that had then marked many other aspects of American life. He influenced the culture of and contributed significantly to the civil rights movement. Robinson also was the first black television analyst in MLB and the first black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock full o'Nuts. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York. After his death in 1972, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his achievements on and off the field.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, into a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia. He was the youngest of five children born to Mallie (ne McGriff) and Jerry Robinson, after siblings Edgar, Frank, Matthew (nicknamed "Mack"), and Willa Mae.[1][2] His middle name honored former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born.[3] After Robinson's father left the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California.[4][5]

The extended Robinson family established itself on a residential plot containing two small houses at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena. Robinson's mother worked various odd jobs to support the family.[6] Growing up in relative poverty in an otherwise affluent community, Robinson and his minority friends were excluded from many recreational opportunities.[7] As a result, Robinson joined a neighborhood gang, but his friend Carl Anderson persuaded him to abandon it.[7][8][9]

In 1935, Robinson graduated from Washington Junior High School and enrolled at John Muir Technical High School.[10] Recognizing his athletic talents, Robinson's older brothers, Frank and Mack (himself an accomplished track and field athlete and silver medalist behind Jesse Owens in the 200 meters at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics) inspired Jackie to pursue his interest in sports.[9][11][12]

At Muir Tech, Robinson played numerous sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track and field, and baseball.[5] He played shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and guard on the basketball team. With the track and field squad, he won awards in the broad jump. He was also a member of the tennis team.[13]

In 1936, Robinson won the junior boys singles championship in the annual Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament and earned a place on the Pomona annual baseball tournament all-star team, which included future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Lemon.[14] In late January 1937, the Pasadena Star-News newspaper reported that Robinson "for two years has been the outstanding athlete at Muir, starring in football, basketball, track, baseball, and tennis."[15]

That year, Robinson was one of 10 students named to the school's Order of the Mast and Dagger (Omicron Mu Delta), awarded to students performing "outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition."[21] Also while at PJC, he was elected to the Lancers, a student-run police organization responsible for patrolling various school activities.[22]

After graduating from PJC in spring 1939,[27] Robinson enrolled at UCLA, where he became the school's first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track.[28][29]

While a senior at UCLA, Robinson met his future wife, Rachel Isum (b.1922), a UCLA freshman who was familiar with Robinson's athletic career at PJC.[37] He played football as a senior, but the 1940 Bruins won only one game.[38] In the spring, Robinson left college just shy of graduation, despite the reservations of his mother and Isum.[39] He took a job as an assistant athletic director with the government's National Youth Administration (NYA) in Atascadero, California.[40][41][42]

After the government ceased NYA operations, Robinson traveled to Honolulu in the fall of 1941 to play football for the semi-professional, racially integrated Honolulu Bears.[40][42] After a short season, Robinson returned to California in December 1941 to pursue a career as running back for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League.[43] By that time, however, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place, which drew the United States into World War II and ended Robinson's nascent football career.[40]

In 1942, Robinson was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit at Fort Riley, Kansas.[44] Having the requisite qualifications, Robinson and several other black soldiers applied for admission to an Officer Candidate School (OCS) then located at Fort Riley.[44][45]

Although the Army's initial July 1941 guidelines for OCS had been drafted as race-neutral, few black applicants were admitted into OCS until after subsequent directives by Army leadership.[46] The applications of Robinson and his colleagues were delayed for several months.[47] After protests by heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis (then stationed at Fort Riley) and with the help of Truman Gibson (then an assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War),[48] the men were accepted into OCS.[40][47][49] The experience led to a personal friendship between Robinson and Louis.[50] Upon finishing OCS, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943.[29] Shortly afterward, Robinson and Isum were formally engaged.[47]

An event on July 6, 1944, derailed Robinson's military career.[52] While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer's wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus.[53][54][55] Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody.[53][56] When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed.[53][57]

By the time of the court-martial in August 1944, the charges against Robinson had been reduced to two counts of insubordination during questioning.[53] Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of nine officers.[53]

Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II, Robinson's court-martial proceedings prohibited him from being deployed overseas, and he was never in combat.[59]

After his acquittal, he was transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, where he served as a coach for army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944.[60] While there, Robinson met a former player for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, who encouraged Robinson to write the Monarchs and ask for a tryout.[61] Robinson took the former player's advice and wrote to Monarchs co-owner Thomas Baird.[62]

During the season, Robinson pursued potential major league interests. No black man had played in the major leagues since Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, but the Boston Red Sox nevertheless held a tryout at Fenway Park for Robinson and other black players on April 16.[73][74] The tryout, however, was a farce chiefly designed to assuage the desegregationist sensibilities of powerful Boston City Councilman Isadore H. Y. Muchnick.[75] Even with the stands limited to management, Robinson was subjected to racial epithets.[76] He left the tryout humiliated,[73] and more than 14 years later, in July 1959, the Red Sox became the final major league team to integrate its roster.[77]

Rickey's offer allowed Robinson to leave behind the Monarchs and their grueling bus rides, and he went home to Pasadena. That September, he signed with Chet Brewer's Kansas City Royals, a post-season barnstorming team in the California Winter League.[96][97] Later that off-season, he briefly toured South America with another barnstorming team, while his fiance Isum pursued nursing opportunities in New York City.[98] On February 10, 1946, Robinson and Isum were married by their old friend, the Rev. Karl Downs.[40][99][100]

In 1946, Robinson arrived at Daytona Beach, Florida, for spring training with the Montreal Royals of the Class AAA International League. Clay Hopper, the manager of the Royals, asked Rickey to assign Robinson to any other Dodger affiliate, but Rickey refused.[101]

Robinson's presence was controversial in racially segregated Florida. He was not allowed to stay with his white teammates at the team hotel, and instead lodged at the home of Joe and Dufferin Harris, a politically active African American couple who introduced the Robinsons to civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.[102][103][104] Since the Dodgers organization did not own a spring training facility, scheduling was subject to the whim of area localities, several of which turned down any event involving Robinson or Johnny Wright, another black player whom Rickey had signed to the Dodgers' organization in January. In Sanford, Florida, the police chief threatened to cancel games if Robinson and Wright did not cease training activities there; as a result, Robinson was sent back to Daytona Beach.[105][106] In Jacksonville, the stadium was padlocked shut without warning on game day, by order of the city's Parks and Public Property director.[107][108] In DeLand, a scheduled day game was postponed, ostensibly because of issues with the stadium's electrical lighting.[109][110] 152ee80cbc

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