Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and death.

After graduating from high school, Jackie attended Pasadena Junior College (PJC). Much of his world centered on athletics. He set PJC’s broad jump record, turned into an extraordinary baserunner for the baseball team, and earned a “gold football” and a football Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. After he earned a scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), people labeled him the West Coast’s greatest “all-around athlete.”

In Jackie’s personal life, his mother moved the family into a small house at 133 Pepper Street, letting Jackie’s older siblings have the bigger home to themselves. In 1939, Jackie’s “favorite” brother, Frank, died in a motorcycle accident. One year later, at UCLA, Jackie met Rachel Annetta Isum, a freshman studying nursing. They dated, fell in love, and married.

World War II (1939-1945) prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who was president from 1933 to 1945) to ban racial discrimination in factories that worked with the federal government. Jackie spent three years in the Army (1942-1945), which remained segregated. A football injury stopped him from fighting in Europe or the Pacific. Instead, he attended officers’ training school and became a second lieutenant.