From Pasadena to Westwood

Robinson was born January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, and his family moved to Pasadena, California when he was an infant. He attended John Muir High School in Pasadena and Pasadena Junior College (now Pasadena City College) before transferring to UCLA in fall 1939. He was 20 when he arrived in Westwood — older than typical college freshmen because he had spent two years at PJC playing four sports already.

His older brother Mack Robinson had attended the University of Oregon and won a silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Mack finished second behind Jesse Owens. The Robinson family’s athletic genealogy was already nationally known by the time Jackie arrived at UCLA.

Four varsity letters

FOOTBALL: Robinson was an All-American halfback for UCLA in 1939 and 1940. The 1939 Bruins went 6-0-4 (all four ties — including a famous 0-0 stalemate with USC at the LA Coliseum). Robinson averaged 12.0 yards per carry as a junior in 1939, the highest single-season per-carry average in major-college football until Adrian Peterson’s 13.8 in 2003 (and only achieved at lower-division programs since).

BASKETBALL: Robinson led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring as a junior (1940-41) at 12.4 points per game in a 35-second-shot-clock era. He was the first Black player to letter in basketball at UCLA.

BASEBALL: Ironically Robinson’s worst sport at UCLA. He hit .097 (3-for-31) as a junior infielder. He played mostly because the team needed bodies; the program was thin.

TRACK: Won the 1940 NCAA long-jump championship at 24’10 1/4″. His brother Mack’s 1936 Olympic medal had been in the 200; Jackie chose long-jump as his lane to avoid family comparisons.

Leaving UCLA without graduating

Robinson left UCLA in spring 1941, weeks shy of his degree. He needed to support his family financially — his mother Mallie was struggling to maintain the Pasadena house — and the available work for Black college graduates in California in 1941 was extremely limited even with a degree. He took a job with the National Youth Administration as an athletic director.

He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 and was eventually commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943 (after a high-profile court-martial proceeding over a bus-segregation incident at Fort Hood). After his honorable discharge in 1944, he played one season of Negro League baseball with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945, then signed with Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey in October 1945. He broke MLB’s color barrier on April 15, 1947 at Ebbets Field. UCLA awarded him an honorary degree in 1972 — the year of his death.

Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on Jackie Robinson and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records. Lead image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).