that left them with the horrible feeling of inferiority. This feeling was felt until April 15, 1947, until the man who would change all this stepped up to bat, marking the first time an African-American played in the major leagues.# Jackie Robinson was the man, and as far as the African-American race is concerned, Jackie Robinson is the man. The day has lived in history as the first day of the beginning of a new truth. That, with hard work and a heart the size of a watermelon, black people could aspire to be more. Jackie Robinson is responsible for the truth of hope, a truth more powerful than any other. With this new hope, Jackie Robinson and the African-American race marked the beginning of the struggle for the ultimate holy grail...equality. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. The grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper, “Jackie,” as he become known, struggled from the very beginning. He was the youngest of five children in a poor family. After his father abandoned him at the age of one, his mother was forced to work many jobs just to support the family.# Jackie was very outspoken from the beginning. As a young child confronted with the everyday racist taunts from nearby white children, Jackie lashed back and always stood up for himself, sometimes to the tune of beatings from the children. But Jackie didn’t care. Even despite advice from his elementary teacher, who said he was “destined to be a gardener,”# Jackie always fought the infinite number of tactics to keep him and his race inferior. Jackie believed that God had plans for him, plans beyond the scope of the normal Negro of the times. As he grew older, his fighting spirit continued to follow him along. In 1942, more than a decade before the famous Rosa Parks struggle, Jackie was confronted with a similar situation. Told by an officer to leave his seat on the white section of the bus and mov...
