About fifty years ago, Jackie Roosevelt Robinson became the first black player to play in a Major League baseball game. The day he stepped onto the Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947 he broke the color barrier and made the way for other black athletes to play the game. Without the brave  Jackie Robinson who open the way for other colored athletes like himself there wouldn’t be Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, or  even Tiger Woods. Sports would of been  very different in today’s society.  The way he handled himself on and off the field was very impressive. He took every racist comment that was thrown at him and decided not to make it bother him. The general manager who brought him into baseball, prohibited him from talking back to the people. But Jackie  Robinson didn’t let the pressure get to him at all. Jackie Robinson also helped to advance the civil rights movement further in 1947 with this major move he also helped to galvanize his generation to fight more for civil rights for people of color. The “civil rights movement” really came alive in the 1950’s to the 1980’s, due to Jackie Robinson integrating the segregated professional baseball league. Thanks to many great “civil rights movement icons” like Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Fannie Lou Hamer, we were able to elect our first “Black President” in 2008 and 2012 (President Barack Obama). In 1962 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Robinson distinguished himself as a talented player and a vocal civil rights activist. In 1955, he helped the Dodgers win the World Series. He retired in 1957 with a career batting average of .311. Robinson died in Connecticut in 1972.