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Jackie Robinson is a legendary figure and his name is now synonymous with the desegregation and redefinition of professional sports. Yet, collective knowledge of the historical process that created the American icon has been reduced to an occasional “color commentary.” Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey are forever linked in American history. Rickey understood the psyche of white America. While Branch Rickey’s motives are still unclear, history has proven that his “great experiment” to integrate baseball, ultimately had less to do with baseball and more to do with challenging deep seated attitudes about race. The process had to be systematic, and Jackie Robinson not only had to have all the required physical and emotional assets, he had to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born the youngest of five children near Cairo, Georgia on January 31, 1919. Soon afterwards, his father left the family. His mother then moved the family to Pasadena, California to find work as a domestic. Jackie Robinson excelled in four sports at Pasadena’s John Muir Technical High: football, basketball, baseball and track. He went on to Pasadena Junior College, where he set a National Junior Coll