Day 20 of 28 of Black History

Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color line becoming the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He was also the first black television analyst in the MLB and first black VP for a major American corporation.

Robinson also has a military career history. He was drafted in 1942 and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Kansas. In 1944, in yet another historical segregated bus incident, he was charged with “public drunkenness” even if he didn’t drink. He was court-martialed for the incident and that caused him to never be deployed overseas. After he was acquitted, he was transferred and became a coach for army athletics until he was honorably discharged in November 1944.

Although that part of Jackie’s past isn’t always highlighted, for day 20 of my 28 days of Black History Month facts, I found out that he helped found and direct the Freedom National Bank in Harlem in the 1960s. The bank was, at the time, the largest black-owned and operated bank in NY State. He was the bank’s first chairman. In 1970, he also founded the Jackie Robinson Construction Company to build housing for low-income families.