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Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 –
October 24, 1972) became the first African-American major league
baseball player of the modern era in 1947.[1] While not the first
African American professional baseball player in United States history,
his Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately
eighty years of baseball segregation, also known as the baseball color
line. In the United States at this time, many white people believed that
blacks and whites should be segregated or kept apart in many phases of
life, including sports and daily life. The Baseball Hall of Fame
inducted Robinson in 1962 and he was a member of six World Series teams.
He earned six consecutive All-Star Game nominations and won several
awards during his career. In 1947, Robinson won The Sporting News Rookie
of the Year Award and the first Rookie of the Year Award. Two years
later, he was awarded the National League MVP Award.
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