Jackie Robinson Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. He went to the University of California at Los Angeles. At UCLA he showed a great deal of athletic ability. He was the first student-athlete to win varsity letters in four sports-football, basketball, baseball and track. In 1941 he left college to join the Army. He became a second lieutenant in his journey through the Army. It was a segregated army then. He received an honorable discharge in 1944 after he was acquitted from a court-martial. Robinson began his professional baseball career in 1945. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the leading teams in the Negro Leagues. Later in th