Jackie Robinson on opening day 1947:

1) 28 yo
2) nationally-known All-American football player at UCLA
3) military vet (WWII)
4) ex-#1 Olympic long jumper
5) PAC Conf. hoops #1 scorer

Does that sound like someone who needed a 64-year-old white guy to tell him not to fight back?

Jackie Robinson suffered physical and verbal abuse from opponents and teammates at UCLA.

Robinson missed several games because of injuries stemming from that abuse including two games in which his own teammates deliberately injured him in practice. (Reported by the LA Times.)

His junior year at UCLA, a USC frat won “most humorous homecoming display” by simulating a lynching of Robinson - hanging him in effigy from a tree in front of the fraternity house.

The abuse Robinson faced as a UCLA athlete was much worse than anything he faced w/ the Dodgers.

All of the above incidents will soon be documented online as part of ongoing content presentations we’ll be rolling out soon. Given that so much of this content is entirely unknown it has taken quite some time (years) to discover and document it. But we are finally getting close.

The Black press documented the horrific lynching effigy at USC and organized a protest to have it removed while the white press ignored it except to report it won “most humorous display.”

Thanks to the Black-owned press, we will soon document it online for the permanent record.

Six years before Branch Rickey warned Jackie Robinson about the abuse he’d face in baseball - and supposedly inspired Jack to not fight back - then-UCLA football star Jackie Robinson was punched in the face by a Stanford football player during a UCLA-Stanford game on 10/14/1939.

Color footage includes Jack saving UCLA’s first-ever undefeated season by forcing USC goal line fumble in front of 103,303 fans. UCLA was #1 in attendance that year despite being a commuter school w/ five buildings, no dorms and having been open in Westwood for less than 10 years

I have never found any evidence that Jackie Robinson ever lost control of himself in public (ZERO) and from Rachel we know he was a gentle, loving husband and father.

But if anyone ever deserved to lose his shit, it was Jackie Robinson.

God bless that man.