Episode Details

Jackie Robinson is remembered as the man who quietly endured racist abuse to break baseball's color line. The real Robinson was anything but quiet. He was a fiercely competitive, outspoken, and confrontational athlete who had been court-martialed in the Army for refusing to move to the back of a bus — and who spent the second half of his career and his post-baseball years fighting publicly against the same racism he had been asked to absorb in silence.

This episode traces Robinson from his multi-sport dominance at UCLA through the Army court-martial, the agreement with Branch Rickey to endure abuse in silence, and the combative later years when he finally fought back openly.

• Robinson's athletic dominance at UCLA and the Army court-martial that previewed his defiance
• The agreement with Branch Rickey and the first two years of absorbing abuse without retaliation
• The later career when Robinson began fighting back and the teammates who stood with him
• His post-baseball activism, his complicated political evolution, and his death at fifty-three