How can the actions of an individual change a system? This is the question I will be answering in this blog post. I will be comparing two different people that are from different time periods. There are commonalities and connections between Barack Obama become the first African American president and Jackie Robinson being the first African American professional baseball player even though they had different jobs.
These two influential people have both faced tough times while achieving something that had never been done before. When both these men broke the colour barrier in their own respective careers it was a major advancement in the civil rights movement that was started many years ago and still fights for equality today. These men were both judged for the colour of their skin and racially profiled in life but they didn’t step down and let the others win. They stood up for what they believed in and put the lives of other less-privileged African Americans on their back. I used this juxtapose image above to represent the many different similar skills and challenges that these two faced on their way to the top. The similarities are show in the photo by being able to overlap one photo with the other.
On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected President of the United States. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. At the beginning of his career, after a two-year stint working in corporate research and at the New York Public Interest Research Group, Barrak Obama was trying to make a name for himself in the business world. Barack took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group. For many years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely African American South Side. In 1996 Obama launched his political campaign where he won an election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat from the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. From there he worked as a senator and tried to represent the poor, less privileged families that didn’t have a voice. He would later run for office and become the second African American presidential candidate and the first African American president in the history of the United States.
Now let’s talk about Jackie Robinson’s rise to fame. Just like Barack, Jackie had to work hard to rise to his level of fame. After Jackie was finished with high school he went on to be the only student in history to letter in 4 sports (football, basketball, baseball and track and field). Just shy of graduating and receiving his deploma, Jackie was arrested for trying to help one of his friends who was unlawfully arrested by police. After this Jackie joined the army where he again was arrested or court marshalled for standing up for change when he was told to move to the back of the bus and refused. Later after the charges were dropped for insubordination, disturbing the peace and drunkenness (although he neither drank nor smoked) Jackie was discharged and went back to baseball where he caught the eye of dodgers own Branch Rickey. Branch made up his mind and decided that Jackie would be the man to break the colour barrier in Major League Baseball.
These two men worked hard to achieve their goals and optimized their talents and skills to make a change. Although they were famous in different fields, they both paved the way for others to follow their lead and improve civil rights no matter where they are starting from in life or which path they take.
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