Karsh Signature

Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century

Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson, 1957

Jackie Robinson was born on this day, January 31, in 1919 (d.1972). Robinson is legendary in the United States for being the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. Karsh photographed Robinson in 1957, the year after Robinson had retired from the game.

Robinson also was the first black television analyst in Major League Baseball and the first black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock full o’Nuts. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York.

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