Jackie Robinson Trivia
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60 free Jackie Robinson trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line on April 15, 1947, and this trivia quiz covers the whole story behind that day and everything after it. It starts in Cairo, Georgia and Pasadena, with the brother who won an Olympic silver medal behind Jesse Owens, the four varsity letters at UCLA, the Army court-martial over a segregated bus and the season with the Kansas City Monarchs. Then comes Branch Rickey's famous three-hour interview, the Montreal Royals, Ebbets Field and the ten Dodgers seasons that followed. The baseball questions dig into the details: the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award, the 1949 MVP season, the 19 steals of home, the 1955 World Series, the trade to the Giants that never happened and the retirement announced through Look magazine. The legacy questions cover the retirement of number 42 across baseball, Jackie Robinson Day, the Chock full o'Nuts vice-presidency, the Hall of Fame election, the film 42 and the museum that finally opened in 2022. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Robinson, Branch Rickey and related topics, and each question links to its source. Try our Baseball History and Brooklyn Dodgers quizzes next.
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Q 01At which ballpark did Jackie Robinson make his major league debut on April 15, 1947?
Ebbets Field
Ebbets Field held 26,623 fans that day, an estimated 14,000 of them Black, and Robinson went hitless yet scored the winning run as Brooklyn beat the Boston Braves 5–3.
Q 02In which Southern state was Jackie Robinson born to a family of sharecroppers in 1919?
Georgia
Georgia was home only briefly: in 1920 his mother Mallie took her five children by train to Pasadena, California, where she worked as a maid to support them.
Q 03Robinson's middle name honoured which president, who died 25 days before Jackie was born?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, and the baby became Jack Roosevelt Robinson; his father walked out while he was still an infant, leaving Mallie to raise five children alone.
Q 04Robinson's older brother Mack won Olympic silver in 1936, finishing behind Jesse Owens in which event?
The 200 metres
The 200 metres final in Berlin saw Mack Robinson finish 0.4 seconds behind Jesse Owens; back in Pasadena, he was the big brother who pushed Jackie towards sport.
Q 05Robinson became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports at which university?
UCLA
UCLA saw him star in football, basketball and track, yet baseball, the sport that made him famous, was reckoned his weakest of the four.
Q 06In which event did Robinson win the 1940 NCAA championship?
The long jump
The long jump ran in the family: at junior college he had already broken a national record held by his older brother Mack.
Q 07Which civil rights leader called Robinson "a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides"?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the tribute in a 1962 newspaper column on Robinson's Hall of Fame induction; five years later Robinson publicly challenged King's opposition to the Vietnam War.
Q 08Which boxer, stationed at Fort Riley with Jackie Robinson, stepped in to get Black soldiers into officer school?
Joe Louis
Joe Louis, then world heavyweight champion, took the stalled applications to a War Department aide, and Robinson was commissioned a second lieutenant in January 1943.
Q 09Robinson was court-martialled in 1944 after refusing to do what?
Move to the back of an Army bus
Ordered to move to the back of an Army bus at Fort Hood, Robinson refused; nine officers acquitted him of every charge, but his tank battalion left for Europe without him.
Q 10Robinson's Army unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, was nicknamed what?
The Black Panthers
The Black Panthers, who wore a panther's head on their patches, went on to fight 183 straight days in Europe under Patton, though Robinson never saw combat.
Q 11Which Negro league team did Robinson sign with in 1945, for $400 a month?
The Kansas City Monarchs
The Kansas City Monarchs had Robinson for less than a season of wearying bus rides; Rickey then signed him without paying the club a cent, arguing that Negro league contracts were not binding.
Q 12Which team gave Robinson a sham tryout in 1945, then became the last in the majors to integrate in 1959?
The Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox staged the Fenway Park tryout under pressure from a city councilman, watched three Negro league players for ninety minutes, and signed none of them.
Q 13Who was the last Black major leaguer before the colour line that Robinson broke?
Q 21Which Dodgers manager called a midnight meeting to crush a players' petition against Robinson, then was suspended for all of 1947?
Leo Durocher
Leo Durocher is quoted telling the rebels he did not care if Robinson was "yellow or black" or striped "like a zebra"; soon afterwards the commissioner banned him for the season.
Q 22Which team did a New York newspaper report in 1947 to be plotting a strike rather than face Robinson?
The St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals never walked out: league president Ford Frick let it be known that any player who struck would be suspended.
Q 23Which Phillies manager's dugout abuse of rookie Robinson did Rickey later credit with uniting the Dodgers?
Ben Chapman
Moses Fleetwood Walker
Moses Fleetwood Walker caught for Toledo in 1884, after which an unwritten agreement among club owners kept Black players out of the National and American Leagues until 1947.
Q 14Before signing him in 1945, Branch Rickey made Robinson promise to meet racial abuse in which way?
Turn the other cheek
Turn the other cheek was the promise: when Robinson asked if Rickey wanted a player afraid to fight back, Rickey said he wanted one "with guts enough not to fight back".
Q 15To spare Robinson the segregated South, where did Branch Rickey hold the Dodgers' spring training in 1947?
Havana
Havana was Rickey's answer to the spring of 1946, when Florida towns such as Jacksonville and Sanford refused to let Robinson take the field.
Q 16Which Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter recommended Robinson to Branch Rickey, then travelled with him through 1946 and 1947?
Wendell Smith
Wendell Smith did not rate Robinson the best player in the Negro leagues; he backed him as a college man and former Army officer who could take the pressure.
Q 17Which future Hall of Fame catcher became Robinson's Dodgers teammate in 1948, a year after he broke the colour line?
Roy Campanella
Roy Campanella was sent to the minors that May, where he became the American Association's first Black player, and came back in early July as Brooklyn's regular catcher.
Q 18With which minor league club, the Dodgers' International League affiliate, did Robinson spend 1946?
The Montreal Royals
The Montreal Royals won the pennant and the Little World Series with Robinson batting a league-best .349, and more than a million fans paid to watch his games that year.
Q 19Where did Robinson make his minor league debut on April 18, 1946?
Jersey City
Jersey City's ballpark was packed for the opener, and Robinson answered with four hits, a three-run homer and four runs scored in a 14–1 win.
Q 20Why did Robinson, a natural middle infielder, play first base as a 1947 rookie?
Second base was already taken
Second base was already taken by Eddie Stanky, so the rookie spent the spring learning first; Stanky was traded to the Boston Braves in 1948 and Robinson moved across.
Ben Chapman's taunts drew such a backlash that weeks later he and Robinson posed for a photograph together to quiet it.
Q 24Which Dodger is said to have put his arm around Robinson as fans jeered, a moment now honoured by a statue?
Pee Wee Reese
Pee Wee Reese, a white Kentuckian, is said to have quietened the crowd with the gesture, yet no report from the time records it, and tellings differ on the year and the city.
Q 25Which Jewish slugger whispered encouragement to Robinson after a collision at first base?
Hank Greenberg
Hank Greenberg, then with Pittsburgh, had endured years of antisemitic taunts himself, and told the rookie he knew how tough it was and to stay in there.
Q 26Who broke the American League colour line with Cleveland just 11 weeks after Robinson?
Larry Doby
Larry Doby went straight from the Newark Eagles to Cleveland on July 5, 1947, with no season in the minors to ease him in.
Q 27Robinson led the National League in which category as a 1947 rookie?
Stolen bases
Stolen bases were his signature: 29 led the league in 1947, and over his career he revived the lost art of stealing home, doing it 19 times.
Q 28What set Robinson's 1947 Rookie of the Year Award apart from the ones presented today?
It covered both leagues
It covered both leagues, a single award for all of baseball until 1949, and since 1987 the trophy in each league has carried Jackie Robinson's name.
Q 29Which Hall of Famer and Dodgers scout coached Robinson's hitting in spring 1949, when his average jumped from .296 to .342?
George Sisler
George Sisler had played college ball for Branch Rickey at Michigan; decades on, as Rickey's scout, he taught Robinson to stop lunging and hit to right field.
Q 30In 1949, Robinson became the first Black winner of which National League award?
Most Valuable Player
Most Valuable Player was his reward for a .342 season that won the batting title and carried Brooklyn to the pennant by a single game.