Where the color barrier faded

THE memory of Jackie Robinson has become so closely intertwined with the Brooklyn Dodgers that it is easy to forget he was a product of Southern California. Though born in Georgia, Robinson arrived in California as an infant. He spent his formative years in Pasadena. There he first experienced both discrimination and opportunity, and there he won his initial athletic fame. He enrolled at UCLA in 1939. When he left in 1941, six years before his fabled Dodger debut, he already reigned as perhaps the greatest of all sports legends in the region's history.

By Jules Tygiel

December 3, 2006