A YANK MAGAZINE interview with the recently demobilized Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972), who at the time was about to embark on one of the most glorious baseball careers a man could ever wish for. Largely remembered as the one who "broke the baseball color barrier", he proved to not only be a superb athlete and a good sportsman, but a valued member of the Civil Rights Movement who, among other contributions, is remembered for clearing the path so that other African-American athletes could advance to the major leagues. He was awarded many prizes before retiring from baseball in 1957. This interview centers on Robinson's non-professional days in sports; his football injury at Pasadena Junior College, basketball at UCLA, his days with the Kansas City Monarchs and a brief period as an officer in the 761st Tank Battalion.
A 1951 article about the Negro Baseball League can be read here
In 1969, Jackie Robinson wrote about African-American racists, click here to read it...
Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.
This is a profile of Dr. Sigmund Freud that appeared during the last months of his life. In the Spring of 1938 Freud and his family had fled to London in order escape the Nazis. A heavily illustrated, four page article that served to answer the U.S. serviceman's questions as to who Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972) was and why was he deemed suitable to serve as President? "Mr. Truman now occupies the Presidency, of course, because he won the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination in Chicago last summer. Two things won him the nomination. First was the fact that he alone was acceptable to Mr. Roosevelt and to both the conservative element of the Democratic Party and its liberal wing. The second was the excellent performance of the Truman Committee in the investigation of our government's spending money for the war-effort...One of the main themes of his campaign speeches last fall was that the U.S. should never return to isolationism."
Click here to read about the busy life of President Franklin Roosevelt. This is a profile of the American photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971). At the time these pages appeared on the newsstand, the photographer's stock was truly on the rise as a result of her remarkable documentary images depicting the Great Depression as it played out across the land. • A Video Clip About One of the Most Famous Images from the Depression • Preferring not to be found face-down in the Chicago River, this journalist wrote a very middle-of-the-road sort of article about Al Capone following the thug's 1931 conviction on tax evasion. A year and a half after departing Germany, Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) vogued it up for the cameras at a meeting for the scientific community in Pennsylvania where he answered three very basic questions concerning his research.
"A small, sensitive, and slightly naive refugee from Germany stole the show at the winter meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science, which closed at Pittsburgh last week. Not only the general public and newspapermen, but even the staid scientists forgot their dignity in a scramble to see and hear the little man, Albert Einstein, whose ideas have worked the greatest revolution in modern scientific thought." | 
