Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography
Page 16
ous times before dumping him into the river.
Robinson, who relied on ghostwriter William Branch to put his
thoughts on paper, chose to address the Parker lynching in the first column following his introductory one, and he took the opportunity to slam those who, like President Eisenhower and the Rev. Billy Graham, among many others, had called for a “go slow” approach to civil rights.
“I can’t really express my deep outrage about this terrible incident,”
Jackie stated. “The lynching of Mack Parker is but the end result of . . .
all the weak-kneed ‘gradualism’ of those entrusted with enforcing and protecting civil rights.”17
Robinson’s frustration deepened the following month, shortly after
an all-white jury in Monroe, North Carolina, had acquitted a white
man charged with raping an African American woman in front of her
children and other witnesses. At the time, Eisenhower stated that he based his hopes for greater civil rights on moral law rather than legislation because he believed that statutory laws had little effect on changing the human heart or eliminating prejudice.
Robinson fumed. “Can the president possibly mean that we must go
ahead and allow these people to commit these crimes and merely stand and wait, and hope and pray, that their hearts will change?” he said.
“When a man has his foot on your throat, you can worry later about
changing his heart. Right now, your main concern is to keep him from choking you, else you may never live to save his soul.”18
Law and morality were combined in Robinson’s thought, and so
even as he traveled to churches around the country, demanding that
Eisenhower and other public officials take immediate and direct
action to combat racial violence and injustice, Robinson continued to advance a theology of personal responsibility among African Americans themselves.
In June 1959, he traveled to Tuskegee, Alabama, home to Booker T.
Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, and praised local African Americans for building their own economy, including a shopping center, a savings and loan association, a car dealership, and other businesses, after white politicians and business leaders had ignored their vigorous protests of a gerrymandering that had effectively disenfranchised many African
American voters.
“It seems to me their story is clearly indicative of the emergence of a new and determined spirit in the South,” Robinson stated. “Negroes
“HoeInG wItH God”
115
are getting tired of waiting for someone else to do something about
granting them their rights, and are taking the initiative to help themselves. And in so doing, I found the Negro residents of Tuskegee, Ala., had developed new pride, industry and sense of importance in life.”19
He concluded his high praise by encouraging others to embrace and
enact the same spiritual slogan adopted by the African Americans of
Tuskegee: “God helps those who help themselves.”20
That was also Jackie Robinson’s spiritual slogan.
Robinson’s theology of responsibility combined doses of individual-
ism and communalism—as individuals and as a people, African Ameri-
cans were to be responsible for their own lives—and in his ongoing
work with the NAACP, which clearly provided him with a meaningful
life purpose, he depicted himself not as a lone ranger but as someone inextricably connected with his oppressed brothers and sisters.
“I have to point out . . . that no Negro really has it ‘made’ until the most underprivileged Negro in America retains his full rights and dignity as a free and equal human being,” Robinson explained in July 1959. “It is the responsibility of us all—Negro or white, privileged or oppressed—to contribute actively toward gaining greater freedom for all.”21
Because of his early life in the black church, which often spoke of
church members as a family, Robinson had an active sense of human
interconnectedness.
His fervently held conviction about the vital importance of con-
tributing to freedom was also far from merely a practical or pragmatic point. As a believer, Robinson noted that the responsibility to fight for freedom for all was ultimately grounded in the Bible’s admonitions to proclaim liberty and end oppression, and he cited the jubilee passage in Leviticus 25:10–14 to back his point. For Robinson, setting all the captives free was the pressing work of the people of God.
That same month, Robinson followed his own biblical advice by
siding with American Jews facing religious discrimination from the
Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco). For years, the company
had required job applicants to list their religion as a qualification for employment, with the purpose of denying jobs to Jewish men and
women, an undeniably discriminatory practice that reflected and
abided by King Saud’s policies of refusing to allow Jews to enter Saudi Arabia or work for Saudi Arabian companies in the United States.
In response to this discrimination, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) filed suit against the New York State Commission against Discrimination for allowing Aramco to practice religious discrimination in the state, and
116
JACKIE ROBINSON
in July 1959, New York Supreme Court justice Henry Epstein ruled in
favor of AJC. In his written decision, Epstein told Aramco to “go elsewhere to serve your Arab master—but not in New York State.”22
Robinson lauded the ruling, arguing that religious discrimination was similar to racial discrimination in its character and effects. “There seems to be little difference in this case than if a Northern company doing business with the State of Mississippi refused to hire Negroes because Mississippi’s Governor objected,” he said. Jews in New York were like African Americans in the South; both were captives to prejudice and
discrimination practiced and demanded by governing authorities. And, further, it was incumbent upon everyone to help Jews enjoy the religious freedom guaranteed them by law and morality. “There is no question
in my mind but that discrimination must be fought by all of us on all fronts— religious or racial, at home or abroad,” Robinson stated.23
However popular he remained in his postbaseball career, Robinson
was not immune to personal experiences with racial prejudice, and in October he found himself face-to-face with discrimination after delivering a speech to seventeen hundred NAACP supporters in Greenville,
South Carolina.
Arriving at the airport for his trip back to New York, Jackie and his NAACP colleagues lawfully bypassed the “colored lounge” in favor of
the main lounge reserved for whites. As they sat there, according to Robinson, “a disheveled, unshaven man,” carrying a gun and dressed
in what appeared to be a uniform jacket, approached the party, identified himself as a police officer, and in “halting, seemingly uneducated speech,” demanded that they move to the “colored lounge.”24
The airport manager soon arrived, making the same demand, and
as Robinson and his friends stood to protest, the manager summoned
another police officer to arrest the party should they sit back down in their seats.
The Robinson party then instructed the officer that the lounge was
a federally subsidized facility under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission and that, according to ICC regulations, it was
completely lawful for them to sit in the lounge reserved for whites.
According to Robinson, the white officer acted “completely per-
plexed,” and after making a few quick phone calls, simply “quit the
scene,” allowing Robinson’s party to stay in the main waiting room.25
A
s 1959 drew to a close, Jackie and Rachel experienced deep satis-
faction and joy while watching their children exchange gifts on Christmas Day. It was the first year that Jackie Jr. had earned his own money
“HoeInG wItH God”
117
for the presents he gave to Sharon and David, and Rachel and Jackie
were more than proud of their eldest son.
At least as meaningful for Robinson during the Christmas season was
the experience of playing Santa Claus for underprivileged children at an airport terminal in New Jersey. Clad in a long beard and a red suit stuffed with pillows, Robinson did not fool all the children. “Hi, Jackie Robinson—you can’t fool me!” shouted one precocious boy. But the
many other children simply swarmed around Santa and took their turns to talk personally with the jolly man who might bring them gifts.26
The opportunity troubled Robinson as well. “How do you promise
a child a present that may never come?” he wondered when he heard
requests for bikes, dolls, and trains. He settled on telling the children that he would talk to their parents to see if they had been good and that perhaps their presents would arrive on Christmas Day. “It was a feeling of sadness,” Robinson recalled, “but one of great happiness, too, as I watched each child go away with hope dancing in their eyes. . . . And hope, after all is the greatest gift of all at Christmastime.”
But Christmas 1959 was not hope-filled everywhere, and it proved
more than a troubling period for Jews in Europe and across the world.
On Christmas Eve in Cologne, two young German men, members
of the far-right German Reich Party, vandalized a synagogue and a
nearby Holocaust memorial with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans.
The resulting publicity gave rise to similar anti-Semitic expressions throughout Europe and many other areas populated by Jews.
With the arrival of the New Year, Robinson, a fierce opponent of
religious discrimination, could not help but comment on the shock-
ing wave of anti-Semitism. “This revival of Hitlerism, with its swastika smears on the walls of synagogues, Jewish places of business and even private homes, is but another symptom of rabid sickness in our
society,” he said. “Since every one of us is a member of some vulnerable minority—whether it be by race, religion, national origin, political party, education, occupation, or other differences—none of us is safe once group-hate is unleashed against any other.”27
Robinson congratulated Eisenhower for publicly condemning
the new wave of anti-Semitism. But he also criticized the president
for recently expressing doubt about enlisting Congress to pass laws
designed to shore up voting rights for blacks in the South. “As I’ve said before, I submit that Negroes have been patient for nigh unto a hundred years, and now our patience is wearing thin,” Robinson said, adding that the time had long passed for Eisenhower to show some
118
JACKIE ROBINSON
“aggressive direction” on racial justice in the United States. “Even a simple, forthright statement of moral principle—such as he unhesitat-ingly made concerning anti-Semitism—would go a long way to lend
needed encouragement to both whites and Negroes who are struggling
to live up to both the spirit and the letter of the law.”28
No such statement came.
In early 1960 Robinson supported the student sit-ins at segregated
lunch counters throughout the South. He was impressed when he met
some of the young protesters in New York in March. “Their calm but
serious determination impressed me no end,” he said. “Some of them
have been personally assaulted, arrested, manhandled by the police and placed in jail.”29
Eisenhower was not the only president who attracted Robinson’s
wrath at this point. So did former president Harry Truman, who, a
week after Robinson had met with student protesters, sharply con-
demned the student sit-ins. “If anybody came to my store and tried to stop business, I’d throw him out,” Truman stated. “The Negro should
behave himself and show he’s a good citizen. Commonsense and good-
will can solve this whole thing.”30
Robinson, shocked and surprised, characterized Truman’s comments
as “regrettable but insignificant,” and he taunted the former president by saying that if he really meant what he said, he should open his own business and expect to be protested. “And it is exceedingly pathetic,”
Robinson added, “to hear a former President declare he would resort
to violence to oppose children peacefully asking to buy ice cream at a soda fountain.”31
Robinson contributed money to the sit-ins—his good friend Mar-
ian Logan had established an emergency fund for the students—and in
April he made time to watch “Anatomy of a Demonstration,” a CBS
news report on lunch counter sit-ins carried out by trained groups of integrated students in Nashville, Tennessee. Robinson was spellbound by the report and especially impressed by an exchange between a CBS
interviewer and the Rev. James Lawson, the Gandhian leader who per-
sonally trained the students in nonviolent direct action.
When the interviewer asked Lawson whether African Americans,
too, had contributed to the crisis, Lawson replied, “Yes. We have sinned by cooperating with the evils of segregation for as long as we have.”32
Lawson’s answer fit so perfectly with Robinson’s own spiritual
emphasis on responsibility that he included the quotation verbatim in his newspaper column.
“HoeInG wItH God”
119
Robinson’s theology of responsibility also extolled the spiritual
weapon of nonviolence in domestic politics, and he felt a close kinship with the students whom Lawson was training to withstand racist jeers and physical assaults. Watching them try to remain calm and nonviolent in these workshops took Robinson back to the first year he was
with the Dodgers, when he and Rickey had agreed that he would not
physically or even verbally resist those who wanted to drive him out of Major League Baseball, and Robinson praised the students for their nonviolent resolve.
By this point, Robinson was also thick in the political fray of the
1960 presidential election. As a registered independent, he had refused to back any political party and sought instead to align with the individual candidate who would best advance civil rights for African Americans.
He preferred Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the early part of the
race, but the Minnesota senator’s failure to gain a solid base of support led Robinson to Republican Richard Nixon.
Unlike many African Americans in 1960, Robinson had an intense
dislike for John F. Kennedy and his seeming indifference to the civil rights movement, including his vote to send the 1957 civil rights bill back to committee in a wider attempt to kill the legislation.
Robinson’s distaste for Kennedy grew even stronger when the can-
didate selected Lyndon Johnson, a former segregationist from Texas, as his running mate on the Democratic ticket.
The Kennedy team, particularly former Connecticut governor Ches-
ter Bowles, reached out to Robinson, arranging a meeting between him and the senator in Washington, DC, but the effort proved disastrous
when Kennedy, according to Robinson’s account, avoided all eye con-
tact and conceded he knew very little about the concerns of African
Americans.
Robinson also gave a number of reasons for settling on Nixon: the
vice president’s anticommunism, his willingness to tour Africa, his
leading role in engineeri
ng passage of the 1957 civil rights legislation, and his pledge to move faster on civil rights than Eisenhower had.
Robinson felt so strongly about the presidential election that he
took leave from his position as a columnist with the Post in September to campaign full-time for Nixon.
But Robinson also grew impatient while stumping for Nixon, com-
plaining that the campaign managers simply ignored or dismissed
opportunities to connect with African American voters, especially those in Harlem.
120
JACKIE ROBINSON
His greatest frustration occurred in October, when Nixon refused
Robinson’s personal urging that he telephone Martin Luther King Jr., who was beginning to serve a sentence of four months at Reidsville State Prison in Georgia. While Nixon felt a call would be “grandstanding,”
Kennedy called Coretta Scott King, and his brother Robert enlisted a local judge to help secure King’s release.33
Robinson was visibly upset after Nixon refused to call King, and his frustration was so intense that he almost quit the campaign immediately.
But he stayed the course, urged on by Branch Rickey himself, and
agonized time and again as he watched the African American vote,
including Rachel’s, swing in wide favor of Kennedy.
Although disappointed with the Democratic victory, Robin-
son wrote Kennedy a letter of praise one day after the new president appointed Harris Wofford as the White House staff member in charge
of civil rights issues. “I thank you for what you have done so far, but it is not how much has been done but how much more there is to
do,” Robinson wrote. “I would like to be patient, Mr. President, but patience has cost us years in our struggle for human dignity. I will continue to hope and pray for your aggressive leadership but will not refuse to criticize if the feeling persists that Civil Rights is not on the agenda for months to come. May God give you the strength and the energy to
accomplish your most difficult task.”34
Robinson’s “hope,” as he put it to the president, was yet another
part of his Christian faith—an abiding hope that the will of God would indeed flourish on earth, right here and now, if he and others just
worked hard enough, long enough, and sacrificially enough, for the