Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography

by Long, Michael G.

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  JACKIE ROBINSON

  Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Massachusetts, was on his way

  to Stanford University.

  Robinson would recount these positive days in another project cap-

  turing his attention at this point, a new autobiography he would write with Al Duckett. Robinson’s pitch letter for the book had described

  a personal evolution in terms that evoked his mother’s decision to

  straighten her back and leave Jim Sasser’s oppressive farmland.

  And he let would-be publishers know that the viewpoints of oth-

  ers would never again lead him to bow down or remain silent. “I

  paid more than my due for the right to call it like I see it,” Robinson explained. “And I could care less if people like me, so long as they respect me. The only way I know how to deserve respect—even if one

  does not receive it—is to be honest enough with oneself, to be honest with others. This is the cardinal principle I have kept in mind in making plans for this book.”46

  Random House met with Robinson about the project, but the

  publishing giant turned it down because Jackie insisted that the book address not only the baseball years but also his careers beyond the baseball diamond—in business, politics, and civil rights—the work he considered far more important than all of his baseball feats. But Putnam accepted the proposal, and Robinson and Duckett began to write.

  However good 1970 felt at points, Robinson was dying. Plagued

  with advanced diabetes, his body was ravaged. His legs were hurting, his sight was failing, and his heart was struggling. Rachel was heartbro-ken. She had taken leave from her mental health work in New Haven

  in the fall of 1969, partly because she knew her husband and son would need her close by in the days and months to come. But being so close to her dying husband was not easy, especially since he refused to talk about his death, and she eventually decided to seek therapy so that she could cope with the event before them.

  As his condition worsened in the new decade, Robinson made sure

  to pave the way for younger black leaders. He endorsed Charles Rangel over Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in the 1970 Democratic primary election to represent Harlem in the House of Representatives, and in early 1971 he offered support to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in a visit to Operation Breadbasket in Chicago.

  Robinson held Breadbasket in the highest of regards and even served

  on its board of directors. Modeled on the Rev. Leon Sullivan’s work in Philadelphia, which Robinson had long supported, Breadbasket was an

  SCLC campaign designed to use negotiations and the threat of economic

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  boycotts to pressure major corporations to create jobs, and better jobs, for African Americans. With his emphasis on economic advancement,

  Robinson was delighted with Breadbasket’s economic program.

  Robinson was also impressed with Jackson’s leadership of Bread-

  basket, and in his rallying speech in Chicago he described Jackson as a

  “tall, young, brave Black Moses who can take us some giant steps along the way to that Promised Land of which Dr. King spoke.”47

  Shortly after speaking in Chicago, Robinson headed to yet another

  sports banquet honoring his legacy. Side by side, the two events put him in a reflective mood, and in a later letter to Calvin Morris, the associate director of Breadbasket, Robinson wrote: “I left Chicago to attend a sports banquet. After my Chicago experience, the dinner was an empty affair. Imagine having to leave a Breadbasket affair where people were deeply involved in creating dignity and self-respect to attend a banquet honoring people because they were able to catch and hit a ball but not at all concerned about people.”48

  The issues of poverty and relief remained front and center in Rob-

  inson’s mind in March, when Rockefeller proposed cuts to New York’s

  welfare programs. Robinson sketched his disagreement with the gover-

  nor in a letter to the New York Post.

  “I don’t think our priorities are reached when we would deny people

  their needs while we spend billions searching for rocks on the moon,”

  he said. “We must care more about people and when we do, I think we

  will find poor people caring more about themselves. I believe dignity should be our prime target. Cutting back on welfare only indicates that we are not truly concerned about the needy.”49

  By spring, Jackie Jr. had graduated from the rigorous rehabilitation program and had even become an assistant regional director for the

  organization. His progress left Robinson deeply proud, as did the times when the two of them, father and son, once alienated from each other, spoke together as a team at antidrug campaigns and events.

  Rockefeller took notice, and after the Robinsons spoke at a drug

  abuse program at a New York school district, he sent the elder Jackie a note: “I am certain you can never fully realize the impact the two of you had on the community. I thank you both for your courage and for your willingness to help others out of your own experience.”50

  Father and son also worked together, though Jackie Jr. took the

  lead, on an “Afternoon of Jazz” that would benefit Daytop. Scheduled for the end of June, the concert was a labor of love for the whole Robinson family.

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  JACKIE ROBINSON

  But Jackie Jr. would not live to see the fruits of his work.

  On June 17, as he was returning from New York City around 2:00

  a.m., he lost control of David’s car on the Merritt Parkway. The MG

  smashed into a fence and an abutment, breaking his neck and leaving

  him pinned to death in the car.

  Robinson could not bring himself to identify his son’s body at the

  morgue. “I had gone weak all over,” he later wrote. “I knew that I

  couldn’t go to that hospital or morgue or whatever and look at my dead son’s body.”51

  But Robinson could not get out of breaking the horrible news to

  Rachel, who was away at a conference, so he and Sharon drove to Holy-oke, Massachusetts, while eighteen-year-old David went to identify his brother’s body in Norwalk.

  Rachel collapsed on hearing the news. And when she, Jackie, and

  Sharon returned to their Stamford home, she bolted from the car and

  ran all around the property, screaming from the depths of pain that

  only she could know.

  Jackie, too, wept openly. The pain was raw, and his hope-filled

  Christian faith offered some comfort.

  But faith was less comforting to Rachel. According to Jackie, “She

  didn’t want to hear about God knowing best, or any of the other cli-

  chés that people use to make you feel better. God had taken her son

  just at a time when he had begun to help a lot of other youngsters less fortunate than he had been.”52

  Letters, cards, and telegrams arrived at the Robinson home shortly

  after the news went public, and one of the letters was from the White House. “I have just learned of the tragic death of your son, and I want you to know that my thoughts and prayers are with you and Mrs. Robinson at this difficult time,” Nixon wrote. “I know that nothing said could relieve the pain that this loss has brought you, but I do want you to know that Mrs. Nixon and I will be praying that God may give you

  the strength and courage to persevere.”53

  A family friend, the Rev. George Lawrence, conducted the funeral

  at Antioch Baptist Church in Brooklyn. More than fifteen hundred

  attended the solemn service, and gospel singer Joyce Bryant and a Daytop choir offered musical selections.

  The Robinsons decided not to cancel the “Afternoon of Jazz,” and

  more than three thousand
people turned out for the lakeside event

  featuring Roberta Flack, Herbie Mann, Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor,

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  175

  and others. Jesse Jackson spoke for more than twenty minutes and led the crowd in prayers for Jackie Jr. and the Robinson family.

  The days afterward were difficult. Rachel went back to work at the

  hospital and then withdrew to herself on returning home. Jackie felt abandoned. Biographer Arnold Rampersad reports that the tension

  between the two began to dissipate only weeks later, after Sharon

  discovered her father weeping alone in the living room. When she

  asked him why, he replied: “First Mr. Rickey and my mother, then

  your brother. Now I wonder if I am losing my wife.”54 Rachel was

  reading alone in her bedroom at the time, but when Sharon told her of Jackie crying, she went to him at once. And the slow process of healing began.

  Robinson also experienced a reconciliation of sorts with his for-

  mer boss, William Black, who sent a generous check in support of the

  “Afternoon of Jazz.” Robinson had left Chock full o’Nuts on unhappy

  terms, but he was deeply grateful when he learned of Black’s gesture.

  “What you are doing I shall never forget,” he wrote in a letter to

  Black. “I am sure you must know how much your bringing me in to

  the Chock Full o’Nuts family in the early years meant to me and my

  life. While we have been apart these last few years, your influence has been a factor in many of the things I’ve done since that time. And now that you have made our jazz concert a success, I am even more deeply indebted to you.”55

  Several months earlier, Robinson had also reconciled with Buzzie

  Bavasi, who was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers when

  Walter O’Malley decided to trade Robinson to the New York Giants.

  Bavasi knew that the experience had left Robinson bitter, and he

  attempted to heal the long-term breach, although indirectly, in a letter he wrote to Robinson in February 1971.

  The occasion was Major League Baseball’s decision to elect into the

  Hall of Fame only one player a year from the Negro leagues and to

  keep plaques honoring the Negro-league players separate from those of other inductees. In his letter to Robinson, Bavasi shared that he found that decision to be another example of asking blacks to “sit in the back of the bus.”56

  In Robinson’s reply, he expressed his agreement and offered his own

  friendly gesture in return. “You know I feel strongly about this matter,” he wrote. “I am pleased you are expressing yourself about the way you feel. Your action justifies the way I thought of you before the 1957

  misunderstanding.”57

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  JACKIE ROBINSON

  As his health worsened, Robinson even adjusted his attitude toward

  Nixon, shifting primary blame for racial issues onto the vice president and other presidential advisers.

  In early December, Nixon had written a glowing statement about

  Robinson’s athletic prowess as his contribution to a testimonial dinner honoring him as “The Man of 25 Years in Sports.” Robinson sent the

  president a follow-up letter gently explaining his lack of support.

  “Because I felt strongly that it is not good policy for any minority to put all of their eggs in one political basket, many of us had decided it may be best to support you and your candidacy in the coming election,” Robinson wrote. “However, your Vice President, Mr. Agnew,

  makes it impossible for me, once again, to do so. I feel so strongly about his being anti-black and anti-progressive in race relations that I dread the fact of anything happening to you and Mr. Agnew becoming

  President of the United States.”58

  This shift, of course, did not mean that Robinson would be silent

  when he disagreed with Nixon. In March 1972, he even wrote Nixon a

  blistering letter in which he expressed his fury at the president’s call for a one-year moratorium on busing to integrate schools.

  Robinson continued to seek reconciliation elsewhere as his life

  came to a close, and even Roy Wilkins, the NAACP head who had

  evoked Robinson’s wrath in 1967, and Malcolm X were among the

  beneficiaries.

  Robinson had been sharply critical of Malcolm throughout the mili-

  tant’s life, even after he left the Nation of Islam, but in the new autobiography he penned with Al Duckett, Robinson praised Malcolm’s

  powerful conversion at the time of his hajj, when he came to see that Islam included people of all colors. Robinson especially liked these words from Malcolm: “If white Americans could accept the Oneness of God,

  then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man.”59

  Robinson also accepted a reconciliatory gesture from Walter

  O’Malley’s son, Peter, now president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who invited Robinson to an Old Timers Day when Robinson’s number, as

  well as the numbers of Sandy Koufax and Roy Campanella, would be

  retired. With urging from Don Newcombe, Robinson accepted the invi-

  tation and ended up describing the day as one of the greatest in his life.

  After the event, Robinson even told a reporter that the long- standing feud was not between him and the elder O’Malley. “The problem was

  never between Jackie Robinson and Walter O’Malley,” he said. “It was between Walter O’Malley and Branch Rickey.”60

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  But Robinson continued to have a problem with Major League

  Baseball, and when Commissioner Bowie Kuhn invited him to throw

  out the first ball at one of the games of the 1972 World Series, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his shattering of the color barrier, Robinson initially declined, citing his ongoing frustration that there were no African American managers.

  But Kuhn’s office made it difficult for Robinson when it told him that the occasion would also honor Jackie Jr. and Daytop. Robinson relented, but in his televised speech, he delivered a jab to Major League Baseball.

  With his family next to him, and a national viewing audience of

  sixty million before him, he said: “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon but must admit I’m going to be tremendously

  more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching

  line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.”61

  White-haired, unsteady on his feet, and virtually blind from dia-

  betes, Robinson shocked those who had not seen him in recent years.

  Rachel woke up early on October 24, 1972, nine days after the

  World Series honor.

  After getting dressed, she headed to the kitchen to make breakfast.

  It was a typical day. But then she saw Jackie running down the hallway toward her. He was naked.

  “So I ran out of the kitchen to meet him because I knew something

  was very wrong,” she later recalled. “And he put his arms around me

  and said, ‘I love you.’ And he just sank to the floor.”62

  Felled by a heart attack, ravaged by diabetes, Robinson died at

  7:10 a.m.

  More than twenty-five hundred people—athletes, politicians, civil

  rights activists, and celebrities—attended the funeral at Riverside Baptist Church on 122nd Street in New York City. Rachel had asked for

  two-thirds of the seating to remain open for everyday citizens on a first-come, first-served basis. She also insisted, given her husband’s love for children, that a special section be reserved for the young ones.

  Jesse Jackson delivered the eulogy. Jackson was a lo
ngtime family

  friend who had asked Robinson to be the first vice president of PUSH

  (People United to Serve Humanity), and Jackie had accepted the offer.

  In his moving eulogy, Jackson said: “When Jackie took the field,

  something in us reminded us of our birthright to be free.”

  “He was immunized by God from catching the diseases he fought,” he

  added. “The Lord’s arms and protection enabled him to go through dangers, seen and unseen, and he had the capacity to wear glory with grace.”63

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  JACKIE ROBINSON

  A large choir from Canaan Baptist Church sang a tribute that

  included “Precious Lord,” “Come, Ye Disconsolate,” and “If I Can

  Help Somebody.” Roberta Flack also sang a moving spiritual, “I Told

  Jesus It Would Be All Right If He Changed My Name.”

  The funeral cortege weaved through Harlem and past Freedom

  National Bank before heading to Brooklyn, where a Jackie Robinson

  Construction Company was launching a new project, and then on to

  Cypress Hills Cemetery. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay their respects.

  Robinson was laid to rest, finally, next to his son Jackie Jr.

  Today, when visitors pay their respects at the grave and look at his tombstone, they can read Jackie Robinson’s spiritual approach to life:

  “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 125–26; Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 371–73.

  2. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, 368.

  3. Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 126.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995), 30–31.

  6. Jamie Crawford, “How Church Helped Sign Jackie Robinson,” CNN.com, April 14, 2001.

  7. Jackie Robinson, untitled manuscript on faith, n.d., Jackie Robinson Papers,, box 12, folder 11, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  8. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, 374.

  9. Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 126.

  10. Add Seymour Jr., “Jackie Robinson: ‘Temper Like a Rattlesnake,’ ” Associated Press, April 14, 1997.