Once Jack and Rachel knew these facts, they were able to put Jackie’s letters from Vietnam into sharper perspective and understand the murderous forces that had driven him over the edge. At first, those letters were simple missives from a young man venturing into the great world, seeking to be all that he could be. Then the letters began to reveal the terrifying pressures on him and the other young American soldiers ordered to Vietnam. If one incident set the tone, it came early, when some other soldiers killed a Viet Cong sniper. “They tied him to the front of their jeep like a deer,” Jackie wrote his father, “then drove through the village with a loud speaker & had the interpreter tell the people that this is what would happen to all Viet Congs and people who support them. It was a horrible sight.”
Horror soon became routine. His platoon sergeant from Fort Reilly, a man he liked—“he always gave me a fair break”—was killed. In another action, “We lost six men this week, including our executive officer. We also had eleven wounded.” By this time Jackie was sick to his stomach about the war. “This is the most miserable place in the world,” he wrote his father. “I can’t see why we’re fighting for it. When you see somebody get shot you think about what a waste this all is.” Bradley Gordon remembered Jackie telling him later: “Man, you talk to a guy in the morning, and you’re putting him into a body bag in the afternoon. Or you’re grabbing parts of him, putting them in a body bag.… Man, how can I tell my parents this? How can I tell anyone? No one really understands. Everyone tells me I’ll get over it, I’ll get over it. Man, I have nightmares at night.”
But in Vietnam, military violence was not the only force that shattered ideals. After his relatively congenial years in Stamford, the bitterness between blacks and whites in the U.S. Army over there devastated Jackie. Now he warned Rachel about having his brother, David, grow up in a mainly white world, as he himself had done: “If he doesn’t learn to talk like he’s colored and get in the groove with at least the low-middle class Negro he’s going to get a shock soon.” For one thing, David must learn to dance the way blacks danced. “I didn’t know how to dance,” Jackie wrote, so “I’d get a bunch of hardheads together” and “break up dances.” In fact, the sweep of history had already made David much more aware of race and his African ancestry than Jackie had ever been. “Jackie had come from a world of acceptance by whites,” Bradley Gordon said, “but a place where he was an oddity, a famous black man’s son. And then he left that sanctuary and found out that it was a horrible world out there. It got to the point where he couldn’t bring himself to explain one more time what he was about, why he liked anonymity so much. He came back from Vietnam, and he was not the same person. He said, ‘Man, it’s crazy. We’re over there fighting this war, and the racism stinks.’ He was angry. No one understood, he couldn’t talk to anyone.” (Gordon himself would soon understand. Commissioned as an officer in the Air Force at nineteen, he fought in Vietnam and was wounded in the Tet Offensive of 1968.)
By the time Jackie’s orders came to return home, he was a changed young man—how much so, his parents were to find out only after his arrest. But his last letters from Vietnam gave an ominous hint of the change. “I’m going to need some time to myself,” he warned his mother. “I know I wouldn’t be up to anyone hollering at me or trying [to] force [a] decision on me.” He knew that he was a different person now, and more dangerous. “I’m in perfect control of myself but strange things aggravate me and I can’t guarantee how much I can take. When somebody over here is pushed too far he’s capable of anything.”
After Jackie’s arrest, a flood of sympathetic messages poured in, many of them including offers of help for the Robinson family. Jack and Rachel declined virtually all these offers; they would face the situation as a family and do what they could to help Jackie. “We know the only real solution,” Jack wrote the Wallersteins, “is the love and understanding we as a family give our son. While your offer of help is appreciated, I have faith that our family ties are strong and that with God’s help we will come through this crisis.”
JACKIE’S ARREST DEEPLY upset his father but did not disable him. Later in March, along with the writer James Baldwin and others, he testified before a congressional subcommittee in favor of a proposal by a New York congressman, James H. Scheuer of the Bronx, to establish a presidential commission on black American history. He also stepped up his efforts to affect the presidential election coming in the fall. Despite Vietnam, Johnson seemed likely to be renominated by the Democrats; among the Republicans, Nixon had inherited much of the old Goldwater support, and also seemed certain of nomination. Robinson, dismayed, continued to fret at the attitude of the Republican Party to blacks. Writing to Clarence Lee Towns Jr., the leading black on the Republican National Committee, he warned that blacks, who had made up only six percent of the voters for Goldwater, would not support Nixon: “I suspect that unless the party shows a desire to win our vote, it may rest assured that I and my friends cannot and will not support a conservative.”
Ironically, Robinson and the Arizona senator now enjoyed a far more cordial relationship than in 1964. Attending a public banquet in Arizona, Robinson had listened in amazement as Goldwater voiced his outrage at examples of racial prejudice he had seen on a recent trip into the South. After the dinner, the two men met and chatted amicably. Later, Goldwater invited Robinson to join him at lunch in New York City. “This time, I accepted,” Jack told his Amsterdam News readers in March 1968, alluding to his public refusal of a similar invitation in 1964. “In person, the Senator is a charmer.… I must confess that, although we still disagree sharply in some areas, my personal anti-Goldwater feelings have ebbed considerably.” But this thaw with Goldwater had nothing to do with Nixon: “I have my right to remember that I am black and American before I am Republican. As such, I will never vote for Mr. Nixon.”
In a memorandum of March 8, four days after his son’s arrest, Jack solemnly laid out for Rockefeller his thinking on the 1968 campaign. “Speaking from the heart of Jackie Robinson,” he began, “I must tell you several of my strong beliefs.” This was a critical moment in history. “I believe that each man is placed upon this earth with a destiny to fulfill. I feel strongly that you were meant to lead in world councils, in national affairs and domestic problems and within a political party which was born slanted towards freedom, but which in recent times has turned its back on its own heritage.” Robinson himself could not support Nixon. “The people who rejected the black man in 1964 and carried the Goldwater standard are the identical people who desire the all-things-to-all-men phoniness of a Richard Nixon and his crowd.” Rockefeller had a duty to run. “I believe overwhelmingly that you are THE Republican with a decent chance to win over Mr. Johnson.… I believe you have no alternative but to go firmly forward to acceptance of your rightful role in our society.”
But the presidential race soon became even more complicated. First, Senator Robert Kennedy announced that he would pursue the Democratic nomination. Then, on March 31, beaten down by opposition to the Vietnam War, President Johnson stunned the nation with the news that he would neither seek nor accept renomination. In April, Vice-President Humphrey, preparing for his own entry, formally sought Robinson’s support. However, Jack made it clear that “Governor Rockefeller’s desires dictate my actions. I fully expect he will be the Republican nominee and I will do everything I can for him. I find him to be a man of great integrity and ability.” Should the Rockefeller candidacy fail, Jack would then “be happy” to help Humphrey. Although Robinson had developed a sincere respect for Robert Kennedy, he would not support his candidacy over that of Humphrey.
Then, the day after Jack wrote this letter, a calamitous blow descended. On April 4, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to the aid of striking sanitation workers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Leaving Jackie’s hospital room in New Haven, where they were visiting, Jack and Rachel sorrowfully drove down from Connecticut to New York to join a group of mourners gathered at the home of Ar
thur and Marian Logan, then flew south to Atlanta for the funeral. Few deaths had ever touched Jack more intimately. Perhaps he had seen in King a reincarnation of the selfless black spiritual leader, attuned to the reality of politics but also humble and loving, he had experienced crucially in his early life with Karl Downs in Pasadena and later in Austin; in any event, Robinson had come to see Dr. King as the embodiment of the finest traditions of black manhood, a figure who could lead by the power of personal moral authority as well as eloquence, a man Jack was proud to follow. In his weekly column, he hailed the martyred minister as “the greatest leader of the Twentieth Century.”
The death of Dr. King and the ugly disturbances that followed in Harlem and in a hundred other cities across the nation cast a somber spell over the following days and weeks. On April 10, sad and demoralized by this terrible blow to the civil rights cause and to his own liberal ideals, but striving to be upbeat, Jack presided over the “Hollywood-style” opening of the first Sea Host restaurant in Harlem, located at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 138th Street, near the Harlem Hospital. His heart was elsewhere, but Jack said what he had to say. “Our people have always been enthusiastic about seafood,” he announced. “Now we can offer fine quality at sensible prices.”
His many involvements away from Sea Host offered more in the way of dignity. Later that month, for example, he traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, for an NCCJ Brotherhood dinner attended by a thousand guests at Bellarmine College there. On May 2, he was co-chairman of the annual gala awards dinner of the National Urban League. The next day, in Austin, Texas, he was the main speaker, on “The Church and the World,” at the 81st Annual Assembly of the Texas Association of Christian Churches. One week later, in Boston, Jack addressed Northeastern University’s fourth annual national police seminar, which that year asked the question “Is Justice a Myth?”
But another event, bittersweet at best, troubled the family and especially Jack and Rachel. Sharon, now eighteen, had decided to marry her boyfriend, a high-school basketball star from nearby Norwalk, Connecticut. To her parents, her decision was a grave disappointment; neither bride nor bridegroom seemed prepared for the challenges of marriage. Nevertheless, on April 27, leaning on her father’s arm and beautiful in a white bridal gown and veil, she walked down the aisle of the North Stamford Congregational Church near the Robinson home on Cascade Road. “Dad smiled reassuringly,” Sharon recalled, “but I sensed his reluctance as he handed me over.” His reluctance was justified. Although Jack did not know it, Sharon’s husband had more than once struck her in fits of rage. Almost exactly one year later, the couple would be divorced.
A month later, Jack was hammered again. On May 21, his mother, Mallie, now seventy-eight years old, was walking up the driveway at 121 Pepper Street, with her eldest son, Edgar, watching her from his porch, when she collapsed. Uncertain about her state, Jack took the first plane he could find to Los Angeles, but Mallie was dead when he arrived. In Pasadena, Jack found it hard to look at his mother’s face. Mallie’s power to command his attention, to charge and recharge his conscience and his sense of duty, shame, and guilt, was still strong. “I felt I couldn’t go into the room where she lay,” he wrote. “Somehow I managed to and I shall always be glad that I did. There was a look, an expression on her face, that calmed me. It didn’t do anything about her hurt, but it made me realize that she had died at peace with herself.”
June brought another terrible death. In Los Angeles, on the evening of his victory in the California primary, Robert F. Kennedy was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan. The blow was complicated for Jack by the fact that the issue of the Amsterdam News that featured news of the death included a column by Jack critical of Kennedy, written before his death. Jack had to emphasize his genuine sorrow concerning the assassination; Kennedy had shown an unmistakable passion for social justice, and he was deservedly a hero to most black Americans. Speculation quickly arose, in both the black and the white press, that Governor Rockefeller might choose Robinson, or some other leading black, such as Whitney Young of the National Urban League, to complete Kennedy’s unexpired term in the Senate. (Eventually, the governor chose a white politician from upstate New York.) Certainly Rockefeller and Robinson now seemed as close as ever. On June 15, at the governor’s request, Jack spoke on the importance of civil liberties at an Elks convocation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Then, on June 23, Rockefeller made a spectacular entrance, in a helicopter, as Jack and Rachel hosted a luncheon for a powerful group of about seventy members of the black National Newspaper Publishers Association, which had just ended its annual convention in New York City. Dressed in a hound’s-tooth jacket and black slacks, Jack suavely introduced the governor. After some brief remarks by Rockefeller and an informal question-and-answer session, Robinson seized the chance to blast Nixon. “If Nixon is elected President, we as Negroes are in serious trouble; we would, in my opinion, be going backward.”
Jack was again busy as a host and in the news the following Sunday, when he and Rachel welcomed about two thousand patrons to another “Afternoon of Jazz” on the grounds of their home. The event was in part festive, in part somber: this concert would raise funds for the support of Dr. King’s children. Under a searing sun, a green-and-white-striped tent gave a measure of relief to an honor roll of musicians, including the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Thelonious Monk, Billy Taylor, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Lionel Hampton, and Duke Ellington, all eager to take part in the event. The concert raised about $30,000 for its cause.
These hectic events, coupled with the more intimate, multiple blows and strains of the preceding year, almost ended in disaster for Jack himself. On June 24, the day after the publishers’ luncheon, Jack visited his physician, Dr. Cyril Solomon, with complaints about a mild discomfort in his chest. Dr. Solomon sent him to have an electrocardiogram. Hearing nothing from the cardiologist, Robinson and Dr. Solomon assumed that Jack’s heart was in good shape. Then, on June 28, at a dinner, Jack fell ill and almost collapsed. On July 1, after a strenuous day at the jazz concert, he finally consulted again with Dr. Solomon, who decided to telephone the cardiologist. To his astonishment, Solomon learned that the EKG showed that Jack had suffered a mild heart attack. Fortunately, he had sustained no tissue damage to his heart; rest would probably take care of the problem.
Death was in the air, and Robinson could hardly avoid brooding on his own. “I guess the good Lord has a job for me,” he wrote a friend, “or else I could or would have had some serious heart damage.… I have not been too disturbed and know when it’s time nothing will prevent any of us going. I don’t know what it is but the good Lord has one more job for me or else I would be a lot sicker than I am. I am heeding his warning and am really doing well, getting plenty of rest and reading.” He was well aware of all that he had gone through in the preceding year, from the deaths of his mother, Branch Rickey, Dr. King, and Robert Kennedy to the arrest of Jackie and Sharon’s unpromising marriage. “I can’t imagine what else can happen to us this year. We had our share of problems but as has been said frequently if we can stand the test all will come out fine. I am sure we have the courage. I pray we have seen the last of trouble for a while, anyway.”
The summer of 1968 became a time mainly of rest and recuperation. No longer at the hospital in New Haven, Jackie was now a resident at the Daytop Rehabilitation Program in Seymour, Connecticut, highly recommended by experts in the field of narcotics treatment; its hard discipline was enforced by the reformed drug addicts who made up its staff. Residents had to prove themselves again and again, in a highly structured format, before they would be seen as cured. “This is a tough period,” Jack wrote about his son’s ordeal; “only God knows how he will do. He swears he’ll be O.K. but it’s not that easy. We can only hope and pray, for Jackie has lots of problems and only he can solve them. We will know in a matter of time. We are hopeful but we know how tough it is.”
Barely a month later, Jackie fell again. On the night of August 23, polic
e arrested him in a hotel room in Stamford along with a nineteen-year-old woman from Manhattan. Jackie’s companion was charged with “loitering for the purposes of prostitution,” he with “using females for immoral purposes.” The police would say no more. Jackie’s bond was posted at $7,000. His arrest could have ended fatally; according to the police, he had pointed a handgun at an officer. Again, somehow, he was able to avoid jail. He was sentenced to a suspended term of two to four years in prison and ordered back to Daytop.
As Jack and Rachel knew now, there would be no easy cure for their son. He would make progress, then falter; but as long as he returned to Daytop, they could still hope for his eventual recovery. In the meantime, his parents, as well as Sharon and David, stayed resolutely in touch with him. They visited him in Seymour, welcomed him home when he returned, sent him cards and letters and homemade cookies and cakes—whatever they could do to assure him that he was wanted and loved.
As for the Republican National Convention that summer, Jack made no effort to go to Miami Beach early in August to attend it. As expected, the party chose Nixon to run for President. To Jack’s disgust, Nixon then chose as his running mate the governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, a man of impressive looks but little substance, and known in Baltimore to be hostile to blacks. Thus Robinson was eagerly responsive when Humphrey, struggling with Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota for the Democratic nomination, set out to win over the most influential black supporters of Rockefeller, Martin Luther King Sr. and Robinson himself. On August 11, Jack announced that he was resigning as Rockefeller’s special assistant for community affairs to campaign for the Democrats, “if they will have me.” He was especially incensed by reports that Nixon had apparently given the South, in the person of the segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, veto power over his choice for Vice-President. “Now he’s sold out,” Robinson said contemptuously of Nixon to a reporter. “He’s really prostituted himself to get the Southern vote.”
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