I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson Page 10

  Very soon after my talk with Mr. Rickey, I learned that as long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people who seemed to have sympathy for the underdog. But the minute I began to answer, to argue, to protest—the minute I began to sound off—I became a swellhead, a wise guy, an “uppity” nigger. When a white player did it, he had spirit. When a black player did it, he was “ungrateful,” an upstart, a sorehead. It was hard to believe the prejudice I saw emerging among people who had seemed friendly toward me before I began to speak my mind. I became, in their minds and in their columns, a “pop-off,” a “troublemaker,” a “rabble-rouser.” It was apparent that I was a fine guy until “Success went to his head,” until I began to “change.”

  It is true that I had stored up a lot of hostility. I had been going home nights to Rachel and young Jackie, tense and irritable, keyed up because I hadn’t been able to speak out when I wanted to. In 1949 I wouldn’t have to do this. I could fight back when I wanted. That sounds as though I wanted to get even, and I’m sure that is partly true. I wouldn’t have been human otherwise. But, more than revenge, I wanted to be Jackie Robinson, and for the first time I would be justified because by 1949 the principle had been established: the major victory won. There were enough blacks on other teams to ensure that American baseball could never again turn its back on minority competitors.

  When I reported for spring training I was right on target, weightwise, in excellent condition, and my morale was high. On the first day a sportswriter who interviewed me, quoted me as saying, “They’d better be rough on me this year because I’m sure going to be rough on them.”

  Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler had me on the carpet for that statement. I couldn’t help wondering if he would have called up Ty Cobb, Frankie Frisch, or Pepper Martin—all white and all given to sounding off—for the same thing. I told the commissioner exactly how I felt and that, while I had no intention of creating problems, I was no longer going to turn my cheek to insults. Chandler completely understood my position, and that was the end of our interview.

  During spring training it looked as though there would be definite racial trouble ahead. We were scheduled to play in Atlanta in April. The Atlanta newspapers announced that the Grand Dragon of the Klan had warned the Dodgers that Roy Campanella and I would not be allowed to play because interracial games were against the laws of the state. Dr. Samuel Green was the top Klansman and Earl Mann ran the Atlanta Crackers team. Green and his bedsheet brigade were assailed in the local press for indicating that, if black players came to Atlanta with the Dodgers, there would be bloody violence.

  Mr. Rickey predicted that there would be an assault of enthusiasm instead of violence and that we would be threatened by hoards of autograph seekers rather than Klansmen. It was another Rickey prediction that was right on target. The autograph-seeking crowds after that first game were tremendous. Almost 50,000 turned out for each of the three games, and for the Sunday game there were about 14,000 black fans. I don’t know whether that disheartened the Klan or not, but there was absolutely no trouble. In a number of other Southern cities that season, we didn’t even encounter threats. The fans were accepting integrated baseball, but there were other problems to contend with.

  In one game at Vero Beach I had gotten into a hassle with a young Brooklyn farmhand which almost came to blows. Later, during the season, I was thrown out of a game for the second time. The penalty was for grabbing at my throat—a sign that signified an umpire was choking up. “Choking up” meant that the umpire was favoring home teams on decisions.

  In acting like this, I wasn’t doing anything that players hadn’t been doing for years. All typical players with spirit act that way. They throw their hands in the air in disgust, kick bitterly at the ground or at a glove. They shake their heads in disbelief at decisions. They react. Sometimes they get fines. Most of the time, unless they do something terribly violent, there just isn’t any aftermath at all.

  I received a great deal of personal publicity in 1949. Sometimes, in the dressing room, in the midst of a group of Dodgers, all of us would sound off about something we didn’t approve of. A writer outside the door who had heard what we were saying would do a piece telling the world what Robinson was “popping off” about. That was one of the reasons for the excess publicity. Another was that I said pretty much what was on my mind whenever the press interviewed me. Sportswriters seemed to come directly to me whenever there was a hint of a story. They knew I would say what I thought. One of them once told me I represented the difference between steak and hamburger on the dinner plates of some writers. The sportswriters knew I wouldn’t back down if I got into trouble—that I wouldn’t whine that “I was misquoted.”

  It felt good to be able to breathe freely, to speak out when I wanted to. There was also another good element. Many times when I made strong or controversial statements, I was not fighting for a personal thing. I was standing up for my team. I was saying things some of my teammates felt but were reluctant to say. The Dodgers appreciated this, and it was a refutation of the charge that I was making verbal grandstand plays to promote myself.

  In July, 1949, I was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee headed by Georgia Congressman John S. Wood. He sent me a telegram asking me to come to Washington to testify before his committee “to give the lie to statements by Paul Robeson.” I learned that the committee had also invited other blacks, some prominent lawyers, sociol-ogists, ministers, and educators. I was impressed by the fact that a Congressional committee had asked for my views, but I realized that they must have felt my popularity with black and white sports-loving masses would help them refute the Robeson statement. I was in a dilemma because the statement was disturbing to me in some ways, although I believed I knew why it had been made.

  Paul Robeson, the noted singer, an active fighter against racism, had been quoted in the world press as saying that American Negroes would not fight for America in case of a war against Russia. It was not the first time Robeson had troubled the establishment. He was a black man who, in white eyes, “had it made.” But he was an embattled and bitter man. He looked back on a childhood in a city where white people pushed blacks off the sidewalk. He grew up, not in the South, but in Princeton, New Jersey. He had gone to Rutgers University, become Phi Beta Kappa and the captain of a record-making football team. Robeson remembered sitting on the bench during certain football games even though he was the star because a Southern college was playing his team and would not countenance the presence of a black man on the field. Paul was a brilliant law student. When he was graduated from law school and looked for jobs with white law firms (there were few black firms in those days), he found he was discriminated against. Even after he became an eminent artist, he learned with resentment and sorrow that after the applause had died, he was once again a nigger. When he was on tour, hotels found polite excuses—sometimes not polite—for not taking him in. In others that did give him accommodations, he was asked to take his meals in his room.

  In 1931 Robeson left his country, announcing that he would live in England. He took his son, Paul, to Russia to be educated. In Russia he found a country where “I walked the earth for the first time with complete dignity.” He had not yet officially espoused Communism, but his statement, from Paris, declaring blacks would not fight Russia for America, had aroused Con-gress and the press.

  I was not sure about what to do. Rachel and I had long talks about it. She felt I should follow my instincts. I didn’t want to fall prey to the white man’s game and allow myself to be pitted against another black man. I knew that Robeson was striking out against racial inequality in the way that seemed best to him. However, in those days I had much more faith in the ultimate justice of the American white man than I have today. I would reject such an invitation if offered now.

  The newspaper accounts seemed to picture the great singer as speaking for the whole race of black people. With all the respect I had for him, I
didn’t believe anyone had the right to do that. I thought Robeson, although deeply dedicated to his people, was also strongly influenced by his attraction to Soviet Russia and the Communist cause. I wasn’t about to knock him for being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. That was his right. But I was afraid that Robeson’s statement might discredit blacks in the eyes of whites. If his statement meant that all black people—not just some blacks—would refuse to defend America, then it seemed to me that he had been guilty of too sweeping an assumption. I was black and he wasn’t speaking for me. I had served in the Armed Forces and had been badly mistreated. When I couldn’t defend my country for the injustice I suffered, I was still proud to have been in uniform. I felt that there were two wars raging at once—one against foreign enemies and one against domestic foes—and the black man was forced to fight both. I felt we must not back down on either front. This land belongs to us as much as it belongs to any immigrant or any descendant of the American colonists, and slavery in this country—in whatever sophisticated form—must end. There are whites who would love to see us refuse to defend our country because then we could relinquish our right to be Americans. It isn’t a perfect America and it isn’t run right, but it still belongs to us. As my friend the Reverend Jesse Jackson says, “It ain’t our government, but it’s our country.”

  After word got out that I had been asked to testify, Rae and I received an overwhelming amount of letters, wires, and telephone calls. Some sought to dissuade me from going to Washington, others gave advice on what I should say, and still others threatened me with a loss of popularity in the black community and charged I would be a “traitor” to my people if I testified. Obviously some of the mail had been organized by the Communist Party, but there was a considerable amount that Rachel and I judged was sincerely free of political motivation. After we considered all the factors, I decided to testify.

  The speech I gave in front of the committee was well-received. However, many of the newspaper articles praising it, also gave the impression that I had put down Robeson hard. That wasn’t true. The major points I made were these:

  I said that the question of Communist activity in the United States wasn’t a matter of partisan politics. I mentioned that some of the policies of the committee itself had become political issues.

  I told the committee that I didn’t pretend to be an expert on Communism or any other kind of political “ism,” but I was an expert on being a colored American, having had thirty years of experience at it, and I knew how difficult it was to be in the minority. I felt that we had made some progress in baseball and that we could make progress in other American fields provided we got rid of some of the misunderstandings the public still suffered from. There had been a lot of misunderstanding on the subject of Communism among Negroes in this country that was bound to hurt my people’s cause unless it was cleared up. Every Negro worth his salt hated racial discrimination, and if it happened that it was a Communist who denounced discrimination, that didn’t change the truth of his charges. It might be true that Communists kicked up a big fuss over racial discrimination because it suited their purposes. However, that was no reason to pretend that the whole issue was a creation of the Communist imagination. This talk about “Communists stirring up Negroes to protest” only made present misunderstandings worse.

  I then said I had been asked to express my views on Paul Robeson’s statement to the effect that American Negroes would refuse to fight in any war against Russia because we loved Russia so much. I commented that if Mr. Robeson actually made that statement, it sounded very silly to me but that he had a right to his personal views. People shouldn’t get scared and think that one Negro among 15,000,000 of us, speaking to a Communist group in Paris, could speak for the rest of his race.

  I wound up my statement by saying:

  “I can’t speak for any fifteen million people any more than any other person can, but I know that I’ve got too much invested for my wife and child and myself in the future of this country, and I and other Americans of many races and faiths have too much invested in our country’s welfare, for any of us to throw it away because of a siren song sung in bass.

  “I am a religious man. Therefore I cherish America where I am free to worship as I please, a privilege which some countries do not give. And I suspect that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of almost any thousand colored Americans you meet will tell you the same thing.

  “But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop fighting race discrimination in this country until we’ve got it licked. It means that we’re going to fight it all the harder because our stake in the future is so big. We can win our fight without the Communists and we don’t want their help.”

  That statement was made over twenty years ago, and I have never regretted it. But I have grown wiser and closer to painful truths about America’s destructiveness. And I do have an increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over the span of that twenty years, sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people.

  During the 1949 season there was a tremendous improvement in the closeness of the Dodger team. Racial tensions had almost completely dissipated, and the team cared most about acquiring talented players. The club had been strengthened by the addition of several players, among them Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe. The year 1949 wound up being a truly great one. Once again, we became the National League pennant winners. We lost the series to the Yankees, but it was a hard-fought series.

  The year 1949 was also a banner year for me personally because the sportswriters named me Most Valuable Player. I signed a 1950 contract for $35,000, which in those days was a very good paycheck. I was happy as the season ended and happily unaware of the trouble that lay ahead.

  VII

  The Price of Popularity

  To our great joy we had another addition to the family in 1950. Sharon Robinson was born on January 13 in Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York. We had finally bought our own home in the St. Albans section of Long Island. There were some modestly priced good-looking homes in our immediate neighborhood, homes that were mainly white-owned. Located in the neighborhood were the Roy Campanellas; Count Basie and his wife, Catherine; Herbert Mills of the Mills Brothers; and others from the entertainment world and field of education.

  A movie, The Jackie Robinson Story, was to be filmed that year. The producers wanted to make it before spring training, but I had been holding them up until the birth of my daughter. When Sharon was born, I planned to take Jackie out to Hollywood with me while Rachel stayed home with the baby and my mother, who had come East to help us during the last stages of Rae’s pregnancy.

  Two weeks after I’d been on the set in my unaccustomed role of actor, I confessed to Rachel that not only did I miss her a lot but I wanted to see Sharon and I’d probably learn my script much faster if she came out to join me. When Sharon was just three weeks old, she was en route to Hollywood with her mother. Rae said that our daily life during those few weeks when they rushed to put the picture together in record time, reminded her of my first baseball days. There was a lot of difference, though. Every morning a limousine came to pick up the four of us and we would all spend the day on the lot. Ruby Dee, who played the role of Rachel in the picture, paid a lot of attention to our baby. Jackie had spent a lot of his infant hours on the knees of baseball players, and little Sharon was getting the same kind of treatment from movie stars. That same old Jackie Robinson Story is still turning up here and there on television. It was exciting to participate in it. But later I realized it had been made too quickly, that it was budgeted too low, and that, if it had been made later in my career, it could have been done much better.

  I left Rachel and the children with her mother and went on to spring training. Often, during that spring training season, I thought about how much fun it had been when Rae and I had Jackie with us during spring training at Vero Beach. He loved that place. He had his own ball then and
would play out on the field every day, running back and forth to Rae to get his ration of freshly squeezed orange juice. Ballplayers and some of the fans gave him a lot of attention, and at times he was surprisingly responsive. One day, unknown to Rae and me, he got out on the field and started hamming it up. It was during an exhibition game warm-up and people were throwing money at him from the stands. He was happily giving his fans autographs and before I realized what was going on, he had collected quite a little hoard of change for himself.

  Watching little Jackie being so outgoing delighted Rae and me, but at the same time it gave us a sober awareness of the serious problem he would have in asserting himself as an individual. We had heard and read about the conflicts children face whose parents live in the spotlight. We became more aware of the problem each day as Jackie grew older. There are any number of well-intentioned people who inflict problems on the kids of famous fathers. Jackie became a victim of these problems when he was still a very small boy. Almost as soon as he could say his name, people would come up with brilliant statements such as, “Oh, so you’re little Jackie Robinson, huh? You think you’ll ever be as famous as your father?” Or, “Oh, are you going to be a ballplayer too? You know you’ll never be able to do what your daddy has done.”

  There were dozens of approaches, all meant to be teasing or affectionate and all chipping away at this little boy’s self-esteem. They also convinced him that probably he and I were or should be in some sort of competition.

  He was a loving and lovable youngster and sunny in disposition. There was very seldom any outward sign that this kind of thing bothered him. But it did and we knew it did. We knew that when he was very young, he began to feel exploited, to sense that perhaps people were making much of him, not be-cause of himself, but because he was my son.