I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson Read online

  The day Jackie left I had just been released from the hospital. I had had a major operation and I had been badly scared. I was profoundly thankful to come home.

  But Jackie had disappeared. Mother Isum said the last time she had seen Jackie he was carrying a brown bag, and she thought he had gone to the bank. We called the bank and learned that he had taken the money out of his savings account.

  Normally we never invaded our children’s privacy. We didn’t believe in entering their rooms without knocking or rummaging through their things without permission. But when Jackie disappeared, I felt justified in searching his room to try to find out where he had gone. The search wasn’t fruitful in that sense, but in the course of it I came across an old wallet of Jackie’s. It was jammed with typical teen-age possessions. Among them was a pocket-sized picture of me. It meant that Jackie had cared a lot more for his old man than his old man had guessed.

  I couldn’t hold back the tears. I broke down and cried in the terrible way a man cries when he’s someone who never cries. Through all the bad times Rachel had never seen me cry, and it made a bad experience that much more painful to her.

  A few days later Jackie called and said that he had reached California and that he couldn’t get a job. He wanted to come home, and he made it clear that his running away was not a sign of rejection of us and it didn’t mean he didn’t love us; he had to get away and see if he could get by on his own.

  Shortly after he ran away, in the spring of 1964, Jackie volunteered for the Army. He told us that he hoped to pull himself together, get the discipline he knew he needed badly, and establish his own identity. He was seventeen and he believed all the stories he heard about the opportunity the Army gave enlistees to travel. Jackie got to travel all right. Within less than a year of training, he was shipped to Vietnam and straight into combat. However, before he was sent overseas, Jackie had taken high school equivalency exams and passed, and he was proud that he had taken his future into his own hands. His letters encouraged us to believe some of his problems would be solved.

  When he was in Vietnam, Jackie was bothered by the antiwar demonstrations at home. I didn’t like them either, and I had disagreed with the stand Dr. Martin Luther King took on the war. Reverend Jesse Jackson has pointed out that Dr. King was against the war but not against the soldiers; that his fight was with those who set the policy that created the war. Disagreement about the war has created much bitterness and division in the country, and I felt strongly that those who opposed the war had no right to call the black kids who served in it willing dupes of imperialism and to ridicule and denigrate our men.

  As for the blacks who joined the Army, often it was not solely for reasons of patriotism that they did so. Many of them sought opportunities in the Armed Forces that were denied them in civilian life. Many of them came to wonder, as Jackie finally did while he was in the hospital in Vietnam, about the contradiction of having fought for freedom for people on foreign soil only to come home to be denied equal rights. Jackie supported the war, but he didn’t buy a system of government that preached democracy in Vietnam but had neither homes for blacks in certain neighborhoods nor jobs for the black veteran in certain areas like the construction industry.

  While Jackie was in the hospital in Vietnam, newspaper articles about him portrayed him as a hero, but he shrugged that off by saying, “It wasn’t all that much. I just got shrapnel in the ass.” The reports we got, however, indicated that he had gone through a pretty traumatic experience. He got a sample of the horror of killing firsthand when—on one side of him at the front lines—one of his best buddies was killed and another died in his arms. This happened as Jackie was trying to drag his own wounded body back behind the lines in search of the medics.

  Sharon and David read and shared every letter Jack sent to the family. Quietly, Sharon was going through her own traumatic problems becoming a teen-ager. She went through a heart-wrenching experience in her friendship with Christy, a daughter of one of our neighbors. Christy was white, but her whiteness and Sharon’s blackness had been irrelevant to both of them ever since they became friends at five. They were best friends and Christy’s parents were as delighted with the friendship as we were. If Sharon wasn’t spending the night at Christy’s house, Christy spent the night at ours. When their friendship hit the rocks, it was a replay of an old and tragic story. It illustrates what society does to youngsters whose color blindness in their love for each other fades into a sad color consciousness during teen-age years. Young romance, date making, the whole social situation enters the picture. In the South and in many parts of the North, it would have been the white girl withdrawing, being warned perhaps by family or friends, that social contact with a black friend could create problems. It didn’t happen that way with Christy and Sharon. Christy wasn’t the one who withdrew. Sharon was the one, and Christy was terribly hurt by it. But Sharon did it because something in her anticipated a rejection by Christy which could ultimately hurt her deeply.

  Sharon, perhaps for the first time, began to wish we had never moved from St. Albans. She loved the country atmosphere and she loved our house, but she dreamed how wonderful it would have been to have these elements and still be within a black community where she could have black companionship. Sharon, I believe, is one of those young women who would have a hard time ever marrying across the color line because of the depth of her pride in being black.

  Looking back to her teen-age days, Sharon thinks we were overprotective of our children, that we shielded Jackie and David and her too much. At home Rae and I had always been careful not to raise angry voices when the children were around. Maybe Sharon was right. At any rate, when she came out of her quiet little shell briefly and began to rebel, Sharon decided to go off with a crowd we didn’t particularly approve of. She wanted to see life more realistically. She felt that Rae, even though she never overtly pushed it, hoped she would go into nursing. As a result, when Sharon decided to be independent, she vehemently declared she didn’t want to be a nurse. Today Sharon is a nurse and admits she rejected the idea because she was looking for things to reject.

  Rae and I have never had a deeply serious conflict. We do not have a storybook marriage full of sweetness and light. But we are both very grateful that our love for each other has been strong enough for us to give each other comfort through good and bad times. One of the factors that could have threatened our marriage if we hadn’t applied patience and understanding to its solution had to do with Rae’s professional career. When Jackie was twelve years old and David was in school full time, Rachel enrolled in New York University and began working for her master’s degree in psychiatric nursing. She earned it in 1960. Rae says that one of her motivations in preparing to reenter professional life was crystallized one day when the children were going off to camp. She realized as they left that the day would be coming when they wouldn’t be kids anymore. Probably all of them would go their separate ways. She would need something to do to occupy her mind, but, even more important, she did not want to go through her life being known only as Mrs. Jackie Robinson. She has a strong, independent spirit, and she wanted to be accepted as an individual in her own right. To be very honest, if I had my way, Rachel would not have a job. But having my way would constitute selfishness as well as insensitivity to her needs as a person.

  Rachel says that I was proud as long as she was going to school. I was working for Chock Full O’Nuts then. We would get up very early in the morning, drive into the city from our Connecticut place, and in the evening I would go to the school and pick her up to drive her home. She studied into the wee hours and on weekends. She frequently went to bed with the kids but would then get up later to do her work. She says I was proud and pleased—and I was—when she was graduated but that when she actually began to go to work every day, my annoyance and resentment began to show. We had discussed the problem and made our agreement, but I know she is right. I really didn’t want her to work, even though I knew she was entitled to aspire to
her own personal goals. Now I am proud that my wife has had a successful career. Her first job was as staff nurse and supervisor on the administrative staff of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. She didn’t have to work late in the day and was generally at home when the children came home from school.

  In 1965 Rachel went to Yale University as assistant professor in the School of Nursing. She was also director of nursing in the Connecticut Medical Health Center in New Haven. Holding down both jobs simultaneously meant that she was involved in teaching, clinical work, and administration at the same time. She loved the work. She found it challenging and she particularly liked the contact with students. On her job Rae was known as Rachel Robinson, not Mrs. Jackie Robinson. We still laugh about one experience she had when she first went to work. An article had come out about our family in Life magazine. One of her co-workers was looking over the magazine and turned to look at Rachel, then back at the magazine.

  “Aren’t you Jackie Robinson’s wife?” was the inevitable question.

  Without even giving it a second thought, Rachel promptly said, “No.”

  The denial just slipped out. She was so horrified when she realized what she had done that she promptly went to look for a fellow psychologist at the school. They sat down and discussed the incident. Rachel realized that she didn’t really want to deny that I was part of her life but that she wanted to be known and respected as an individual in her own right.

  For a while Rae told herself that it was necessary to conceal her married identity because it might make a difference to her patients who were usually accustomed to having those who took care of them remain fairly anonymous. Now she knows that this rationalization was a copout and that what she actually wanted was the assurance of her own identity. After she realized that, she didn’t go around announcing that she was Mrs. Jackie Robinson, but neither did she do anything unnatural to hide it. People would discover her private identity when I went to staff parties with her. She told me once, “Now that I am established as an individual, I’m pleased to have people link me with you.” Some of her patients or co-workers often ask about me and she likes to talk about me. She kids me about a habit I have had for years—of constantly saying “we” when I am referring to myself. I hardly ever say “I.” I’m apt to say that “we caught a plane to Cincinnati” even when Rachel hasn’t gone along. It’s an integral part of my speech pattern.

  Rachel has told me, “You don’t think of me as separate, and sometimes you have a hard time allowing me to be separate.” She’s right about that, and she has reminded me several times in a teasing way of what I said when mail started coming to the house addressed to Professor Rachel Robinson. I asked if that was the proper way to address her.

  “Yes, honey,” Rachel answered. “I have a name, too, and there’s nothing wrong with people using it.”

  Sometimes I think that just about everyone in our immediate family has had an unusual struggle to gain acceptance as an individual. Although our problems were somewhat unique because of my position as a celebrity, we were really going through the crises common to any family—and particularly any black family growing up in today’s society. It was the universal conflict of father and son, of growing brothers and sisters, of a man and his wife when she is trying to establish an identity and worth beyond her role as a wife—and it was the problem of an upward mobile black family in a subtly discriminatory affluent northern white society.

  XV

  On Being Black Among the Republicans

  My first meeting with Nelson Rockefeller occurred in 1962 during a public event at which we were both speakers. The Nelson Rockefeller personal charm and charisma had now become legendary. It is almost impossible not to like the man. He gives two distinct impressions: that he is sincere in whatever he is saying and that, in spite of his fantastic schedule, power, and influence—at that specific moment of your contact—he has shut everything else out and is focusing his complete and concentrated attention on you.

  While I admired his down-to-earth maner and outgoing ways instantly, I was anything but overwhelmed at our initial meeting. I am aware that the enormously wealthy have time to spread charm as they like. They have their worries, but survival is not one of them, as it is with us. I wasn’t about to be taken in instantly by the Nelson Rockefeller charm. After all, Richard Nixon had turned the charm on me too (although his is a bit brittle compared with Rockefeller’s) and look how that had turned out.

  I knew that Rockefeller’s family had given enormous sums to black education and other philanthropic causes for black people and that at that time (nearly twenty years ago) a significant number of black college presidents, black professionals, and a significant number of leaders of national stature had received a college education, financed by Rockefeller gifts. While I have no need to detract from the contributions of the family to black education, I felt it certainly must be weighed in terms of what went into the amassing of one of the world’s greatest fortunes.

  As for Nelson Rockefeller himself, I knew little or nothing about his politics. As far as I was concerned, he was just another rich guy with politics as a toy. Our first chat had nothing to do with politics. In fact, the governor took advantage of the occasion to tell me about a private problem. Since I was an officer of the Chock Full O’Nuts Restaurant chain at that time, he thought I might be able to help him. It seemed the Rockefeller family was unhappy about one of our advertising jingles which assured the public that our coffee was as good as any “Rockefeller’s money can buy.” Representations about the family’s feeling in the matter had been made through legal and diplomatic channels, but the offensive jingle was still being aired on radio and television commercials. I promised to mention the matter to Bill Black, Chock’s president. I was surprised at Mr. Black’s reaction. When I reported the Rockefeller concern, he snapped, “Good! Let them sue. We can use the publicity.”

  As far as I was concerned, that was the end of that. As far as I knew, I’d probably never be in contact with the governor again. However, I began to change my mind about Rockefeller when I learned the extent of his support for a man I admired deeply, Martin Luther King.

  When student sit-ins began in the South and many so-called liberals criticized them, Governor Rockefeller told the press that he believed the protesting youngsters were morally justified. I also learned that, unlike Richard Nixon, who failed to speak out about the Georgia jailing of Dr. King, the governor had promptly wired the President asking for his protection.

  I also learned of some of the governor’s unpublicized actions. Before Rockefeller became governor, the world was stunned by the attempted assassination of Dr. King by a black woman in a Harlem department store. Rushed to Harlem Hospital, Dr. King, who had been wounded by a letter opener plunged into a spot just below the tip of his aorta, immediately was put under the care of a team of crack surgeons headed by Dr. Louis Wright. The newspapers gave intensive publicity to the fact that the then-Governor Harriman had sped to the hospital escorted by police convoy with shrieking sirens. Harriman ordered every available facility utilized to save Dr. King. Then he stayed at the hospital for several hours, keeping vigil and awaiting word of the civil rights leader’s condition. Governor Harriman de-servedly got credit for his concern about a beloved black leader. But it was Nelson Rockefeller who quietly issued orders to have the hospital bill sent to him.

  I learned that the governor had made frequent gifts to Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I was on the scene a few hours after hate-crazed bigots burned Georgia churches to the ground. Dr. King asked me to head a national fund-raising drive to restore the churches. Two of the first substantial donations were made by my then-boss Mr. William Black and by Governor Rockefeller. We did rebuild those churches.

  Yet with all his goodwill gestures and philanthropies, there was one fact which bothered me deeply about the Rockefeller Administration in 1962. Although New York has, for many years, enjoyed a reputation as a liberal stat
e, the higher echelons of the state government were all white. There were no blacks at top-level, policy-making positions. There was not even one black man or woman who had a direct line to the governor and who could alert him to the concerns and grievances of black people. I wondered if Nelson Rockefeller’s generosity to black causes was a compartmentalized activity of his private life, and I was sufficiently curious to write him a letter.

  My letter to the governor was a harshly honest letter. I said I felt no self-respecting black man could respect an administration that had no blacks in significant jobs. Governor Rockefeller met my honesty head on. He telephoned me personally and told me how much he appreciated my truthfulness. He admitted that things were not as they should be for blacks in state government and that he wanted to take steps to correct this; he suggested we meet and talk things over within the next few days.

  In the course of that telephone call, I bluntly said, “If you don’t want to hear the down-to-earth truth about how you are thought of in the black community, let’s just forget about it.”

  He assured me that he wanted and needed unbiased advice. The meeting, unadvertised in the press and unreported after it took place, was held in a private room at the top of Radio City Music Hall. About a dozen to fifteen people whom I had invited attended. For some three hours we told the governor our grievances about the failure of his administration to include blacks in the political and government action. The people there didn’t hesitate to recite harsh facts. He was aware of some of the facts we gave him; other facts seemed to shock him. He accepted our criticism, our recommendations for change, and he acted to bring about reforms. He did not bring any apologists or token black leaders into the meeting to justify himself. He brought an open mind and someone to take notes.