I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson Page 22

  Proudly I have to say that the couple of years I put in working for Rockefeller did make a difference. Not enough of a difference, however, because we were up against the kind of neglect of blacks in the state of New York which had long preceded the Rockefeller administration. In the realm of high political and government activity, there are many instances in which prejudice against blacks is not a problem. Blacks simply don’t exist in the minds of the people in power.

  I did what I could. I managed to get some things straightened out in state civil service. Maneuvering behind the scenes was responsible for some significant appointments that didn’t benefit just one individual but also put that individual in a position to help many. When I went to the scenes of unrest and riot as the governor’s representative, I went not to emphasize the “cool it” bit, but to listen and learn why things had become so hot. I didn’t listen only to the law and order people or the black and white bourgeoisie. I got together the so-called militants and offered to do what I could to communicate their beefs to the governor, to housing people, and to industry. I felt the job was worthwhile and that I had made some progress for the black cause while I was in it.

  There had been headlines about my leaving the Rockefeller administration, and many people had falsely concluded that I was angry with the governor. This was not true. Our warm personal relationship still exists, even though I have been dismayed by the welfare and education slashes, the one-year residency regulation to qualify for welfare, and a few other moves the governor has made in the last couple of years. He seems to have made a sharp right turn away from the stand of the man who once fought the Old Guard Republican Establishment so courageously. During the summer of 1971, I met with the governor and voiced my concerns; I told him I was beginning to wonder if he was the same Rockefeller. For the first time he became a little angry with me, but I had no intention of backing down and he wouldn’t have expected me to do so. He assured me that he was the same Rockefeller, but he spent quite a while telling me about his problems and how he was convinced that some of the steps he had taken were the only possible ones to try to stop the wreckage of our economic system. I could clearly see some of the points he made and understand why he felt he had to take certain positions. However, I told him honestly that I could not in good conscience support some of his current political philosophy. Mr. Rockefeller seemed to respect this personal conviction just as I had respected his. He said his only ambition was to be the greatest governor New York State ever had. I told him I thought he had been well on his way but had got sidetracked.

  Even though I can’t agree with a lot of steps he has taken recently, I personally like the guy. I have been under constant fire from friends and even from members of my family who harshly condemn the governor’s role in the terrible Attica situation. But I believe that he sincerely used his best judgment in a crucial situation and took the advice of people he really believed in. I think he should have gone to Attica in person, but others close to him said it would not help. The final results were disastrous, but if he was wrong in the Attica tragedy, I do not believe his decision or his actions reflect the full measure of the man.

  XIX

  The Influence of Martin Luther King, Jr.

  The Montgomery boycott against the buses, which led to the 1956 Supreme Court decision, is almost ancient history now. But the memory of the man responsible for the first real breakthrough in the civil rights movement lives on.

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had led the black community in the boycott that caused almost unendurable hardship to his people for over a year before the Supreme Court decided segregation on buses should be eliminated. During this period Martin Luther King and his family were the constant target of threats. In fact, whites—afraid they were losing—condemned the use of car pools, sent the Ku Klux Klan out to burn and destroy Negro property, threatened the arrest of anyone who picked up a Negro pedestrian, and in the end bombed the King home.

  At the time, Martin was at a regular mass meeting at Abernathy’s church and Coretta was sitting in the living room at home talking with a visitor. She heard something that seemed to land on the porch and thought that she and her visitor should go back to the bedroom “just in case.” Halfway down the hall, they heard the explosion and saw smoke. The telephone rang. Coretta answered it to hear a woman’s voice say, “Yes, I did it. And I’m just sorry I didn’t kill all you bastards.”

  Martin arrived home to find steadily increasing throngs of black men and women armed with anything they could get their hands on—sticks, bottles, rocks, and in some cases guns and knives—surrounding his house. Threats and curses filled the air.

  Who can forget Martin Luther King’s words spoken from the porch of his bombed home?

  “Don’t get panicky. . . . If you have weapons, take them home. . . . We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. . . . We must love our white brothers no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.’ This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.”

  I met Martin not long after the bombing. I had been extremely impressed by his calmness in the face of such terrible violence and threats to his family. When we met, through Al Duckett, who was a close personal friend of Martin’s, I was immediately struck by his dedication. I joined him whenever possible. I became a close friend and I began to understand the remarkable qualities that made him the leader he was. Godliness, strength, courage, and patience in the face of overwhelming odds were his chief characteristics.

  As much as I loved him, I never would have made a good soldier in Martin’s army. My reflexes aren’t conditioned to accept nonviolence in the face of violence-provoking attacks. My immediate instinct under the threat of physical attack to me or those I love is instant defense and total retaliation.

  Martin had designated me head of the fund-raising drive to rebuild the burned-out Georgia churches. I felt that if Martin King could make the kind of sacrifices he was making, I had to do what little I could to support him. He was and is my idol, but we didn’t always agree.

  I was one of the many people who were convinced he was wrong in his stand on the Vietnam War. Early in May, 1967—reluctantly, though I felt I had to do it—I wrote him an open letter in my newspaper column asking him to use one of the succeeding columns for his reply.

  I started out by saying that I considered him the greatest civil rights leader in the history of mankind. I said that, although I might be mistaken, it seemed to me he was utterly wrong in his stand on Vietnam. I was confused by this because I knew that he was a totally sincere and dedicated man and my respect for him was unbounded. I added that the children had started to ask us questions we were unable to answer.

  “Isn’t it unfair,” I asked, “for you to place all the burden of the blame on America and none on the Communist forces we are fighting? You suggest that we stop the bombing. It strikes me that our President has made effort after effort to get both sides to the peace table. Why should we take the vital step of stopping the bombing without knowing whether the enemy will use that pause to prepare for greater destruction of our men in Vietnam? Won’t you admit that, whenever there has been a lull or a cease-fire, our opponents have used this time to regroup and rebuild and to make themselves stronger in order to kill more of our soldiers? Yet, you have called the United States—and unfairly, I feel—the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. There was one 30-day period, you will recall, when we permitted a cease-fire and the Viet Cong used it to build roads and tunnels and to store food in order to further the murder of our men and their own fellow-countrymen. Why do you seem to ignore the blood that is on their hands and speak only of ‘the guilt of the United States’? Why do you not suggest that the Viet Cong cease, stop, withdraw also? I am firmly convinced that President Johnson wants an end to this war as much as anyone. If you want to be very cyni
cal about it, you have to admit that the termination of the war would be in his best political interest in the coming elections.

  “I am confused, Martin,” I concluded. “I am confused because I respect you deeply. But I also love this imperfect country. I respectfully ask you to answer this open letter and give me your own point of view.”

  It was painful writing this letter. It was all the more painful for Al Duckett, who had been writing the column with and for me for a few years. Al was also a writer for Martin Luther King, and, in fact, he did a major job on the famous “I Have a Dream” speech and on one of Martin’s books—Why We Can’t Wait—and some of his sermons. Al knew about my convictions in favor of the United States’ position on the war. But he did not really agree. He was strictly on Martin’s side on this one. It wasn’t often that we didn’t see things the same way about the column, but this was one of those times. Al thought I ought to talk to Martin directly before releasing the column and I agreed. But I was unable to contact Martin for several days, and since I felt we could no longer hold up the column, we went to press with it. Immediately after its publication, Martin telephoned me at home that night. I was terribly touched by the fact that Martin was not nearly as anxious to defend my attack publicly as he was to have me, as a friend, understand his philosophy and motivation. This was one more attribute of Martin’s humanity. Criticism, especially from friends, wounded him deeply. He wasn’t concerned about possible embarrassment in front of the public; he felt hurt when he was misunderstood by someone who he felt understood him.

  We had a long and, for me, enlightening conversation that night, and in the end I understood Martin’s inner compulsion to speak out against war and for peace. He would have been untrue to himself if he had not taken a stand for the principle in which he so deeply believed. He was one of the world’s leading exponents of nonviolence, and it made as much sense to him to oppose wars throughout the world as it did to oppose violence in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham.

  I felt he was calling for a mismatched marriage between the civil rights movement and the peace movement, and that such a marriage could be a disastrous alliance. We covered this point and others in our lengthy discussion. Contrary to public opinion, Martin’s criticism of the U.S. policy in Vietnam was not coming out of a vacuum. He had done a fantastic amount of research and had brilliant arguments to support his position. Months later he made a major speech at New York’s Riverside Church, explaining with great detail and eloquence his position against the war. Much of what he said on that occasion he had said to me on the phone that night.

  I can’t say that Martin convinced me that I was wrong and he was right on all counts. I am proud to say, however, that learning, firsthand, his point of view only served to increase the deep admiration I held for him. No matter how much we disagreed, I had renewed faith in his sincerity, his capacity to make the hard, unpopular decision, and his willingness to accept the consequences. He had taken a magnificently brave and lonely stand. Within his own organization there was much concern about his views—enough to make him agree to emphasize that he was expressing his own personal viewpoint rather than that of his board and staff. The fund-raisers for the organization continued to warn him that many whites who had been substantial contributors were withdrawing their support and that the allegiance of many blacks was also in jeopardy. The war, however, was one issue on which Dr. King would not compromise. He took the position that, if all the sources of income for his organization dried up and he were left alone crying out against organized killing, that would have to be the route he had to take.

  Today, in the early seventies, I cannot bitterly oppose, as I did in my open letter to Martin Luther King, the notion that America leads the world in violence. I do not make these statements because the tide of public opinion has changed about the war. I originally felt strongly about our role in the war; that we had a commitment to honor and should not back down in the face of an aggressive enemy. I have not embraced nonviolence, but I have become more cynical about this country’s role in Vietnam. I have become skeptical about the old domino theory; that the fall of Vietnam would bring Communist domination to Southeast Asia. I feel that the regime we are supporting in South Vietnam is corrupt and not representative of the people. I am personally upset by the plight of the American GI—and particularly the black soldier. The drug situation, which I learned about at great personal cost because of my son’s addiction, angers me greatly. Finally, I cannot accept the idea of a black supposedly fighting for the principles of freedom and democracy in Vietnam when so little has been accomplished in this country. There was a time when I deeply believed in America. I have become bitterly disillusioned.

  The tragic death of Martin Luther King, the short-lived national sorrow over that death, and the nation’s speedy recovery and return to business as usual cause one to wonder if this country will ever rise to the capacity to be true to itself, to be true to those lofty aims we say were our reason for coming into being.

  At the funeral services, I was plunged into deep contemplation as I thought of the sadness of saying farewell to a man who died still clinging to a dream of integration and peace and nonviolence. I could only hope that perhaps his death was symbolically hopeful. Perhaps after the streets of American cities were no longer haunted by angry blacks seeking to avenge the assassination, we would find ourselves. Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King’s last full measure of devotion for the cause of brotherhood would not prove to have been in vain.

  It is still too soon to assess the impact of his death, as it is too early to measure the meaning of the death of Malcolm X. There have been some hopeful and positive developments, and there has been evidence that hatred is still a brutal and vicious force. Martin Luther King accomplished much in his lifetime, but Americans still have a long way to go in terms of working toward the beloved society concept for which he lived and died.

  XX

  Jackie’s Prison

  In June, 1967, Jackie was discharged from the service. When he came back home, he was more confused than he had been when he went into the service. He didn’t stay around home much. He said he just wasn’t ready to decide what he was going to do and that he had to stay away from us to figure it all out. He kept trying to reassure us that we didn’t have to worry about him, that he would be all right. And though we were concerned, we tried to believe him because we wanted to.

  The last thought in our minds was addiction.

  We knew that things weren’t right, but there is nothing that can blind parents as much as loving hope. We talked with Jackie and we listened to him. I felt my communication with him was improved. We were relieved when he laughed off the idea of his ever becoming addicted. He was most persuasive when he frankly admitted using marijuana, warning us that there was no point in our forbidding him to use it, telling us that he liked grass, that he was not going to give it up. He gave us the familiar argument that marijuana is harmless, not addictive, that it only leads weak-minded people into the hard stuff. We didn’t have a thing to worry about in terms of his sticking a needle in his arm. He was afraid to stick himself with needles. It would never get to that. Not with him. He was convincing. We found out later that there is something about drug addiction that imbues its victims with a terrible kind of craftiness and ingenuity. Jack sold us on his point of view. We looked around us. We read everything we could get our hands on. We went down the primrose path part of the way, though not all the way, with those goddamned experts that make young people and their parents believe that marijuana is harmless. Look at all the brilliant achievers who smoke it. It isn’t any worse than alcohol.

  As I look back, I become bitter about people like Dr. Margaret Mead. I am sure that she and many others who call for the legalization of marijuana are quite sincere, but I think they are doing an incalculable amount of damage. What we did—and what thousands of other parents are doing—is so terribly wrong. We depended on Jackie to have the ability and strength to restrict himself to marijuan
a—an ability and strength that he didn’t have, that a lot of troubled people don’t have.

  The morning of the day the roof fell in on us, I had been interviewed by the Associated Press on the telephone. A few minutes later the reporter called back. I had expressed some strong and controversial views to him, and I assumed he was calling for some clarification. Instead he said, “What about Jackie?”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded.

  “Don’t you know that your son was arrested about one o’clock this morning on charges of possession and carrying a concealed weapon?” the reporter asked.

  I was stunned. Dully, I heard the information that Jackie was in jail at that moment. He was of age, and when he gave the police instructions not to contact us, they went along with it. That was why we had not heard.

  I remember clearly my first gut reaction. If I could have put it into words then, I would have said, “The hell with you, Jack. We’ve tried to do our best. You’ve been getting into trouble every time we turn around. Now you’ve placed us in a terrible position. There’s going to be a lot of bad publicity and grief for everyone in the family.”

  That was my first reaction, but it was wiped out in seconds. I immediately called Rachel. We had to let Jackie know we expected him to shoulder the consequences of his mistakes but that we were 100 percent behind him and would leave no stone unturned to do whatever was necessary to help him. Rachel and I went to the police station and posted the $5,000 bail required.

  After a long talk with Jackie, we decided that the best thing to do was to put him in the New Haven hospital. It seemed logical because Rachel was working near there and could see that he got the proper attention. That was a mistake also and Jack told us so after he had been there a few days.