remembered. “It was available to you even as a non-religious thing.”18
The church even served a role in Isum’s budding romance with her
high school boyfriend, Eddie, a tall and kind young man who faith-
fully walked her home from school. “I let Eddie kiss me only when
he had met my two terms: I had to be sixteen, and he had to join my
church,” she explained. “I was sixteen, and he joined Bethel AME on
35th Street, so I let him kiss me. That’s what I was like in those days!”19
Isum excelled as a student, and a local civic group awarded her a
scholarship for university studies.
At nearby UCLA in the fall of 1940, she quickly discovered that her
fellow black students, few in number, tended to hang out in Kerckhoff Hall, where Robinson held a part-time maintenance job. Isum could
36
JACKIE ROBINSON
not help but notice him. “He was big, he was broad-shouldered, he was very attractive physically, and he had pigeon toes you couldn’t miss,”
she recalled.20
There was something else she found intensely attractive. “He was
clearly comfortable and proud of being a black man,” she said. “In the 1940s I was very impressed by that fact. Not all of us could carry our racial identity with such pride.”21
“Jack displayed his color by wearing white shirts,” she said. “There was a kind of dignity about him and a sense of purpose that attracted me.”22
Isum was too shy to break through the crowd that regularly gathered
around Robinson, so she often arrived at the commuter parking lot
early, hoping to spot him and arrange to have their paths cross. Before too long, Jackie’s good friend Ray Bartlett introduced them, and much to her surprise, she sensed they shared a similar characteristic.
“I was extremely shy but I was rather pleased to see that he was also shy in that encounter,” she explained. “However, my impression of
him was that he had great self-confidence, and I was pleased to see that he was not arrogant. It’s a trait I detest.”23 Isum had been concerned about that because when she had first spotted Robinson, during his
football days back at Pasadena Junior College, she had imagined him
as cocky and conceited, mostly because he stood on the sidelines with his hands on his hips.
Isum was not the only one struck in that first encounter. “I was
immediately attracted to Rachel’s looks and charm,” Robinson remem-
bered. But there was also something else that captured his attention.
“When she left,” he said, “I walked to the parking lot with her. She made me feel at ease, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her.”24
Their easy conversations continued, and before long the two were
seeing each other every day. In spite of their notable differences—
Rachel was a serious nursing student, and Robinson was focused on
sports—the two felt a deep connection. “There are few people it is easy for me to confide in,” Robinson recalled, “but when I was with Rae
I was delighted to find that I could tell her anything. She was always understanding and, beyond that, very direct and honest with me.”25
Rachel and Jackie had similar values, and both had been reared in
the church. That point was not lost on her mother, Zellee, when Rachel introduced her to Robinson. According to Arnold Rampersad, “Jack
immediately won Zellee over; she saw him from the start as a gentle
person, a gentleman, serious and religious, as well as handsome.”26
“to seek to HelP otHers”
37
Rachel had a similar effect on Mallie Robinson. “She thought of
me the way my mother thought of Jack,” Rachel said. “Here’s a girl
in the church, she doesn’t drink or smoke, a good student, going into nursing, no other boyfriends.”27
Jackie knew there was something special about Rachel, and the
death of her father brought them closer together.
“It wasn’t until her father died in 1940 that I realized I was deeply in love with her. Rae’s deep grief had a profound effect on me,” he said.
“In this time of sorrow we found each other and I knew then that our relationship was to be one of the most important things in my life no matter what happened to me.”28
But the bond between Jackie and Rachel, no matter how special or
significant, could not keep him from leaving UCLA before he earned
his diploma. The impatient Robinson had other things on his mind.
3
“You Are a Child of God”
Refusing the Back of the Bus
In early March 1941, Robinson quit college during his senior year
at UCLA.1 He had used up his eligibility in football and basketball
and chose to forgo his eligibility in baseball and track. He was keenly aware of the limited opportunities for young black men in professional sports or anywhere else, regardless of whether they had a college degree.
Robinson also felt it was necessary to provide financial support for his mother, Mallie.2 His decision to leave UCLA was opposed by Mallie,
Rachel, Karl Downs, his coaches, and university administrators.3
Robinson, who had majored in physical education, sought coaching
jobs and was hired by the National Youth Association (NYA) to be
an assistant athletic director on the campus of California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo, California. The NYA, which had been
created by the Franklin Roosevelt administration as part of the Works Progress Administration, provided relief, jobs, and job training for people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five.
Robinson trained NYA workers, many of whom came from under-
privileged, single-parent homes and had experienced brushes with the law. He saw himself in some of the young men. “I realized that I had been no different from many of these kids, who would make good if
given half a chance,” he said.4 Robinson found the work rewarding, but the job did not last. It appeared to be only a matter of time before the United States would enter World War II. The NYA was no longer viable.
The war industry needed workers, and the army needed young men.5
39
40
JACKIE ROBINSON
Robinson again found his options limited. He might have been one
of the best athletes in the country, but he was a black athlete. Professional football and baseball enforced unwritten gentlemen’s agreements prohibiting blacks. Many semiprofessional leagues allowed integrated competition but paid low wages. Robinson began playing semiprofessional football in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he also did construction
work near Pearl Harbor.
He left Hawaii on December 5, 1941, two days before the Japanese
bombing there forced the United States into World War II, and began
working at Lockheed Aircraft near Los Angeles. Back home with his
mother on Pepper Street, he regularly saw Rachel, who was still attending UCLA.6
Robinson waited for his draft notice. He was no different from
millions of other Americans who wanted to avenge the Japanese
bombing on Pearl Harbor.7 “Jack fully shared the outrage that most of America felt about the attack,” Rachel remembered. “At that time he
was a patriotic man and felt that he, as much as any American, owed it to his country to fight for freedom.”8
Other black Americans felt differently. Bayard Rustin, who would
become the main strategist of the modern civil rights movement, spent the war years in jail after informing his draft board that both conscrip-tion and war were inconsistent with the nonviolent teachings of Jesus.
As a Christian pacifist, Rustin refused to submit to t
he draft, let alone to fight and kill anyone. Unlike the Quaker Rustin, Robinson did not take his cue from the nonviolence of Jesus. Love your enemies, turn
the other cheek, put away your sword—this was not the type of coun-
sel that Robinson turned to when considering his duty in the face of threats posed by Japan and Nazi Germany. He clung instead to his
spiritual belief in human freedom and the need, if necessary, to fight to preserve it.
But Robinson was just like Rustin in another sense: Both were
deeply troubled by a government that asked African Americans to fight for freedom abroad while denying them the same at home. The United
States entered World War II partly to end racism in Europe, but while Americans fought against Germany and Japan, the country paid little
attention to the racism on its home front, where blacks faced discrimination in all areas of life, including the military. African American leaders openly criticized this hypocrisy and said that if blacks were going to put their lives on the line for their country, the country should treat them as it would any other citizen—with equal justice under law.
“you are a cHIld of God”
41
The Pittsburgh Courier, the influential black newspaper, launched the “Double V” campaign that called for victory in the war but also
a victory against racial discrimination in the United States.9 Editors at the main publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The Crisis, weighed in, too. “Be it said once more that black Americans are loyal Americans,” the editors wrote, “but let there be no mistake about the loyalty, it is loyalty to the democratic ideas as enunciated by America. . . . If all the people are called to gird and sacrifice for freedom, and the armies to march for freedom, then it must be for freedom for everyone, everywhere, and
not merely for those under the Hitler heel.”10
The government paid little attention. The army and navy enlisted
blacks, but blacks were given little chance for promotion. German
prisoners of war were allowed to drink from the same water fountains as white US soldiers; black soldiers were relegated to segregated water fountains. Black newspapers reported that the Red Cross would not
accept blood from black soldiers.
Black soldiers were also sometimes shot to death by military police
officers or by local police officers in towns where the soldiers were stationed. When a white police officer struck a black soldier with a nightstick in Alexandria, Louisiana, in January 1942, a riot ensued and twelve black soldiers were shot.11 A sheriff in Centerville, Mississippi, ended a dispute between a black soldier and a white military police
officer by shooting and killing the soldier.12
Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, said the discrimi-
nation and violence against blacks sent a destructive lesson to the country’s white children, who were taught that the country was fighting
a war for democracy. America, White said, “could not play the Star-
Spangled Banner without using the black and white keys.”13
In mid-March, Herman Hill, a correspondent for the Pittsburgh
Courier, asked the Chicago White Sox, who spent spring training in Pasadena, if they would give a tryout to Robinson and a Negro
league pitcher, Nate Moreland. Robinson impressed White Sox man-
ager Jimmy Dykes. “I would welcome Negro players on the Sox,”
he said, “and so would all the other managers in the major leagues.”
Dykes, however, also said that baseball had an “unwritten law” that
prohibited blacks. In a subsequent article, Hill wrote that Dykes had refused to pose for photographs with Robinson and Moreland and
that “several White Sox players hovered around menacingly with bats
in their hands.”14
42
JACKIE ROBINSON
Robinson was drafted into the US Army on March 23, 1942, and
sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, where he distinguished himself on the firing range. He was introduced to heavyweight champion Joe Louis. After
Robinson told Louis that no black had ever been admitted to Offi-
cer Candidate School at Fort Riley, Louis interceded with the War
Department, and Robinson and several other African Americans were
commissioned second lieutenants. Robinson became a platoon leader
and the unit’s morale officer. He used his position as morale officer to confront segregation on the base. At one point he engaged in a shouting match over the phone with a white major over why blacks were not allowed access to the post exchange (PX).15
When Robinson showed up to play on the camp baseball team, he
was told that he would have to play on the black team. Pete Reiser, who would later be Robinson’s teammate on the Brooklyn Dodgers, was on
the field with the white ballplayers and remembered seeing Robinson
being turned away. “This was the first time I saw Jackie Robinson,”
Reiser said. “I can still see him slowly walking away.”16
He was asked to play on the Fort Riley football team. But Robin-
son was told before a game against the University of Missouri that he had been given a two-week leave to go home, even though he had not
requested one. When Robinson returned, he learned that the Univer-
sity of Missouri would not play the Fort Riley team if it had a black player. Robinson, furious at the army’s duplicity, quit the team.17 His commanding officer told Lieutenant Robinson he could be ordered
to play. Robinson responded that he could be ordered to play, but he could not be ordered to play well.18
Robinson, as it turned out, did not play because of an ankle injury
first suffered while playing football for Pasadena Junior College. His ankle developed a bone chip, which caused the joint to occasionally
lock up. It was aggravated by sustained and vigorous physical activity, and required frequent visits to the hospital during his two and a half years in the army.19
In early 1944, Robinson, now a cavalry officer, was transferred to Camp Hood, forty miles southwest of Waco, Texas, where he was assigned to a segregated tank unit, the 761st Tank Battalion. There may have been no other military bases more segregated and surrounded by towns more hostile to black soldiers than Camp Hood.20 Black soldiers lived in the least desirable section of the camp and faced Jim Crow conditions.
If they went off base, they found Jim Crow customs and laws rigidly
“you are a cHIld of God”
43
enforced by local police, who used whatever means they thought nec-
essary. “Segregation there was so complete,” one black officer said, “I even saw outhouses marked ‘White,’ ‘Colored,’ and ‘Mexican’; this was on federal property.”21
Robinson’s rank did not spare him the indiginities of racial dis-
crimination. Neither did regulations that banned segregated seating on military buses. On July 6, 1944, a month after the D-day invasion in France, Robinson was returning from the military hospital when a bus driver ordered him to the back of the bus. Robinson, who knew about
the federal policy ending segregation, did not move. An argument with the driver followed. Things escalated when the bus stopped at its next stop. The military police (MP) escorted Robinson to the police station for further investigation.
When Robinson and the MPs approached the station to meet with
the camp’s assistant provost marshal, a white MP, hearing about the
confrontation, inquired whether they had “the nigger lieutenant” with them. Robinson exploded with rage, threatening to “break in two” anyone who referred to him with that word. Inside the station, the proud Robinson reportedly interrupted when the assistant provost marshal
discussed the issue with witnesses without seeking comment
from him.
Robinson was accused of showing disrespect toward a superior officer and failing to obey a superior officer’s command.22
Robinson believed he had done nothing wrong, given the regula-
tions that allowed him to sit where he wanted on the bus. Secondly, he was an officer and felt he deserved to be treated as one.
Robinson was arrested and then court-martialed for insubordina-
tion. If found guilty, he would be sent to a military prison. It meant little that Robinson had army regulations on his side. To the white bus driver, the white military policemen, the assistant provost marshal, and the army, Robinson was just another uppity black man.
Robinson and others contacted the NAACP, and the Pittsburgh
Courier and other black newspapers published editorials and articles on his behalf. This might have prevented Robinson, a well-known athlete, from being found guilty, but it did not save him from going on trial and sitting in a courtroom with shackles on his hands and legs.23
And yet, as he faced trial and sat in the courtroom, he remained
confident that things would work out because of the deep faith in God that his mother had instilled in him. God would take care of him,
Mallie had told him since he was a boy. Rachel remembered that her
mother-in-law’s faith had left a deep impression on Jackie. According
44
JACKIE ROBINSON
to Rachel, Mallie told her son, “You are a child of God, made in God’s image. Because God is there, nothing can go wrong with you. You can
allow yourself to take risks because you just know that the Lord will not allow you to sink so far that you can’t swim.”
That spiritual lesson mattered to Robinson during his court-martial.
As Rachel recalled, “An ordeal like the court-martial was a sign to Jack that God was testing him. And Jack just knew he would respond well,
he would come through, because he was a child of God. His faith in
God was not very articulate, but it was real, and it did not allow for much doubt.”
The white witnesses who testified against him appeared incredulous
that Robinson would be offended by being called a “nigger.” In his
Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography Page 6
