and then to accompany Robinson during spring training.75 He also
signed a second black player, pitcher Johnny Wright, so Robinson would not have to face history by himself. In a letter to Smith, Rickey asked him
“I Have kePt My ProMIse”
67
to watch over the ballplayers “because much harm could come if either of those boys were to do or say something or other out of turn.”76
Rickey recovered in time to go to Florida before spring training.
Months before, Rickey had found a Florida city for spring training that was relatively progressive on race relations. Daytona Beach was home to a black college, Bethune-Cookman, whose president, Mary McLeod
Bethune, had been an adviser to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The
city had a black middle class and a black political presence. It also had a baseball field in the city’s black section. Rickey had even flown to Daytona Beach to convince city officials that the Montreal Royals and Robinson would obey the city’s segregation laws.77
After arriving, however, Rickey learned that the city lacked the facilities to accommodate the hundreds of ballplayers who had been invited to try out for the organization. Rickey then moved his minor-league
teams forty miles southwest to Sanford, where Red Barber had grown
up. Barber recommended Sanford and Rickey trusted Barber. But San-
ford was more representative of the Deep South, where segregation
laws were enforced by strict and often violent means.78
Shortly after the press conference in Montreal, Robinson left on a
barnstorming tour of Venezuela with a team of Negro League all-stars.
When he returned from Venezuela, he went to New York City, where
Rachel, having graduated from the UCLA nursing program, was work-
ing at a hospital. Jackie visited Rickey in another hospital.79 After a few days in New York, Jackie and Rachel took a train across the country
to Pasadena. The long journey gave them long-needed time together.
The Robinson’s engagement had been stressful because they had been
apart so much. “But we remained steadfast despite temptations and the turmoil around us,” Rachel said.80
Jackie and Rachel were married on February 10 at the Independence
Church of Christ in Los Angeles. The Rev. Karl Downs came from
Austin, Texas, to officiate the ceremony. The church was packed with family and friends. After the reception, the newly married couple spent the night at the Clark Hotel.81 Once inside the hotel room, they could, if only temporarily, close the door on the rest of the world. “All my fears and doubts vanished,” Rachel remembered.82
5
“God Has Been Good to Us Today”
Integrating the Minors
Jackie and Rachel Robinson waited in a Los Angeles airport during the early evening of Thursday, February 28, 1946, to board a plane that
would take them first to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then to Daytona Beach, Florida, where he would begin his tryout with the Montreal
Royals. In a short time, the Robinsons, who had been married for less than three weeks, would leave behind their relatively comfortable world in Pasadena for an unpredictable and perhaps unforgiving one.
Several friends and family members, including Jackie’s mother, Mal-
lie, accompanied them to the airport to say good-bye. Mallie handed
Jackie and Rachel a shoe box.
“What’s this?” Jackie asked.
“It’s full of fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs,” Mallie said.
“Aw, mamma, you shouldn’t have brought this,” he protested.
“They serve food on the plane.”
“I just thought something might happen,” she responded, “and I
didn’t want you starving to death and getting to the baseball camp too weak to hit.”
Mallie’s experiences as a black woman in Georgia taught her the
importance of being self-sufficient.
“God bless the child who got’s his own,” she said.
Jackie and Rachel abhorred the stereotype of blacks that her food
represented—restricted from dining cars, carrying shoe boxes of food, and having picnics on trains. They were of a generation, or so they
69
70
JACKIE ROBINSON
believed, where blacks flew on planes with whites and ate in the same restaurants as whites.
Rachel had never been in the South, and given what she had heard
and read, had no interest in ever going. She wore a dyed, three-quarter ermine coat, which was a wedding gift from Jackie. She also wore a
matching black hat and carried a brown alligator-skin handbag that
he had bought her a few months earlier when he was playing baseball
in Venezuela. Rachel knew a fur coat was inappropriate for the warm
weather in the Deep South. It was “my certificate of respectability,”
she said. “I thought that when I wore it everyone would know that I
belonged on the plane, or wherever I happened to be.”1
This was wishful thinking. No fur coat could change racial attitudes or protect her from bigotry. There had been marginal progress in civil rights during the New Deal and World War II, but racial equality
remained an unfulfilled promise.
In the months after the end of the war, there was an escalation of
violence against black Americans. In most, perhaps all, cases, the blacks who were beaten, jailed, or murdered posed no real threat to the institution of Jim Crow. This was not the case with Jackie Robinson. He
was on his way to confront baseball’s color line in the Jim Crow South.
Never had so much been riding on an athlete, and no state was more
dangerous for blacks than Florida.2
A few months earlier, near Tallahassee, Jesse Payne, a black teenager, had been arrested and charged with attacking the five-year-old niece of a Florida sheriff. A white mob dragged Payne from the unguarded jail one night, shot him dead, and left his body on a highway.3
Robinson might not have heard of Jesse Payne but, as a black Ameri-
can, he was not naive to racial violence. As he and Rachel headed to Florida, he fully realized he was putting their lives in jeopardy. Rachel, too, knew how segregationists maintained their laws and traditions
through violence and, like Branch Rickey, she was worried how Jackie would respond. “I knew how quickly Jack’s temper could flare up in
the face of a racial insult,” she said. If that happened, she did not know if they might be “harmed, or killed” or if Rickey would end the tryout.4
As Jackie sat in the airplane, perhaps his thoughts returned to the
discussion he had had six months earlier with Rickey. He remembered
the promise he had made to Rickey. Robinson knew the time would
come when he would have to “turn the other cheek.”
Robinson was expected to be at spring training on March 1. He
believed he could make it to the training camp by leaving on February
“God Has Been Good to us today”
71
28. If he flew through the night, he could arrive at the Montreal spring training camp the next afternoon. He did not foresee the difficulties ahead. It took Jackie and Rachel almost two full days to get to Daytona Beach.
The Robinsons landed in New Orleans in the early hours of the
morning for what was supposed to be a four-hour layover. But, as they waited for their flight, they learned they had been bumped. When
Rachel went to use the bathroom, she saw signs for “White Women”
and “Colored Women.” Proud and indignant, she went into the
“white women’s” restroom. “I re-emerged my self-esteem momentarily
restored and joined Jack,” she said.5
When the Robin
sons tried to enter an airport restaurant, they were
told blacks could order food but they were not allowed to eat in the restaurant. They walked away without ordering anything. After a few
hours of waiting, they decided to find a hotel room and wait there until receiving word of their flight. A cab driver took them to a nearby hotel, but when he learned it was restricted to whites, he drove them to a
black hotel. The room had an awful smell. “I was almost nauseated. It was a dirty, dreadful place,” Rachel remembered.6
The exhausted Robinsons sat on the side of the bed and opened
the shoe box Mallie had given them. “As we quietly ate, I could feel humiliation and a sense of powerlessness overpowering me,” Rachel
said. “More importantly, I appreciated Mallie’s wisdom as never
before.”7 Twelve hours passed before the Robinsons boarded another
plane to Pensacola in the Florida panhandle. They were scheduled to
continue to Daytona Beach after refueling. A flight attendant asked
the Robinsons to exit the airplane. Once they were on the tarmac, they were told that the plane was headed into bad weather and needed additional fuel. To counter the weight of the fuel, three passengers had to be removed—the Robinsons and a Mexican.8 As the Robinsons listened to the implausible explanation, Jackie saw three white passengers boarding the plane.9 He could feel the rage building in his stomach.
But before he lost his temper, he remembered Rickey’s warning that he had to choke back his anger.10
The Robinsons decided they could not wait for another plane that
may or may not have a seat for them. They decided to take a Grey-
hound bus. When they boarded the bus, it was early in the morning.
They sat in comfortable seats near the front of the bus and went to
sleep, hoping they would sleep most of the way.11 When white passen-
gers boarded the bus at the next stop, the driver woke up the Robinsons
72
JACKIE ROBINSON
and, calling Jackie “boy,” ordered him to the back of the bus. Jackie, who had once been court-martialed for refusing to go to the back of a bus, obeyed the driver. “We had agreed that I had no right to lose my temper and jeopardize the chances of all the blacks who would follow me if I could break down the barriers,” he later said. “So we moved.”12
It took more than eight hours to cross the state from Pensacola to
Jacksonville, where they waited inside the segregated section of a bus station for another bus that would take them the rest of the way to
Daytona Beach.
The Robinsons arrived in Daytona Beach at 3:00 p.m. on March
2. The trip from Los Angeles had taken them more than forty hours.
Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe of the Courier were waiting for the Robinsons and greeted them with smiles. But Jackie was in no mood
for niceties.
“Well, I finally made it,” he snapped. “But I never want to take
another trip like this one again.”
Rowe drove the Robinsons to the home of Joe Harris, who was
known as the black mayor of Daytona Beach, and his wife, Duff, in the segregated part of Daytona Beach.13 Robinson said little until Rachel went to bed. He then expressed his fury, repeating indignity after
indignity he had endured, from being bumped from planes to being
turned away at the airport restaurant to having to sit in the back of a bus—and being called a boy.
“This man had become a ‘boy,’ ” Rowe remembered.14
Robinson told Smith and Rowe he wanted to return to California or
maybe to the Negro leagues. Robinson did not like black baseball, but at least he was treated the same as everyone else. Smith and Rowe told him he could not quit, not for himself and not for all the black people who depended on him. They said he had to endure certain indignities so other blacks could have opportunities that were now closed to them. “We talked all night. That calmed him down,” Rowe said. “We tried to tell him what the whole thing meant, that it was something he had to do.”15
On Monday, March 4, Rowe drove Robinson and Johnny Wright,
the other black prospect signed by Rickey, to Sanford, about forty miles southwest of Daytona Beach. Practice had already started when Robinson and Wright arrived. When they walked toward the field, dozens
of ballplayers stopped what they were doing and stared at the two black prospects.16
When practice was over, Robinson met Hopper, the Mississippian
who worked as a cotton broker in the off-season. If Hopper was still
“God Has Been Good to us today”
73
unhappy about having to manage Robinson, he hid it from the ball-
player, shaking Robinson’s hand.17
Rickey did not have the promises in Sanford that he had in Day-
tona Beach. Sanford was in rural Florida and had a Ku Klux Klan
presence. After the second day of practice, a white man approached
the house in the segregated neighborhood where Robinson was stay-
ing. Smith and Rowe were sitting on the front porch, and Robinson
was inside the house. The stranger told the sportswriters that he had come from a meeting of dozens of townspeople. If Robinson did not
leave town by sundown, the man said, the ballplayer’s life would be
in danger. Smith called Rickey, who told them to return to Day-
tona Beach with Robinson and Wright. Once safely back in Daytona
Beach, Jackie was reunited at the Harrises with Rachel, who had not
gone to Sanford.18
The Sanford experience left Robinson shaken, and again he talked
about quitting. Those doubts only increased during the first weeks of spring training.19 Robinson had rarely had reason to doubt his athletic ability. From the time he was a boy, he was usually the best athlete in any sport he played. Not this time. He was a twenty-seven-year-old rookie who had played relatively little organized baseball. He had played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs the year before, but he was aware of criticism that his arm was too weak for the position.
Robinson tried to impress Hopper and the Montreal coaches by
throwing the ball as hard as he could on every throw at Kelly Field in Daytona Beach. His arm began hurting, and by the time he returned
to the Harrises’ he could barely lift it. He could not throw the ball the next day at practice. Rachel massaged his arm after every practice, but there was little one could do for a sore arm except hope that it healed on its own.20
Rickey moved Robinson to first base, where a strong throwing arm
was not necessary. But a change in his position brought its own frustrations. He worked hard to adapt to first base, a position he had never played, but he had trouble making the adjustment, dropping easy
throws, bobbling grounders, and struggling with his footwork. Rickey and his coaches, including Montreal’s reluctant manager Clay Hopper, provided Robinson with unceasing encouragement.21 When Robinson’s arm felt better, he was moved to second base, where he appeared far more comfortable.
Rickey’s confidence in Hopper was temporarily shaken during one
practice when Robinson made a terrific play on a ground ball.
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JACKIE ROBINSON
“Have you ever seen a human being make a play like that?” Rickey
said to Hopper.
Hopper replied, “Mr. Rickey, do you really think a nigra is a human
being?”22
Rickey ignored him but quietly wondered if Hopper could rise to
the challenge of managing Robinson.23 Robinson later said that he was treated fairly by Hopper.24
Rickey also worried about Robinson’s emotional state.
He recognized that Robinson’s speed was its own offensive weapon.
He worked with him on his baserunning, ye
lling encouragement: “Be
more daring! Take a bigger lead.”25
Rickey, though, knew that before Robinson could steal a base, he
had to get on base, and Robinson continued to struggle with his hit-
ting. The pressure made things worse. He knew that with every swing
his shoulders were carrying the hopes of millions of blacks. He con-
stantly heard the cheers of black fans. “I could hear them shouting in the stands,” Robinson told Wendell Smith, “and I wanted to produce
so much that I was tense and over-anxious. I found myself swinging
hard enough to break my back. I started swinging at bad balls and
doing a lot of things I wouldn’t have done under ordinary circum-
stances. I wanted to get a hit for them because they were pulling so hard for me.”26
Robinson felt his world closing in. He remembered the goldfish bowl
in Rickey’s office. He did not seek out friendship among the Montreal players—and none sought him out. He spent most of his daytime with
Smith, Rowe, and Wright. But he spent every minute of every evening
with Rachel. The Harrises gave them a room but not much else. The
Robinsons ate most meals in nearby black diners. They tried to escape by going to the movies, but there was only one black theater and it
showed only one movie. “Night after night we would go to the same
old Negro theater, seeing the same old movies over and over,” Rachel said. “And day after day I would go out to the ballpark.”27
In the quiet of their room, Jackie poured out his pain and frustra-
tion. This put pressure on the marriage; but instead of straining the marriage, it strengthened it. The two of them became one. Jackie began to refer to himself not as “I” but as “we.” As Rachel explained later,
“We began to see ourselves in terms of a social and historical problem, to know that the issue wasn’t simply about baseball but life and death, freedom and bondage, for an awful lot of people.”28 The newly married couple shared everything, or just about everything. Rachel learned
“God Has Been Good to us today”
75
she was pregnant but decided not to tell Jackie just yet. She felt he was under enough pressure.29
Robinson continued to say his prayers before he went to sleep. Oth-
Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography Page 10
