Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography
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League. Brooklyn won the pennant five more times and finished sec-
ond in the league three times in Robinson’s ten years with the team.
The Sporting News, which had long campaigned against blacks in baseball, named Robinson its rookie of the year.
Robinson’s triumph that season did not belong just to Brooklyn;
it belonged to all blacks and anyone else who believed in racial equality. “He had revolutionized the image of black Americans in the eyes of many whites. Starting as a token, he had utterly complicated their sense of the nature of black people, how they thought and felt, their dignity and courage in the face of adversity,” Arnold Rampersad said.
“No black American man had ever shone so brightly for so long as the epitome not only of stoic endurance but also of intelligence, bravery, physical power, and grit. Because baseball was lodged so deeply in the average white man’s psyche, Robinson’s protracted victory had left an intimate mark there.”40
The experience exacted a terrible toll on Robinson. Yet, as Dan Bur-
ley wrote in the Amsterdam News, the ballplayer had not just survived but succeeded. “All season long the first Negro to play in modern big league baseball had endured the insults, name-calling, hate-filled looks of opposing players and had suffered in martyred silence,” Burley said.
“They had hit him deliberately, as some would have it, with pitched
balls; had tried to spike him, to make him lose his nerve and will and thus be automatically thumbed out of the big show. But they failed.”41
There would be no break in the hostilities during the World Series
against the New York Yankees, who directed what Robinson called the
worst invective he heard all season from the relative anonymity of their dugout. “They haven’t got the guts to come out in the open and call
me names,” Robinson told Burley. “They are dirty cowards who hide
in the darkness of their dugout and make their low, nasty remarks.”42
The Yankees defeated the Dodgers in a seven-game series that ended
on October 6.
Once the season ended, Robinson could not retreat into a private
world, as most other ballplayers could. He could take a temporary
break from being Jackie Robinson the ballplayer, but he could not take a break from being Jackie Robinson, the inspiration for millions of
blacks who saw in him the chance for a better life.
The day after the series ended, Robinson received a letter from the
Rev. John Curran, priest of the St. Thomas Rectory, one of eight Catholic parishes in Harlem, who told the ballplayer that black America had long waited for someone to integrate baseball. Whoever did so would
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require uncommon courage, Curran said. “Thank God you have what
it took and takes,” he wrote. “You must know by now, tho only feebly, what a tremendous boon you have been to our underprivileged youth.”
Curran recognized that Robinson represented something far big-
ger than himself. “You know all too well the difficulties besetting the way of life of the Negro, and we are all so extremely proud of you and your accomplishments in the face of almost insurmountable odds,” he
wrote. “God spare you many years to your wife and family. May you
continue further to inspire our youth to bigger and greater things.”43
Ministers from different faiths used their sermons to reinforce the
faith of those who believed in racial equality and to convince others that integration was not to be feared and that racial equality was in the best interests of the country and all those who believe in religious and democratic principles.
In late February, the Robinsons received word that their friend Karl Downs was dead. On February 26, he underwent an emergency operation by a white doctor at segregated Brackenridge Hospital in Austin.
“Complications set in,” Robinson later recalled. “Rather than returning his black patient to the operating room or to a recovery room to be closely watched, the doctor in charge let him go to a segregated ward where he died.” Robinson said that Downs would have lived if he had
either been a white patient in Texas or received care in Brooklyn. Robinson believed that Downs had died “of racism.”
If Downs had lived, Robinson said, he would have ranked with
some of the great figures of the civil rights movement, including Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and Martin Luther King Jr. “He was able
to communicate with people of all colors because he was endowed
with the ability to inspire confidence,” Robinson said. “It was hard to believe that God had taken the life of a man with such a promising future.”44 Robinson’s own future on the baseball diamond was about
to take a different turn.
When he had first met with Rickey in August 1945, he promised he
would respond to his detractors by turning the other cheek. He lived up to that promise. “In observing that trust,” Rickey said admiringly,
“he has had an almost Christ-like taste of turning the other cheek.”45
By 1949, Robinson had more than earned the right to be himself.
With Rickey’s permission, he now refused to back down from umpires,
players, sportswriters, and anyone else who insisted that he be deferen-tial or compliant. Robinson was at last his mother’s son, reflecting the fiercely strong woman who straightened her back in Georgia, believing
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that “God wants human beings to work and speak for the freedom and
equality which is rightfully theirs, even if they must suffer because they do this.”46
In doing so, Robinson disappointed and angered many of those who
accepted him in the big leagues as long as he was compliant, as long as he was seen and not heard. “I learned that as long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people who had sympathy for the underdog,” he said. “But the minute I began to
sound off—I became a swell head, wise guy, an ‘uppity nigger.’ ”47
During the 1949 season, as Robinson became more assertive on the
field, he was asked to rebut the views of another assertive black man, Paul Robeson, who had been one of the great college football players of his day and then earned his law degree at Columbia University before succeeding as a singer, actor, lecturer, and activist. Robeson rejected racial discrimination by becoming a Communist, which made him an enemy
of conservative America, particularly during the Red Scare after World War II, when tensions increased between the United States and the Soviet Union. Robeson outraged his critics when he said that blacks would not fight for the United States during a war with the Soviet Union.48
The House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed
Robinson, who characterized Robeson’s remarks as “silly” and criti-
cized communism as godless and antithetical to his own views on politics and religion. “I am a religious man,” he said. “Therefore I cherish America where I am free to worship as I please, a privilege which some countries do not give.”49
Robinson did not denounce Robeson but did present a contrary
point of view from a prominent black man. This pleased the com-
mittee, communist-hating conservatives, including Rickey, and most
Americans. Robinson, however, would later express regret over his
appearance before the HUAC committee. He came to believe he had
a lot in common with Robeson, once expressing his sadness that in
America, “anything progressive is called Communism.”50
In January 1950, Jackie and Rachel celebrated the birth of their
daughter, Sharon. David, their third
and final child, was born a little more than two years later. Several weeks after Sharon’s birth, Jackie left his family for spring training.
During Robinson’s fourth season, he began discussing his faith more
openly in interviews. He told the Brooklyn Eagle about his dependence on faith and his nightly routine of praying before going to bed. “It’s the best way to get close to God,” he said, and then added with a smile,
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“and a hard-hit ground ball.”51 Faith provided Robinson comfort
against the ongoing pressures in life and baseball. But Sunday games often prevented him from going to church. He wondered if maybe a
chapel could be built inside Ebbets Field, he said, “where the fellows of all religions could go and worship a little while.”52
When the 1950 season ended, so did Branch Rickey’s relationship
with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He sold his share of the team for a little more than one million dollars. Rickey was then hired as vice president and general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he commit-
ted the organization to signing black prospects. He also signed Puerto Rican outfielder Roberto Clemente, who would become the first Latin
American in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But he could not duplicate
the success he had in Brooklyn. When his contract ended, he was not
rehired. Rickey returned to the front office of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1962 and served with the organization during the team’s World Series championship in 1964.
Rickey’s departure from Brooklyn stung Robinson, who had
depended on Rickey for so much and reposed his faith so completely
in the Brooklyn executive. The relationship between the two men did
not end but, according to Rampersad, “seemed to open the way to a
deeper understanding.” Branch B. Rickey later said that his grandfather thought of Robinson as a second son. “God brought these two men
together at this time in our history. If they had not met, I am sure that baseball would have become integrated eventually,” Branch B. Rickey
said, “but never on the same plane, never in the same way, because of the synergy that existed between them.”53
Robinson, like Rickey, began publicly demonstrating his faith.
He was featured in a national advertisement campaign, “Religion in
American Life.” In a photo with Rachel and Jackie Jr., Robinson was
quoted as saying, “Being without the help of God is something we
cannot imagine.”54
In 1951, Robinson contributed his name to the Committee to Pro-
claim Liberty, which included dozens of other prominent names, to
emphasize religion in the observance of the Fourth of July.55 A year later, Robinson recorded an essay for Edward R. Murrow’s syndicated
radio series, This I Believe, which he concluded by addressing his Christianity. “And, in the largest sense, I believe that what I did was done for me—that my faith in God sustained me in my fight. And that what was
done for me, must and will be done for others.”56
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Robinson became actively involved with other Christian causes.
He donated financially to build a parochial school on 141st Street in Harlem.57 He served on a committee, chaired by former First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt, to raise money to rebuild Concord Baptist Church
of Christ in Brooklyn, which had been destroyed by a fire.58 In 1956, Robinson appeared at a program for youths at a national conference for the Methodist Church in Minneapolis.59
Robinson had also long been active as a coach and counselor at the
YMCA on 135th Street. Juvenile membership doubled during Robin-
son’s association with the Harlem YMCA, where he served on the board of directors long after he retired from baseball.60 Robinson, however, preferred spending time with the boys at the YMCA, and whenever he
could he went to the neighborhoods near the Y. He also frequented
hospitals, sent signed baseballs to sick children, and answered mail from other children.61
During spring training in March 1954, Robinson received a letter
from a man in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who volunteered at an orphanage.
During the course of his volunteer work, the man had met Jimmy, a
black boy who kept to himself. When he asked Jimmy what was wrong,
the boy said, “I wish I was white.” Troubled by this answer, the man asked Robinson if he would send an encouraging word to the boy.
Robinson agreed, and in his letter to Jimmy he wrote that while it
was “understandable for a boy your age” to want to be something he
was not, he should be proud of being black in spite of the “problems before us.” Things were improving for blacks in America, Robinson
said, and for this to continue young black children like Jimmy had
to remain hopeful and keep their faith in God. “Just remember that
because of some handicaps we are better off,” he said. “Look in the
mirror at yourself and be proud of what God gave you. I, too, felt the pains you must feel, but I never have been ashamed of what God has
given me. Good luck to you!”62
Robinson became increasingly involved in the issue of civil rights.
In late 1953, he became chair of the Commission on Community
Organizations of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, an
organization that emphasized racial justice in the period preceding
what would become the civil rights movement.63 He also went on an
extended tour of towns and cities during the off-season, preaching self-respect and racial tolerance. Louis A. Radelet, the commission’s director, praised Robinson’s work on the tour in a letter to Rachel and also acknowledged that it took him away from his family. “I know that you
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had confidence in him and in the fact that the sacrifice you were making was worthwhile,” Radelet wrote on February 16, 1954. “I believe
that you may feel sure, now that the trip has been concluded, that the benefits were great.”64
Three months later, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that the doctrine of “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, affirming the hopes of blacks and liberal whites in a way that few things had since Rickey had signed Robinson nearly
a decade earlier. Robinson was responsible in part for what was hap-
pening in America, according to those who viewed racial equality with revulsion and fear.
In 1956, Louisiana passed a law prohibiting integration in sports,
and Bill Keefe, sports editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, blamed Robinson for the law because the ballplayer had stirred up racial ani-mosity. “The NAACP can thank Jackie Robinson, persistently insolent
and antegonistic [ sic] trouble-making Negro of the Brooklyn Dodgers,” Keefe said. “He has been the most harmful influence the Negro
Race has suffered in the attempt to give the Negro nationwide recognition in the sports field.”65
A white Louisiana priest reminded Keefe that the Irish had long
faced discrimination in the United States. Keefe responded to the
priest by writing that God knew what he was doing when he created
blacks as inferior beings—“the thickness of his skull, his ape-like arms and characteristic odor.”66 Robinson also responded to Keefe, saying that he was not a troublemaker but rather an “American who happens
to be an American Negro, one who is proud of that heritage.” He asked Keefe if the sportswriter would use the word “insolent” to describe
Ted Williams, a white ballplayer who was more demonstrative with
his emotions. “Am I insolent, o
r am I insolent for a Negro (who has
courage enough to speak against injustices such as yours and people
like you)?”67
During the 1956 season, Robinson knew his career was ending: his
statistics were down, his playing time was limited, and his body was worn out. Robinson was tired, physically and emotionally, and he
was tired of baseball. But while his career was winding down, Robin-
son was becoming more energized, and more captivated, by his work
in the civil rights movement.
Others recognized this in Robinson, and on December 8, 1956,
approximately five hundred invited guests gathered at the Roosevelt
Hotel in New York City to honor Robinson as he received the NAACP’s
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Spingarn Medal, an annual award “for the highest achievement of an
American Negro.” Robinson was grateful. “Today marks the high point
in my career,” he said. “To be honored in this way by the NAACP
means more than anything that has happened to me before. That is
because the NAACP, to me, represents everything that a man should
stand for: for human dignity, for brotherhood, for fair play.”68
Among the celebrity guests at the swanky luncheon were former
medal recipient Thurgood Marshall, television host Ed Sullivan, and
heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson. But, for Robinson, one
person stood tall above all others—his mother. “The love and devotion of my mother, who sacrificed all her life so that her children could have the things she missed; and the struggle she had trying to keep a poor family going, are things I can never forget,” he said. “Her faith in God and her constant advice that I, too, place that same faith in Him, has proven itself time and time again. I am humbly thankful that God gave me such a mother.”69
While the NAACP honor buoyed Robinson’s spirits, the end of his
baseball career still loomed large. Complicating matters was his contentious relationship with Brooklyn managers and the front office,
particularly Walter O’Malley, who had bought Rickey’s share of the
Dodgers. Robinson had never warmed up to the new owner, and
O’Malley had never warmed up to Robinson. Robinson later suggested