Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography

by Long, Michael G.

  cause of civil rights.

  In early 1961, Robinson praised Attorney General Robert Ken-

  nedy for delivering a major civil rights speech in which he pledged

  that when confronted with civil rights violations, the Kennedy

  administration would act swiftly. In his letter, Robinson confessed

  that he had had “grave doubts about your sincerity,” but that the

  speech had changed his perspective. “I find it a pleasure to be proven wrong,” he wrote.35

  At the beginning of 1962, Robinson began writing a regular col-

  umn for the New York Amsterdam News, the oldest black newspaper in the United States.36 New York Post editor James Wechsler had fired Robinson just before the 1960 presidential election because he believed that Robinson’s political partisanship had clouded his ability to be an accurate and fair columnist.

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  If Robinson was a bit cranky as 1962 began, he soon became

  exhilarated when he learned that the Baseball Writers Association of America had elected him on the first ballot to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Robinson had earlier stated that he would

  never dare “crawl” to the hall, especially if he had to keep his mouth shut to win over writers who had long treated him unfairly, but with the resounding election he found himself relieved and grateful.37

  Reflecting on the award, which he considered to be the greatest he

  had ever received, Robinson said, “I just want to say that if this [election] can happen to a guy whose parents were virtual slaves, a guy from a broken home, a guy whose mother worked as a domestic from sunup to sun-down for a number of years; if this can happen to someone

  who, in his early years, was a delinquent and who learned that he had to change his life—then it can happen to you kids out there who think that life is against you.”38

  And to a news reporter in his living room, Robinson punctuated

  his reflections with a sense of gratitude. “And now to end up like this,”

  he said. “You have to thank God for having a mother like I have who

  taught me right from wrong and for guiding me to my wife.”39

  Just before he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Robin-

  son found himself embroiled in a controversy between Jews and black

  nationalists in Harlem.

  During the summer of 1962, Robinson defended the right of Frank

  Schiffman, the Jewish owner of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, to lease a neighborhood property to white businessman Sol Singer for the purpose of opening a low-cost steakhouse.

  Some local blacks, fearing that the proposed business would under-

  mine the success of a more expensive black-owned restaurant in the

  same general area, had begun to picket the Apollo Theater with signs that described Schiffman as Shylock from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Organized by Lewis H. Michaux, a black nationalist and owner of the famous National Memorial African Bookstore in Harlem, and

  supported by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, the demonstrators

  also did not hesitate to use anti-Semitic epithets when chanting outside the Apollo. One of their sayings was “Black man must stay; Jew

  must go.”40

  Robinson grew incensed when he noticed that Harlem leaders

  remained largely silent in the face of these anti-Semitic protests, and he expressed his frustration in his column. “Here we are, a group as persecuted as anyone in the world,” he observed. “Yet, we stand passively or

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  turn our heads in the other direction when a handful of Negroes mouth the kind of thing which Hitler popularized in Nazi Germany.”41

  Robinson’s work with the NAACP had put him in close touch

  with a number of progressive Jewish leaders active in the NAACP, and he often spoke at Jewish events across the nation. It was his way of returning some of the support that rabbis and other Jewish leaders had offered him so courageously during his first years with the Dodgers.

  “When I think of the Jewish rabbis, it brings my mind to how

  deeply I have been impressed by the wonderful unity and teamwork

  of the Jewish people,” Robinson stated. “Often, while making appear-

  ances for benefits or rallies in which the Jewish people were interested, I would look about me and see the positive evidence of this unity. I would say to myself, ‘Gee, if the Negro people ever grew into this kind of togetherness, they’ll have half the problem licked.’ ”42

  But Robinson’s defense of Schiffman earned scathing attacks from

  black militants sympathetic with the demonstrators. Some launched

  a “hate Jackie Robinson campaign” and turned their pickets on the

  Chock full o’Nuts coffee shop in Harlem.43

  Prominent civil rights leaders, like Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and

  A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, sup-

  ported Robinson. So too did several black Christian ministers, including the Rev. George Lawrence, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in

  Brooklyn, and the Rev. Thomas Kilgore of Manhattan. Lawrence and

  Kilgore used their pulpits to ask their congregation members to pur-

  chase two cans of Chock full o’Nuts coffee every time they needed just one pound.

  After the controversy faded, Robinson again turned his attention

  to President Kennedy, this time faulting him for not intervening in

  the brewing civil rights crisis in Albany, Georgia, where Martin Luther King Jr. had recently been arrested. Robinson invoked God in his

  defense of King, suggesting that the lack of action by Kennedy and

  the rest of the country was virtually godless in character. “It is time for America to take a long look inward,” Robinson said. “What has

  happened in our country—a country which emphasizes that the main

  difference between us and the Russians is that we are a God-fearing

  people? What has happened when men are beaten, jailed and intimi-

  dated because they turn to God for an answer, because they fall upon their knees to pray?”44

  Robinson directed his frustration toward Kennedy shortly after

  approximately one hundred black Christian ministers had marched on

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  the White House in support of King. The ministers had demanded a

  meeting with the president, but their efforts resulted only in a brief session with an assistant attorney general. Robinson was deeply offended, and he characterized Kennedy’s refusal to meet with the ministers as

  “an insult to the national Negro community.”45

  Perhaps with his memories of the Rev. Karl Downs in mind, Robin-

  son also took the occasion to highlight the important roles of the black Christian minister: “The President seems to be unaware that there is no one closer to the pulse of the Negro than his ministers. From the cradle to the grave, the minister remains in intimate contact with his people. He christens or baptizes our babies, counsels, praises and chas-tises our youth, conducts our marriages, seeks to help prevent divorces and administers the funerals of our loved ones. In crisis, sickness and in triumph, the minister is a power, an influence and a leader.”46

  Robinson and King remained in close contact.

  King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Confer-

  ence, had hosted a tribute dinner for Robinson at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan to honor him for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was a delightful occasion for Robinson, and although King

  could not attend because of urgent demands in Albany, Georgia, he

  asked his assistant, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, to read his tribute

  speech at the stunning event attended by Branch Ric
key, Roy Wilkins, Mallie Robinson, Rachel, and hundreds of others important in Jackie’s life.

  King also used the speech as text for a widely read column in which

  he lauded Robinson’s entire career while also tending to the recent

  flare-up with black nationalists. “It needs to be noted that Jackie Robinson speaks not only of the evils which misguided whites heap upon

  the Negro,” King wrote. “He speaks also to the Negro about the evils he heaps upon himself or visits upon others.”47

  The civil rights leader observed that Robinson had “always exercised the honesty, the courage and the conviction to speak out against the forces which would seek to solve the ravaging fear of the black man’s dilemma by rubbing upon it the vicious virus of anti-Semitism and

  religious and racial hatred.”48

  To King, Robinson was a truth-teller, above all else. “Thank God

  for a Jackie Robinson who can stand his ground and say: ‘I have spoken what I believe to be the truth and I cannot retract the truth,’ ” King wrote, adding that Robinson’s passion for truth was a product of his faith. “But here is a man who recognizes that God offers to every mind

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  the choice between truth and repose. Jackie Robinson has chosen truth.

  The Truth, within himself.”49

  While acknowledging that Robinson’s truth-telling had caused a

  number of critics to question his right to speak out in such a forthright manner—after all, he was a baseball player, not a politician or the head of a civil rights organization—King insisted that Robinson had earned the right because “he underwent trauma and the humiliation and the

  loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome

  byways toward the high road of freedom.” It was Robinson’s shoulders on which all the present activists stood. “He was a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the freedom rides,” King declared.50

  King also invited Robinson to travel to Albany at the end of the

  summer to help rally a group of tired and beaten civil rights workers.

  After delivering an inspiring speech before Albany activists in mid-

  August, Robinson then traveled to the small community of Sasser,

  Georgia, where he stood before the ashes of Mount Olivet Baptist

  Church, one of three black churches burned because of its efforts to register African American voters. Robinson could not help but be visibly moved by the sight of the church’s minister and his flock. “I watched a strong man, the Rev. F. S. Swaggott, the pastor of the church, weeping as though his heart would break as he looked over the debris and the wreckage of the institution into which he and his people poured their devotion and their dreams,” Robinson later recalled.51

  It was a deeply sad moment, and Robinson, whose heart could be

  as soft as his resolve was steely, agreed with Walker that something needed to be done to show the world that the fires could not stop the march toward freedom. Robinson suggested the creation of a fund to

  rebuild the churches, and he pledged $100 on the spot. Later that day, he agreed to King’s suggestion that he chair a national committee that would raise all the funds required to rebuild the churches.

  But Robinson had to slow down when he faced serious complica-

  tions of surgery to repair torn cartilage in his knee in early 1963. The unexpected complications, from Robinson’s ongoing struggles with

  diabetes, left him hallucinating and, worse, suspended in that frightening area between life and death.

  “All I can say is that I have been a very sick man,” Robinson stated at the time.52

  He took the sobering occasion to reflect on his life through the lens of his faith: “My experience has impressed me tremendously with the

  realization of how wonderful God has been to me.”53

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  Robinson’s feelings of gratitude were heightened by his encounters

  with ailing children who had learned of his presence in the hospital and had requested that he visit their rooms. He obliged, of course, and he came away with a deepening faith, as he explained in his column:

  If I ever start feeling blue, I am going to remember the sixth floor of this hospital where I saw so many young people suffering without

  complaining.

  But, most of all, I’ll remember a five-year-old who was so badly

  burned that I found it difficult to sit and talk with her. Not a complaint came from this child’s lips.

  It’s hard to describe one’s feelings when someone in this condi-

  tion looks down at a leg that is taped from hip to foot and asks,

  “What happened?”

  I do know that as I was wheeled off the floor and spoke with Doug

  Brown, who had requested that I stop in to visit him, I pledged to be grateful to God for all of his blessings.

  I have suffered but witnessing the suffering of an uncomplain-

  ing, pain-stricken five-year-old makes you feel the power of God’s

  blessings.54

  The lengthy hospital stay also forced Robinson to confront his own

  mortality in terms of his faith. As he stared at the possibility of death, Robinson resisted, saying that he was not quite ready to “steal home,”

  and when a friend asked if he was afraid of dying, he said, “My reply was that I was not afraid—but deeply concerned about the effect it

  would have on my wife and our young children if I were taken away at this time.”55

  With the welfare of his family foremost in his thoughts, Robinson

  turned yet again to the Christian virtue of hope. “I like to think that God has a lot of work left for me to do and wants to give me time to do it the best I possibly can,” he added.56

  A decade of life, with all its challenges and promises, still awaited him.

  8

  “Do You Know What God Did?”

  For King, against Malcolm

  Jackie Robinson’s brush with death did not quiet him. In some ways he seemed even fierier than before, and not long after he left the hospital, he stood up to one of the most powerful black ministers in the nation, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Abyssinian Baptist Church in

  Harlem. Embodying the black church’s traditional mixing of church

  and politics, Powell, a strikingly handsome man with a smooth baritone voice, also represented Harlem in the US House of Representatives.

  Always colorful, Powell courted controversy throughout his career,

  and in a mid-March 1963 rally in Harlem, he called on African Ameri-

  cans to boycott major civil rights organizations that they did not control. It was a clear reference, at the very least, to Jewish leadership on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

  Jews had played a significant role in the NAACP ever since its founding in 1908 as an organized attempt to counter the horrific practice of lynching and the fallout from a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, the home of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. Joel Spingarn, a

  retired professor from Columbia University, had been a founding mem-

  ber of the NAACP, even serving as chair of the board, and he recruited several leading Jewish men to join him on the newly created board.

  While Powell later denied that he had called for a boycott, he con-

  tinued to insist that African Americans should occupy the primary

  leadership positions in civil rights organizations.

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  That separatist message played well in Harlem, where Malcolm X,

  the Nation of Islam, and other black militants called for the separation of blacks and whites and even the creation of a separate state for blacks. But Robinson, a Christian integrationist, was not pleased, and he decided to pen an
open letter in his newspaper column.

  In the hard-hitting letter, Robinson defended the NAACP as the

  nation’s “greatest organization working in behalf of all those principles of freedom and human dignity for the black man in America.” He

  described Jewish leaders of the NAACP as having “done a dedicated

  job and organized more moral and financial support for this cause than any ten Negroes.” And he criticized Malcolm X and the Nation of

  Islam, arguing that “the answer for the Negro is to be found, not in segregation or separation, but by his insistence upon moving into his rightful place.”1

  Robinson’s sharply worded letter yielded a torrent of criticism from black militants and followers of Powell and Malcolm X.

  If the criticism stung, Robinson did not let on, but he did attend to a critic who had argued that African Americans should “stick together.”

  “I agree,” Robinson responded. “I have been pleading for Negro unity for years. But if ‘sticking together’ means you continue to blindly

  endorse a man simply because he is black—or green—or white—when

  you truly feel he has been wrong, you can have that kind of sticking together. One of the most precious assets a man has is his right to speak the truth as he sees it.”2

  In early May, more than one thousand African American children

  and teenagers joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s

  campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most dan-

  gerous places for blacks in the United States. Its nickname, Bombingham, was easily deserved.

  Marching from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and through city

  streets, many of the youths ended up in cramped jail cells. More than a few also suffered physical and emotional injuries because Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor, who had shown no

  patience for the young demonstrators, ordered police and firefighters to unleash German shepherds and turn high-pressure fire hoses on the demonstrators. Newspaper photographs and televised images of police

  brutality against children and youths peacefully demonstrating for their rights shocked the nation and the wider world.

  As impatient as ever, Robinson replied to the violence by sending an urgent telegram to President Kennedy, stating that “the pace at which