Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography
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our country is moving toward total equality for all peoples is miserably slow” and calling for the president to cut off federal aid to Alabama and declare martial law. “The revolution that is taking place in this country cannot be squelched by police dogs or high power hoses,” he added.3
Martin Luther King Jr. asked Robinson to visit Birmingham, and
Robinson announced at a May 7 news conference that he would
indeed head to Alabama. “I don’t like to be bitten by dogs, because
I’m a coward,” he stated. “I don’t like to go to jail either, because, as I say, I’m a coward. But we’ve got to show Martin Luther King that we
are behind him.”4
Three days later, not long after a bomb exploded at King’s
headquarters at the Gaston Motel, Robinson and heavyweight boxer
Floyd Patterson, his good friend, left for Birmingham, where he
delivered rousing addresses in two black churches full of cheering
crowds. If only for a short time, Robinson and Patterson offered the activists respite from the brutality they would suffer yet again. That night, in a courageous act that symbolized the movement’s unfailing
determination, Robinson and Patterson stayed at the bombed-out
Gaston Motel before heading back to New York the following morning.
President Kennedy responded to the Birmingham violence by put-
ting on alert federal troops near the city and by delivering a speech, nationally televised on June 11, in which he stated, at the urging of King and others, that racial segregation was a moral issue “as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.”5 Even more significant was the president’s pledge of sweeping civil rights legislation that would correct the wrongs that Robinson and other civil rights activists had been attacking.
Robinson was delighted. Although he had been a tough critic at
times, he could not help but admire the president’s commitment to
advancing civil rights through legislation. Robinson wired the president his support. “Thank you for emerging as the most forthright president we have ever had and for providing us with the inspired leadership that we so desperately needed,” he wrote. “I am more proud than ever of my American heritage.”6
Just hours after the president’s historic speech, Byron De La Beck-
with gunned down Medgar Evers, the top NAACP official in Missis-
sippi, in his driveway in Jackson. Robinson, who had gone to Jackson twice at Evers’s bidding, wired the president yet again, this time seeking federal protection for King as he attended Evers’s funeral. “Should harm come to Dr. King to add to the misery which decent Americans
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of both races experienced with the murder of Mr. Evers, the restraint of many people all over this nation might burst its bonds and bring about a brutal bloody holocaust the like of which this country has not seen,”
Robinson wrote.7
A few months later, supporters of Malcolm X and the Nation of
Islam threw eggs at King and the car he was riding in as he arrived
for a preaching engagement at Salem Methodist Church in Harlem.
A disgusted Robinson blamed the incident on Malcolm, though the
minister of the Nation of Islam unequivocally denied any involvement.
Robinson also loudly registered his disappointment with Malcolm’s
disavowal of nonviolence and his calls for the physical separation of blacks and whites. However, Robinson did acknowledge that Malcolm
had a right to disagree with King and conceded that he too had deep
misgivings about nonviolence. “Personally, I am not and don’t know
how I could ever be nonviolent,” Robinson observed. “If anyone
punches me or otherwise physically assaults me, you can bet your
bottom dollar that I will try to give him back as good as he sent.”8
Turning the other cheek—the nonviolent practice demanded by
Jesus—was not part of Robinson’s personal repertoire, despite the
restraint he practiced during his first years in baseball. If someone attacked him or his family, Robinson would not have thought twice
about using physical force in response. Unlike King, who embraced
nonviolence as a way of life, Robinson echoed Malcolm’s embrace of
a self-defensive posture open to the use of physical force. Nevertheless, Robinson sharply critiqued Malcolm’s opposition to nonviolence as
the main strategy for the civil rights movement, not because Robinson believed that the movement should follow Jesus’ nonviolence in any
and all circumstances but because he found King’s nonviolence to be
the most effective strategy for advancing civil rights.
In early July, Robinson traveled to Denver, Colorado, to accept the
Churchmanship Award at the Fourth General Synod of the United
Church of Christ (UCC), a largely white denomination long known
for its liberal theology and politics.
Given by the Christian Social Action Committee, the award
described Robinson as a “Christian layman fulfilling your ministry to the world” and honored him for his “Christian commitment of time,
energy, and skill in the struggle for social justice.”9
Members of the synod gave Robinson a standing ovation, and he
delivered a stirring speech that opened with a story about an African American boy whose family, like young Jackie’s, had moved into a
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white community that openly demonstrated a frigid attitude toward
blacks. When the young boy tried to attend Sunday school at a church across the street from his home, an usher denied him entrance, telling him that the church was for whites only.
“The little boy was terribly disappointed, so disappointed that he sat down on the church step and began to cry,” Robinson continued. But
then God came along and asked the little boy why he was crying. “I’m crying, because those mean, old people won’t let me in their church,”
the boy replied.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Robinson stated, “do you know what God
did? He sat right down at the little boy’s side and started to cry too.
And do you know why—because that was one church God had been
trying to get into for many, many years.”10
This was Jackie Robinson’s God, one who is faithfully present
to, and suffers with, the captive, the oppressed, the victims of racial prejudice.
Robinson used the story to prick racist churches. “I think we can honestly say that there are many churches in this nation where God cannot feel welcome because some of His children are not welcome,” he said.
“For years, as it has been pointed out often in the past, it has been a national shame that 11 a.m. was the most segregated hour in America.”11
But the primary emphasis of Robinson’s talk was that times were
changing and that “all over this nation today, the consciences of clergy-man and the heads of denominations have been stirred.”12
Leading the way, Robinson believed, was the United Church of
Christ and its public stance against racial injustice. Earlier in the week, the synod had adopted a bold resolution, easily the most liberal passed by any US Christian denomination up to this point, that described the racial crisis in the summer of 1963 as “a sign of God’s action in the history of the United States” and implored the church to join in God’s work by becoming “radically committed” to the struggle for racial justice in employment practices, housing, education, judicial processes, voting, and access to public accommodations and capital.13
Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 wa
s still two years away,
the prophetic resolution also called for the church to help African
Americans “register, vote, and run for office without fear of retaliation, either overt or subtle.”14
Even more striking, though, was the resolution’s sense of urgency,
its dramatic call for the church “to push for all that is due here and now without heeding those who counsel patience, moderation, and gratitude.”
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African Americans suffering from the brutalities of racial injustice should not have to wait for the heavens to open and Jesus Christ to appear.15
A man of impatient faith, Robinson could not have been more
pleased, and he devoted a column to praising the UCC for its
“forthright stance.” He described the trip to Denver as “one of the
finest experiences I’ve ever had,” and he expressed renewed hope that large groups of white Christians could come together, as groups, not just as individuals, to fight for racial justice here and now.16
Robinson observed that he had long been familiar with many
examples of individual white Christians and Jews acting heroically in the civil rights movement. “One thinks of a white minister who led
a Negro girl to school in Little Rock, the group of rabbis who went
to Albany, Georgia, to be jailed, the young Catholic priests who have marched in freedom demonstrations,” he stated. And while these individual actions were admirable, Robinson and others felt that they were also insufficient, especially in light of the resources and credibility that groups of believers could offer the civil rights movement. As Robinson put it, “Many of us in the civil rights movement were disturbed at the way large denominations and conferences acted either timidly or not at all on the question of civil rights.”17
For Robinson, the best model was the one offered by the UCC. “We
need more powerful movements and denominations to realize as the
United Church of Christ realizes that America has too long stopped
payment on the blank check . . . of justice and equality which is the rightful legacy of every American simply by virtue of his birth,.”18
A month later, Jackie and Rachel took their three children—Jackie
Jr., Sharon, and David—to the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom. “I have never been so proud to be a Negro,” Robinson stated when reflecting on that momentous occasion. “I have never been so
proud to be an American.”19
What made him so proud on that day in August was watching
masses of blacks and whites come together to demonstrate their full
support for the civil rights movement. “One had to be deeply moved as he stood, watching Negroes and whites, marching hand in hand, singing songs for freedom,” Robinson said. “What a beautiful picture we
marchers gave to the world.”20
His family’s presence made the day especially meaningful. March-
ing with his son David and explaining to him the meaning of the
movement, seeing Rachel marvel as King shared his dream, hearing
about Jackie Jr. singing and clapping, and experiencing the care others
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showed when Sharon fainted because of the heat—all this made the
day full of “personal thrills.”21
But however thrilled he was, Robinson also sounded an ominous
note about southern segregationists like Senators Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina, John Stennis of Mississippi, and Russell Long of
Louisiana, all of whom had made disparaging comments about the
march, and the possibility that they might block civil rights legislation.
Less than a month after King shared his dream at the march, four
young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson,
and Cynthia Wesley—were murdered when white racists dynamited
their home church, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,
during closing prayers at Sunday school.
The bomb shattered stained-glass windows, destroyed the church’s
basement, crushed nearby cars, and left dozens bloodied and dazed.
One stained-glass window, depicting Jesus with a group of children,
remained in its frame, but the bomb had blown out the face of Jesus. It was the twenty-first bombing in eight years in Birmingham. None were solved by the local police.
Angry men and women flocked to the church following the explo-
sion, and the Rev. John Cross, the church’s pastor, sobbed as he asked everyone to go home. “The Lord is our shepherd,” he shouted. “We
shall not want.”22
Robinson had a different reaction. After drawing attention to the
song “If I Had a Hammer,” Robinson wrote, “If I had been a par-
ent in Birmingham on a Sunday morning which was shattered by a
detonation more vicious than any ever released by Hitler in Nazi Germany—and if, in the ruins of that bombing, one of my children had
been found, crushed to death, I know what I would have done with
that hammer.”23
Robinson would not have loved his enemies. He would not have put
down the sword. He would not have followed the nonviolent Jesus to
the cross. “God bless Dr. Martin Luther King,” Robinson stated. “But, I’m afraid he would have lost me as a potential disciple of his credo of nonviolence.”24
Robinson also demanded immediate action from President Ken-
nedy in the wake of the bombing. “When these people start throwing
bombs in a church where kids are worshipping their God, it’s time for President Kennedy to draw the line.”25
In effect, Robinson hoped that Kennedy would declare martial law
and order federal troops to the city, and he warned of pending violence
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if the federal government failed to respond to the bombing. “But if you want to see a people inflamed, just let the goons and punks keep mess-ing around with our children,” he said. “There’s a line the most docile human beings draw—and this is it!”26
A little more than two months later, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated
President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
“A noble man is gone,” Robinson stated shortly after the assassi-
nation. He conceded that he had sharply criticized the president, but he also hastened to add his positive assessment that Kennedy “had
emerged as the chief executive who has done more for the civil rights cause than any other president.”27
With the violent year of 1963 behind him, Robinson began a three-
year term as president of the United Church Men, a division of the
National Council of Churches (NCC). The NCC, a broad coalition
of Protestant and Orthodox churches, leaned left on civil rights issues.
At the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, the NCC had
characterized segregation as a violation of love and telegrammed its support to Martin Luther King Jr. The NCC had also criticized President Eisenhower for remaining silent as racial violence exploded in the South. And like Robinson, the council had thrown its support behind
King’s subsequent campaigns, the student-led sit-ins, the March on
Washington, and various calls for civil rights legislation. The NCC was Robinson’s kind of organization, and he hoped he could steep it even more deeply in the civil rights movement.
Directly below Jet magazine’s announcement of Robinson’s election as president of the United Church Men was a brief report on the Nation of Islam’s rejection of white applicants. When asked about the rejection, the Nation of Islam’s leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, had stated, “There have been
hundreds who asked about joining.
But I told them . . . since Abraham, Moses and Jesus couldn’t teach
you, there’s nothing we can do either.” Whites were altogether hope-
less unless they experienced a new identity. “No prophet can reform
them,” Muhammad added. “They must have a rebirth; be grafted into
the black man.”28
The contrast between the integrationist Robinson and the separatist
Elijah Muhammad, each driven by his particular faith, could not have been clearer.
In early March, Rachel saw Jackie Jr. walking down one of the main
streets of Stamford. It had been a tough year for him. He was disap-
pointed to be back at Stamford High School, and his frustration was
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compounded by a lack of communication between him and his father.
Jackie and Rachel had sought to help him, as well as Sharon and David, by joining Jack and Jill, a social organization that brought together black families, and becoming active at North Stamford Congregational Church, but nothing seemed to reach Jackie Jr. as he withdrew from
his parents and others.
But when Rachel saw her son, he appeared positive and upbeat. He
was on his way to enlist in the army.
Rachel implored him to consider other options, but Jackie Jr.
enlisted on March 30. His father, according to Rachel, “accepted this momentous change largely in silence, which was not surprising, given what his relationship with his son had become.”29
In mid-April, Robinson turned his attention once again to inner-city violence when approximately seventy-five African American youths were involved in vandalism at a fruit-and-vegetable stand in Harlem. The
minor event exploded into what became known as the Fruit Riot when
the New York Police Department used brutal tactics against the vandals.
When he learned of the riot, Robinson publicly expressed his burn-
ing hope that he could have a “heart-to-heart, man-to-man” talk with the youths so he might tell them that they were harming the freedom
struggle, their community, their families and friends, and their own lives. He would also emphasize “that you don’t win like this,” that you cannot achieve your freedom and civil rights by lashing out in violence.