But King did not give up on Robinson. Although King did not take
his friend up on his invitation to reply in writing, King picked up the phone and called his longtime friend in the quiet of an evening.
As Jackie recounted it, “Before the rich, deep voice identified the
caller, I knew that he was my dear friend, Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.” The civil rights leader had called so that his friend would better understand his convictions and motivations. The two talked about the critical points Jackie had raised in his letter, as well as related matters, and while Robinson found his friend to be “brilliant” in his replies, he did not find them compelling enough to change “all the opinions” he
had of King’s position.46
Robinson recounted the conversation in his newspaper column, and
rather than detailing their points and counterpoints, he decided simply to make his readers understand that his opinion of King as sincere and courageous had not changed. “He is still my leader—a man to whose
defense I would come at any time he might need me. That is a personal commitment and a public pledge.”47
But he also set forth another reason for standing by King even as he disagreed with him: “If ever a man was placed on this earth by divine force, to help solve the doubts and ease the hearts and dispel the fears of mortal man, I believe that man is Dr. King.”48
However divinely inspired King might have been, Robinson contin-
ued to oppose his position on Vietnam. He expressed concern about
those demanding that President Johnson cease bombing raids in the
war-torn country. “I am convinced we must deal from a position of
strength,” he said. “I have found this to be good policy in athletics and I think it is probably the best policy in war.”49
A “position of strength” meant the continuation of bombing, espe-
cially those raids that provided cover for US soldiers. “Should we cease
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to bomb the enemy’s bridges, to destroy and cut off their ammunition bases, we would be extending them an open invitation to commit a
wholesale carnage of which our own fighting men would become the
helpless victims.”50
As the long, hot summer of 1967 came to a close, Robinson felt the
need to speak more on inner-city riots, warning of the possibility that violence might erupt not only in summers to come but also at times
like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
Unlike conservative Christians who saw the root of riots in unchris-
tian hearts, Robinson identified something else as causal. “Riots begin with the hopelessness which lives in the hearts of people who, from
childhood, expect to live in a rundown house, to be raised by one parent, to be denied proper recreation, to attend an inferior school, to experience police brutality, to be turned down when seeking a decent job,” he said.51
The cause of riots was not unconverted hearts in need of Jesus but
hopeless hearts ignited by dreadful living conditions, and this meant that the solution to rioting was not fire-and-brimstone preaching but a collective effort by leaders in politics, business, and civil society to improve the quality of life for those poised to explode.
In a sermon he later preached in New Rochelle, New York, Robin-
son added a spiritual framework to this point, hearkening back to his illustration about the farmer who hoed the land God had given him. “I think we need to think less in terms of ‘helping’ the Negro and more in terms of making sure he has the tools with which to give God a little help by helping himself,” Robinson preached.52 The proper response to the riots was to give African Americans the God-given tools they need to help themselves: quality schools, housing, and jobs.
At this point, Robinson also took special aim at H. Rap Brown, the
new leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, for
having recently told a crowd of fifteen hundred supporters in Jackie’s old neighborhood in Queens that the summer riots were “dress rehearsals for revolution.”53 Brown had encouraged his followers to attend a nearby courtroom to show support for seventeen African Americans,
some of them members of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM),
who had been indicted for plotting to murder African American leaders they considered too moderate, including Roy Wilkins of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and
Whitney Young of the Urban League.
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Robinson blasted Brown, calling him “a sensationalist, dangerous,
irresponsible agitator who has a talent for getting fires ignited and getting himself safely out of the way, leaving those he agitated to face the music.”54
Hate mail poured into Robinson’s office following his vocal
opposition to Brown and his supporters, and one piece even included
a jack-of-spades playing card with the word “Ram” written on it.
Robinson said that while he was uncertain whether the card really
came from the Revolutionary Action Movement, he would never allow
such a threat to deter him from speaking his mind. “I don’t seek to be anyone’s martyr or hero, but telling it like I think it is—that’s the only way I know how to be me.”55
Underlying this conviction, once again, was his gratitude to God and his sense of human interconnectedness. “The Good Lord has showered
blessings on me and this country and its people, black and white, have been good to me,” Jackie reiterated. “But no matter how rich or famous I might become, no matter what luxuries or special privileges I might achieve, no matter how many powerful friends I might make, I would
never be the man I want to be until my humblest brother, black and
white, becomes the man he wants to be. So I must be involved in our
fight for freedom.”
In his fight for freedom, Robinson hoped that the president would
not halt the War on Poverty. Although he touted self-reliance in financial matters, Robinson was also convinced that the nation’s poor, whatever the color of their skin, desperately needed federal assistance in their efforts to escape poverty and that the government had a basic
obligation to implement constructive antipoverty programs like many
of those found in the War on Poverty.
But as 1967 drew to a close, Robinson also emphasized his convic-
tion that governmental assistance was not sufficient and that Christian churches must become a more forceful presence in the fight against
poverty and racial injustice.
The racial segregation so pervasive throughout Christian churches,
he said, betrayed the fundamental spiritual conviction that “if God is truly Father to us all, then this truly makes us all brothers.” If Christians started to act as if they were all members of the one family of God, he said, the church could become “the most powerful force for racial decency in the nation.”56
10
“I Guess the Good Lord Has
a Job for Me”
Heading Home
On March 5, 1968, Robinson learned the awful news that Jackie Jr.
had been arrested for possession of drugs. When the police stopped
him for questioning in a seedy area of Stamford around 2:15 a.m.,
Jackie Jr. had fled, but the officers apprehended him about a block
away, finding not only marijuana in his possession but also heroin and a .22 revolver.
Jackie Jr. had returned home from Vietnam in June 1967, addicted
to drugs, unwilling to start a career, and still anxious to move out from the long shadow his father had cast. Telling his parents he needed to find his own way, he bolted from the family home and hea
ded to the
drug-infested sections of Stamford.
At the time of his arrest, Jackie and Rachel did not know where their eldest child had been living. The prior Saturday, Robinson had left a message at a pool hall that Jackie Jr. frequented, asking his son to call him, but that effort, too, had failed.
Rachel and Sharon, both in tears, accompanied Robinson to the
Stamford police station, where he posted $5,000 in bail to secure the release of their son and brother. Before leaving, Jackie walked over to a group of waiting reporters and spoke openly of his pained feelings.
Rachel recalled how her white-haired husband, just forty-nine,
looked at that moment: “His stance was dignified, but his head was
slightly bowed . . . heavy, it seemed.”1 The New York Times reported that Robinson “stared despondently at the floor” as he spoke.2
161
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JACKIE ROBINSON
“I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I had on my own,” Robinson lamented. “My problem was my inability to spend
more time at home. I guess I thought my family was secure, that at least we wouldn’t have anything to worry about, so I went running around
everywhere else.”3
While he held himself responsible, Robinson suggested that God,
too, had played a hand in the potentially transformative moment.
“God is testing me,” he said.4
Rachel stood by silently, but in the days ahead she was the one to
arrange for Jackie Jr. to receive treatment at Yale New Haven Hospital, a positive move that left the family feeling hopeful.
But more disappointment entered Robinson’s life a short time later,
when Nelson Rockefeller announced that he would not be a candidate
for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Robinson believed
strongly in providence and was convinced that it was Rockefeller’s destiny to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president and to
win the 1968 presidential election.
“I believe that each man is placed upon this earth with a destiny
to fulfill,” Robinson told the governor. “I feel strongly that you
were meant to lead in world councils, in national affairs and domes-
tic problems, and within a political party which was born slanted
towards freedom, but which in recent times has turned its back on its own heritage.”5
After Rockefeller made his announcement, Robinson wrote him
a letter full of disappointment and frustration. “I am hurt because
Negroes desperately need the kind of positive relationship your dedication can bring,” he said. “I am confused because I now must search for a candidate and the choice is difficult.”6
The days grew even bleaker, far bleaker, for Robinson and the
world, a little more than a week later, when James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood alone on the balcony at the Lor-raine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King had traveled to the city to
help sanitation workers protest for better working conditions, and on the night before his death, he sought to instill a sense of hope within the weary workers and their supporters. “I’ve been to the mountaintop!”
King preached. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land !”7
Robinson was crushed by the news of King’s murder, and he and
Rachel joined Rockefeller on his private plane for the trip to King’s funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
“I Guess tHe Good lord Has a JoB for Me”
163
Morehouse College president Benjamin E. Mays delivered the
eulogy. In a tape recording played during the funeral, King himself
spoke of how he wanted others to remember him in death: “I’d like
somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to
give his life serving others.”8
Robinson turned to his faith, even while modestly stating he was
not a “deeply religious man,” when trying to make sense of the assassination of his friend. “I do not pretend that I have begun to reach the mountaintop which God showed the man who, in my view, was the
greatest leader of the Twentieth Century,” he stated. “But I have been able to come to regard his death as perhaps one of those great mysteries with which the Almighty moves—his wonders to perform.”9
With these words, Robinson echoed the first refrain of William
Cowper’s “Light Shining Out of Darkness,” a popular Christian hymn:
“God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants
his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.”10
But Robinson’s faith was also the type that liked answers, a sure and certain footing, and so he also tried to explain King’s death in concrete terms. He did so by returning to a sermon King had preached on the
Sunday following the bombing of his home in January 1957.
In that sermon, King put a series of questions before his congrega-
tion: “Where is God in the midst of falling bombs?”11 Is God totally detached from the horrific event? Is God merely contemplating the
pain and suffering from above? Is God a loving Father concerned for
his children?
In answering these questions, King delivered a small theological trea-tise, claiming that although the will of God causes goodness, it is also
“permissive” in relation to evil. God allows evil to exist so that humans can be truly free in the exercise of their own free wills. God also works to achieve something good out of the evil chosen by people. “And so
God never causes evil,” King preached. “But sometimes he permits evil to exist in order to carry out his creative and redemptive work.”12
King’s biblical text for the day was the Genesis story of Joseph, and he used the narrative to explain that although God did not directly
harm Joseph, God did indeed allow Joseph’s brothers to plot his mur-
der. And after they had left him for dead, God helped Joseph escape to Egypt, become politically powerful, and achieve so much wealth that
he could eventually save his own murderous brothers from famine.
In summing up King’s sermon, Robinson added: “Dr. King said
that perhaps this is what God had done in Montgomery; allowed some
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JACKIE ROBINSON
bombs to fall, allowed some property to be destroyed so that the white community could feel the necessity for reconciliation within the black community.”13
Robinson agreed. And not only did he join King in believing that
God had allowed whites to dynamite black homes and churches so that
God could help bring about racial healing in Montgomery. Robinson
also suggested that God had allowed the murder of King in order to
bring about racial reconciliation in the United States.
“Perhaps this will happen today in America,” Robinson claimed.
“Perhaps, after the raging emotions quiet down; perhaps, after the
streets of our cities are no longer haunted by angry black people seeking revenge.”14
Crushed, Robinson remained hopeful, buoyed by faith in a God
who can find a way out of no way.
But his heart sank as he watched the responses of politicians in the weeks following King’s assassination, and he excoriated both Johnson and Nixon, now a presidential candidate, in a May 3 address to the
Texas Association of Christian Churches. Both politicians, Robinson
stated, failed to show leadership in the days following King’s death for fear of losing the voter base that supported them.
“I said I was not here to talk politics and that is not my purpose,”
Robinson told the Texan Christians. “But I can’t help talking about
politicians—men who set the example of acknowledging the father-
hood of God, but who find it possible, when convenient, to turn their backs on the brotherhood of man.”15
Robinson was hoping for a substantial policy that would help the
poor help themselves, especially poor blacks suffering in disproportionate numbers, and to emphasize the need for such a policy he presented a bleak picture of poor blacks.
“They see no future in an affluent, viable American industrial econ-
omy,” Robinson said. So they turn to drugs, crime, rioting, and even the jungles of Vietnam. “And if they are lucky enough to come out of that war alive and physically, mentally or psychologically unimpaired, they can come back home . . . and find out that the land of the free has homes for the brave—the white brave—anywhere they can afford
to live.
“It is a terrible mess, this whole situation,” Robinson lamented.16
But he held out hope, too.
If the mess is to be cleaned up, he said, “it will only be the church and church people who will be able to do it. But it’s not going to
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165
be done by just Sunday-go-to-meeting Christians, or just by Monday
morning halfback Christians, or by just-let-John-do-it Christians, or
‘I-don’t-want-to-get-involved’ Christians. It will have to be done by dedicated Christians, Christians of understanding, creating goodwill for their fellow man.”17 Robinson implored the Texans to become
active Christians.
One day after King’s assassination, Vice President Hubert Humphrey
sent Robinson a brief note. “As I write this letter, our country is in such trouble,” Humphrey penned. “The terrible tragedy of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has cast a shadow over our land.”18
The vice president also took the occasion to deliver a political pitch to Robinson. “I do hope that if I should decide to be a candidate [for the presidency] that I would be privileged to have your support,” he wrote.19
President Johnson had announced a week before that he would
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