Nearly every day I went to one of the missions for a free bowl of soup. I had to sit through the meetings before I could get the soup, and I sat there with my head lowered, ashamed of myself and ashamed to look up. The white men and women in the missions were kind, and they seemed to genuinely care about the men who came there. When October and the cold weather began, I slept in the mission.
It seemed like there were hundreds of us panhandling and looking for a handout. The streets were lined with bums and derelicts. I looked and acted no different than the rest of them. At night in the mission meetings, I struggled not to cry, but the tears would slide down my unshaven, dirty cheeks as shame and self-disgust washed over me.
When I thought it couldn’t get worse, it got worse. A couple of men had an apartment where they ran some gambling and other illegal things. But when they asked if I wanted to live there in exchange for keeping the place clean and acting as a bouncer, I agreed gladly. I was so eager to get off the streets, I didn’t care where I went or what the job was.
It was like moving into the first floor of hell. The parties went on continually all day and all night. I saw things there that I never dreamed people could do—orgies, drunks, dope peddling, prostitution, and all forms of perversion went on in that place. Many nights I never got to bed because someone would be in my bed—often two men or two women.
Those days and nights have blurred together in my mind. The men who rented the apartment bought me new clothes, and I had a fancy cigarette case and lighter, a big, shiny ring on my finger, and polished shoes, and I grew a mustache. At the age of twenty-three, I was caught in a terrible trap, but I was fed, clothed, and too scared and dumb to get out.
One day when I was running an errand for my bosses, I stopped at a bar and ballroom nearby and discovered they needed a janitor. I begged the manager for the job and, surprisingly, got it. That night I sneaked out of the apartment and moved into a room in the house of a widow lady and her young, pretty niece, a college student. One look at her and I fell hard. Turned out she fell for me, too.
I was glad to be out of the apartment and away from the gambling and the parties, but my life didn’t change much. Every cent I made went for liquor and foolishness. I stopped paying rent because the landlady had hopes I’d marry her niece, and she treated me like I was already her son.
I wrote a letter to Margie and begged her to come to Detroit. I hoped that if Margie came to Detroit, we could get a place together and I’d get my life straightened out. I told her that wages were better and how good things were up north.
In 1935 I managed to get a job on the WPA. I had to stand in line from midnight until 9:00 the next morning to get in. That’s how it was. When I got to the front of the line they handed me a pick and shovel.
Lord, I didn’t want to work with a pick and shovel! I had seen enough pick and shovel on the plantation. I could hear Thrasher’s whip whistling through the air as we dug a ground so cold and hard that our hands bled. I went to work though—by day with a pick and shovel, and in the early morning hours cleaning at the bar and ballroom.
One day the foreman at WPA asked if any of us men were interested in learning cement finishing. I jumped at the chance to get rid of the pick and shovel. Soon I was working as a cement finisher, putting curbs in streets and driveways and earning ten dollars a day. I wrote to Margie again, begging her to come to Detroit.
Margie finally answered me and said she couldn’t come and leave Dad, who was down sick. But she said Janey was making plans to come to Detroit.
Janey arrived all smiles and done up pretty, toting a lot of boxes and grips. She rented herself a house, which she later bought. She moved me into it with her, and then she moved some man in to pay her bills. Not only did she take this man for every dime he had, she used him to start a little business of her own. Her house became a house of prostitution and gambling. Again I was right in the middle of it all. I forgot all about the widow lady’s pretty niece and started working on a gambling habit. It became a passion, and as Janey’s brother I had my pick of the girls.
Janey was very pretty and had a way with men. She could win any man she set out to get, and once she won him, she was boss. She gave the orders, and he would hand over the paychecks to her.
I wanted to ask Janey what happened to her relationship to Jesus. I wanted to say, “You supposed to be a Christian, how come you runnin a bad house?” But how could I jump on her with accusations when I was just as guilty as she? It was the blind leading the blind—blind Janey leading blind me.
The months went by. I forgot all about Jesus. I was Janey’s right-hand man. I hustled business for her, sold her liquor, ran a gambling table, roughed up anyone who wouldn’t pay up, and kept a close eye over the whole operation. We pulled in more money than either one of us had ever imagined. It wasn’t long before Janey bought a newer and bigger house. Her prices went up and so did the class of girls she had working for her. They were college girls, and they wore fur coats. They were white-skinned and black-skinned, although most of our customers were white. White men rarely asked for white girls.
I fell in love with one of the girls. I had dropped the widow’s niece when I moved in with Janey, and Monica came into my life.
“Let’s get married,” Monica would plead.
“Girl, you crazy.”
We would fight and she’d accuse me of not loving her. We raged and ranted and broke things, and many times someone else would have to come and break up our fights. Janey was afraid we’d bring the police down on us.
One Sunday night when I was dealing cards at one of the tables, Monica told me she had a headache and went upstairs to lie down. Later that night she still wasn’t feeling any better, and I thought she was just faking it to get me to give her attention. She was that way. A couple of hours later one of the girls came down and told me I should take Monica to the hospital because she was acting peculiar. I was annoyed, said I wasn’t going to no hospital. “Let her take herself,” which she did.
On Monday I broke down and went to see her. She said she felt much better and her stomachache and headache were almost gone. She was taking antinausea pills and pain killers and she looked pale. Her eyes didn’t look right. I figured a good rest was what she needed. “Robert, let’s not fight no more,” she said.
“No more fighting,” I agreed. “No more.” When I went back to see her later, she was dead. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage; an artery had burst in her brain causing bleeding. By the time they got to her she was gone.
I will never forget standing in that hospital room holding a bunch of flowers in my hand and staring at that empty bed. The sheets were pulled off, and the grey and white stripes of the mattress stared back at me where just yesterday a young, beautiful girl had lain waiting for her health to return.
Something broke in me as I stood there staring at that empty bed. It was as though my life spilled out of me onto the hospital floor. I saw the trap I was in, the hopelessness, and the tragedy of it. Monica was gone. She’d never have another chance for a better life. I stood there trembling, not knowing which way to turn. Then in the silence there came a voice. It was a powerful voice, distant and yet near.
“Robert,” the soft, gentle voice called, “will you not come to me now before it is too late?”
It was a sound as though all the oceans and seas of the world were locked inside it, and all hope and promise were sealed in those words.
I got down to my knees right there in the hospital room and begged the Lord to forgive me and take me back. After weeping and praying for a while I laid the flowers on the empty bed and left.
I didn’t go back to Janey’s that night. I walked the streets crying, feeling bad for Monica, and begging God to have mercy on me.
When I finally returned to Janey’s I locked myself in my room, refusing to eat or drink. Janey knew I was crying over Monica so she left me alone. I wanted Jesus to take me back, and I was afraid I had gotten too far away to get back to Him. It was t
errible. I worried whether Monica was in heaven or hell. Where was I headed?
The following Sunday I found a church nearby. I went up to the altar and the preacher asked me what I wanted. “I want you to pray for me,” I said with tears streaming down my face. He pointed to a side door and instructed me to go through it, and the elders would get me ready to be baptized.
“I don’t want to be baptized, I want to be prayed for,” I said. The preacher sent me into the side room anyway, and there I was met by three stern-faced elders who handed me a robe to put on in order to get baptized.
“I am not going in that water a dry devil and come out a wet one!” I insisted, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted me to join the church. “I don’t want to join your church; I want somebody to pray for me! I’m a sinner and a backslider, and I want to get right with God!” They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, and so I left there, frustrated and defeated.
I went back to Janey’s, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Monica’s pale face and hearing her ask if we could quit fighting. The following Sunday I found a little storefront church with its door open so I walked in and sat down on a folding chair in the back. A young man was standing up near the altar praying, but there was nobody else there. He didn’t know I had come in.
I sat quietly for a few moments, but then the young man’s praying began to fill up the room. He was facing the front wall so he couldn’t see me. He had his arms up in the air. As he prayed, I suddenly began to shake. I fell right off the chair and lay prostrate on the floor. When I looked up, there were about a half-dozen people praying over me. The young man had his hand on my forehead, and he was praying and weeping over me.
They helped me back onto the chair, and I tried to tell them what had happened and why I was there. “I know why you’re here,” the young man said. “You’re here because you’ve strayed a long way from the Lord, but now you want to come back to Him.” I looked at him, amazed. “How did you know?”
He smiled at me. “The Holy Spirit told me you were coming, so I got here early to pray for you.”
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It wasn’t easy to return to Janey’s that afternoon. She was asleep and I woke her up.
“Jay,” I said in a firm voice, “I’m not selling any more whiskey for you, I’m not bringing any more men in for you, and I’m not gambling, drinking, or carousing any more. I’m finished. Don’t you ask me to do a dirty thing again.”
She sat up in bed, looked at me calmly and said, “OK, Robert.” Just like that.
“I went to church today and I’m going to be leading a new life from now on,” I told her. “The Lord has given me another chance.”
Janey yawned and blinked her eyes. “OK, Robert,” she said, and she fell back asleep.
I moved out of the house that afternoon. I didn’t even take a change of clothing. I had only about eighty cents in my pocket and no place to go, but I didn’t care. I was happy.
I walked down the street thanking Jesus out loud. I laughed and cried at the same time, and people looked at me as though I were crazy.
That evening I went back to the little storefront church. The same young man who had prayed for me was there. We prayed together and talked for a long time—in fact, almost all night.
“You know, I don’t even know your name,” I said. He looked at me and laughed. “My name is Robert, too. Robert Jones.”
Then he looked at me with an odd expression on his face. “Robert . . . Robert Sadler. I knew your name was familiar. And your face surely looks familiar. I do know ye!”
“Hunh?”
“I was livin in Seneca yonder across the road from the school where you was a student. My mama took me to the same church you went to every week.”
“Lord, have mercy.”
“I remember you played left tackle on the football team!”
“Do you remember that?”
“The coach, Rufus McGovern, is livin real quiet now. In fact, he’s repented of his ways.”
“Repented. Wal, if that ain’t a miracle.”
I got a job as a caretaker in an apartment building on Harding Street a couple of days later. There was a restaurant near the little storefront church and I became friendly with the proprietor, a balding old man with silver fuzz at his ears. He had a heavy middle-aged girlfriend named Cora who sat at the counter drinking Coca-Cola in the afternoons. She was a sweet lady and loved people. The day she first spotted me she had her eye on me for her niece who lived in Cincinnati.
“I want you to write to my niece,” she’d tell me. At first I thought she was joking. “Where your niece is?” I asked.
“She’s in Cincie and she’s a fine girl. She is your type of girl.”
I finally wrote to her and she answered me. We began corresponding regularly. Her name was Jacqueline Brown Graham.
One day I bought a train ticket to Cincinnati to meet Jacqueline. I walked up the steps to the nicely kept house she lived in with her parents, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t figure out why I was nervous. I had been out with plenty of women.
Jacqueline answered the door. She was very pretty—tall and elegant-looking in a grey crepe dress with ruffles on the sleeves and the neck; she had long black hair brushed up on the top of her head in a roll. There was a gentle smile on her face.
I fell in love with Jacqueline and we were married on June 28, 1939. It was a small wedding attended by Robert Jones, Janey, Jackie’s Aunt Cora, and the Baptist preacher who married us.
Jackie was a good churchgoer. She was clean, good, and lived an honest life without smoking, drinking, or swearing, but she didn’t know the Lord. I prayed for her every day, asking the Lord to touch her and come into her heart. It took nine years.
We moved into the upstairs apartment of a beautiful home at 99 King Street in Detroit. It was the home of a doctor and his wife. Jacqueline worked for the doctor during the day doing general housekeeping, and I worked at a hotel off Woodward near a Catholic church, shining shoes. Then Jackie and I started a little business together doing cooking and catering for the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs. Jacqueline was an excellent cook and she taught me how to make fancy pastries and delicacies.
But no work lasted forever, and I came upon a streak of jobs from caretaking to gardening, and in 1941 I went to school to learn machine operating. After I graduated, I got a job at Ford Motors. We had few financial worries in those days. I made a good living and Jackie and I were happy.
I often took the streetcar downtown to Grand Circus Park to preach about the love of God. Many gave their hearts to Him. I also held a Bible class in our home for young people every Saturday night.
My speech had gotten much better and I wasn’t afraid to talk about the Lord. Jackie wouldn’t give her heart to the Lord, and she rarely accompanied me to church. She lived a more exemplary life than many people who called themselves Christians, and she didn’t think she needed “more religion” or a personal relationship with the Lord.
She occasionally attended a Methodist church near the house. “They’re quiet and reverent,” she’d tell me. “Not like your church. Everyone hollering and making so much noise praising the Lord and all, it’s plain distracting.”
“Honey, the Bible don’t tell us we have to be quiet when we worship the Lord.”
“Well, I don’t like all that noise no way.”
She was a good wife in every respect, and we rarely argued. I didn’t want to ruin the love we had for each another by arguing and fussing with her.
Though I didn’t argue with Jackie, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t argue with God. “God, you got to save my wife! Lord, save her! Oh, God, save Jackie!” I begged, pleaded, moaned, groaned. I made promises and sacrificed, I fasted and did everything I could think of to impress God with the seriousness of my request. The years rolled by, and Jackie remained as cold as ever to the Gospel.
I wanted Jackie to know Jesus the way I did. If only she would love Him and trust her life to Him. I
think I wanted this more than anything in the world. Sometimes I got discouraged, and I would get to feeling sorry for myself. We shared everything else in life, and yet this one vital, beautiful thing we didn’t share.
Finally, it occurred to me to stop my begging and complaining to the Lord and to start being grateful for my wife exactly the way she was. I thanked God and humbled myself. I knew God had hand-picked Jackie for me, and I repented for complaining and fussing in my heart.
The Bible study in our home began with six people. It grew into a group of about forty, until finally we couldn’t get any more into the house. Jackie was never in favor of it. She often stayed in the bedroom or downstairs during our meetings. The young people just loved her anyhow and went out of their way to show her kindnesses.
One afternoon at my machine at Ford, I bowed my head and said, “Lord, I’m not fasting anymore for Jackie’s salvation; I’m not begging anymore; I’m not pleading anymore. Lord, you do with her whatever you want to do.”
Jackie surrendered her life to God the next week.
After Bible study at our house on Saturday night, we had gone to bed and while she was sleeping, Jackie had a dream. In her dream she saw a beautiful church. She could hear wonderful music coming from inside, which was so lovely and inviting that she ran up to it to go inside. Standing at the door, however, was a splendid-appearing man who put his hand up as she tried to enter. He asked, “Why are you coming in here?” Jackie said, “Why, I’m a member here.” Then the man, who Jackie said was glorious to behold, asked if her name was written in the “book.” Jackie said, “Oh yes, I’m sure of it. After all, I am a member of the church!” The man took out a great book with pages that seemed to be endless, and he looked for her name. Closing the book at last, he said, “I’m so sorry, but you may not enter. Only those whose names are written in this book belong here.”
The Emancipation of Robert Sadler Page 21
