Remembering Others After the MLK Holiday - A Peek at Jackie Robinson

Remembering Others After the MLK Holiday - A Peek at Jackie Robinson
By PJ Rain

On January 15, 1929, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and this January we are again honoring his legacy through the observance of a national holiday designated in his name.   Shortly thereafter, we will endorse and promote the month of February as our traditional Black History Month.   However, as one who has observed how those who aggressively speak out and defend against injustices are frequently dismissed, I would like to propose that the annual King Holiday also serve as our reminder to share and acknowledge the sacrifices of those who came before us all year long.

A few years before the birth of Dr. King, on May 19, 1925, the leader most commonly known as Malcolm X was born in Lincoln, Nebraska.   During the course of each year, in addition to recognizing those who are lauded for using a less offensive and more diplomatic approach in the struggle for fair treatment, we should also study and learn more about those who were passionately contrary and who fiercely demanded justice in the face of discrimination.   Dr. King and Malcolm X have often been contrasted as rivals, with the latter being frequently depicted as a violent “hate-monger.”   Yet, both leaders successfully organized, mobilized, and inspired tremendous masses of our people towards an unprecedented level of self-determination and unwavering conviction.   Similarly, both Dr. King and Malcolm X posed significant threats to those who clung to the comfort of racially based socio-economic advantages, and the two leaders' respective assassinations denied us the additional wisdom and vision that certainly would have resulted had they lived beyond the age of 39.  

The issue of passive resistance and restraint versus physical confrontation and self-defense is a balancing act that has existed throughout our rich history.   Just because it may make others comfortable when we embrace that part of us that patiently labors to overcome prejudice, we must not neglect that fierce pride and strength that also blazes from within.   In the spirit of a King Holiday that reminds us to assert our Black and African history all year, here is a story about a famous athlete’s efforts to balance the urge to fight back against the need for restraint.

Back in 1947, when  the 18-year-old King was still pursuing his sociology degree at Morehouse College, and the not-yet-converted Malcolm X was serving a prison term in Massachusetts, a 28-year-old baseball player by the name of Jack Roosevelt Robinson was about to become the first African-American to play Major League Baseball since the late 1800s.*   Robinson’s passage from childhood and across the racial barrier of Major League sports embodies elements of Malcolm X’s disciplined and fiery intolerance of racial disrespect as well as Dr. King’s belief in non-violent restraint in the face of hateful provocation.  

Jackie Robinson, like Dr. King, was also born in Georgia and in the month of January, only 10 years earlier (January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia).   Robinson, however, grew up in Pasadena, California, where his family moved and settled while he was still a toddler.   He was the youngest of five children, and his mother instilled in each of them an intense level of self-esteem, pride, and entitlement - traits that if exhibited too freely back in Georgia might have gotten them killed.   However, even though the state of California was not part of the “Jim Crow” South, it still carried the torch of United States’ racism enough to ignite the defiance, in young boys like Robinson, to challenge the existing conditions.   While places like Monroe, North Carolina, still threatened to kill Blacks who simply protested for the right to swim in the local pool as late as the 1950s and 1960s, during the 1920s and 1930s, the local Pasadena YMCA and Brookside Park, where young Jackie Robinson lived, was “gracious” enough to afford young Black children one day each week to use the recreational facilities.  

The absence of an outlet for his boyhood exuberance and the belief that he should be entitled to receive the same treatment and opportunity as any of the other boys in Pasadena led Robinson to have his share of run-ins with law enforcement.   As a youngster, he joined and, according to many accounts, led the “Pepper Street Gang,” which was comprised of a mischievous but cohesive group of Black, Asian, Latino, and poor White boys from his Pasadena neighborhood.   They engaged in relatively harmless schemes such as throwing rocks at cars, collecting and selling used golf balls back to the affluent White golfers at the local courses, and finding their own unauthorized places to swim during the days that they were banned from the town’s recreational facilities.   The young Robinson became quite familiar with the police station, but as with all young boys who are lucky enough, Robinson also became familiar with a couple of adult males in the community who helped him to channel his aggression.   Under the mentorship of a neighborhood mechanic, his local pastor, and his older brothers, Robinson eventually steered clear of the gang mischief, and began to focus his energies elsewhere.   The first display of his athletic gifts began when he was a third grade soccer player who led a team that beat the much older sixth graders. He later went on to star in football, baseball, basketball, and track at John Muir Technical High School.   From there he would go on to further distinguish himself at Pasadena Junior College (PJC) in football, track, baseball, tennis, and even golf.

Yet, despite all of his individual athletic achievements, Robinson maintained a prideful outspokenness, and in 1938, while still a student at PJC, he was arrested and given a suspended two-year sentence for protesting the racially motivated detention of a friend by police.   This was also about the time that Robinson began to solidify a reputation among White authority figures as a combative and defiant troublemaker whenever he sensed racial injustice.   Not surprisingly, this same characterization would later be attributed to one of the aforementioned Civil Rights leaders by most of White America during the 1960s.  

Robinson’s contentious reluctance to concede to racial prejudices continued even beyond his student-athlete days.   In 1942, shortly after finishing his amateur athletic career at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was the first four-sport varsity athlete in the history of the school, Robinson was inducted into the United States Army.  As he climbed to the rank of Second Lieutenant, Robinson constantly fought for Black soldiers to receive the same basic accommodations that were granted to White soldiers.   The results ranged from the simple dignities of having the same number of seats as Whites while waiting to make purchases at the Army’s Post Exchange store to working with boxing great Joe Louis to gain admission for Black soldiers into Officers’ Candidate School.  

Robinson’s “by any means necessary” approach reached its peak in July of 1944 when he was ordered by a bus driver to move to the back of the bus.   While returning from the Army base hospital, after being examined for an old football injury to his ankle, Robinson chose to sit next to the wife of one his Army buddies in the front of the bus.   The woman happened to be a light-complexioned African-American who the bus driver assumed to be White.   Infuriated that Robinson had the gall to sit in the front of the bus and to chat with a woman who appeared to be White, the driver ordered Robinson to the back.   Robinson refused with the same anger and fury that spewed from the driver, so when the bus reached the last stop, the driver rushed off the bus, and returned with his dispatcher shouting “There’s the N---- that’s been causing trouble.”   The military police jeep arrived shortly afterward to transport Robinson to the station for questioning, but when he overheard one of the military police officers make reference to the “N---- lieutenant,” Robinson erupted, threatening to “break in two” anyone who dared to refer to him that way again.    Not surprisingly, a court-martial proceeding ensued with initial charges of drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and insubordination.   However, because regulations had recently been issued prohibiting discrimination on vehicles operating on an Army post, and because Robinson had never had a drop of alcohol in his life, a couple of the charges were dismissed in the early stages.   The additional desire, by the Army, to avoid the scrutiny of a racially based controversy involving Robinson and his national UCLA sports celebrity led to a hearing and his eventual acquittal.   

In November of 1944, after Robinson’s military platoon had been deployed overseas, he was able to negotiate an honorable discharge from the military due to his ankle injury.   A new phase in both Robinson’s life and in our history was about to begin.   After a couple of short stints as a college coach and semi-pro football player, Robinson joined the legendary Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues.   Then in the spring of 1945, Robinson was offered a tryout with the Boston Red Sox of the Major Leagues.  

At the time, there was mild consideration being given to integrating the Major Leagues as several Negro League stars had repeatedly demonstrated during exhibition contests that they were just as good as, and often times better, than many of the Major Leaguers.   While Robinson enjoyed the camaraderie of his Negro League brothers, he became tired of the degradation and constant acceptance of injustices that complicated the team’s travel and scheduling.   So on April 16, 1945, Robinson, Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams, two other Negro League standouts, worked out at Boston’s Fenway Park with some of the White players from the Red Sox.   Unfortunately, it turned out to be a charade that left Robinson, who traveled 1500 miles for the opportunity, both frustrated and humiliated.   The White players that the Red Sox sent to the workout consisted mainly of Minor League pitchers, and Robinson and the others never even got to speak to the manager.   At the end of the workout, the three were told that they would hear back from the Red Sox in the near future, but they never did.

A few months later, after being evaluated by a scout from the Brooklyn Dodgers during one of the Monarchs’ games at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Robinson was invited out to New York to meet with the Dodgers’ general manager, Branch Rickey.   After his experience with the Red Sox, Robinson was skeptical, but his meeting with Rickey turned out to be very different and even a little peculiar.   During the meeting, Rickey tested Robinson by inflicting racial insults of all varieties, and at one point, during a role playing session, it is said that Rickey even took a swing towards Robinson’s face.   The historic August 28, 1945 meeting between Robinson and Rickey had been arranged in an attempt to see if Robinson would be able to withstand the bigotry and hatred that he would encounter as the first Black player in the Major Leagues since the late 1800s.*   Robinson had been selected, not because he was the most talented player from the Negro Leagues, but because he had exhibited the strength, character, and leadership that a man would need to persevere through harsh circumstances.   When the meeting with Rickey had concluded, Robinson had agreed to accept the opportunity with the Dodgers organization and, for two years, not retaliate against any of the hostilities that would await him.  

Although the Dodgers were based in Brooklyn, Spring Training was held in Florida, and life in the civilian “Jim Crow” South required a different type of navigation through racial hatred.   It consisted of a level of restraint that Robinson had not yet experienced, and it involved a degree of sacrifice that would take its toll.   The tests began right away, with Robinson and his wife being inexplicably bumped from their flight to his first Spring Training in Daytona Beach.   Robinson questioned the explanation, but the couple eventually made arrangements to travel the next day.   The following day, when the travel weary Robinson fell asleep as he and his wife sat waiting for a bus to depart, the driver ordered his wife to wake him and move to the back of the bus.   The bus had filled with more White passengers while Robinson slept,   so when his wife woke him up to tell him, Robinson both surprised and saddened her by taking her hand and walking with her to another seat in the back of the bus.   This continued repression was difficult for Robinson who had never been docile or passive.   It was so difficult that he would occasionally explode into private outbursts among confidants.   There was even a point during the 1946 season, while Robinson was playing for the Dodgers’ Triple-A Montreal Royals farm team, that he sought medical attention, and was directed to rest away from the ballpark.   The diagnosis was that his fatigue-like symptoms were related to the prolonged stress that he was enduring.  

The challenges and protests against Robinson’s quest continued from the time of his 1945 meeting with Rickey and on through the April 15, 1947 date on which he played his first game as a Brooklyn Dodger.   In Florida, there were entire towns refusing to open their stadiums for Spring Training games if Robinson was present.   During games, there were players hurling racial insults from the dugouts to unnerve him and pitchers hurling baseballs from the mound to try to injure him.   Finally, from the stands and elsewhere, there were White fans that howled hateful slurs and mailed death threats to his home.   In all instances, Robinson exercised tremendous restraint, receiving direct and indirect assistance along the way from unsung heroes like John Wright, a Black Minor League teammate from the Montreal Royals, fellow Major League pioneers, Larry Doby, Hank Thompson, and Willard Brown, who also made Big League debuts in 1947 a few months after Robinson’s, and of course his wife.

After his playing career ended in 1956, Robinson continued to be involved in efforts to advance opportunities and secure fair treatment for his people.   He served as the chairman of the NAACP million-dollar Freedom Fund Drive, joined Dr. King in protest marches and fund-raising to restore burned churches, and he participated in organizing the Harlem Freedom National Bank while serving as its first chairperson.

Unfortunately, as the 1960s came to a close, Robinson’s health began to rapidly deteriorate.   He suffered mild heart attacks in both 1968 and 1970, and he also sustained a loss of vision and excruciating leg pains due to complications from diabetes and heart disease.   Jackie Robinson passed away on October 24, 1972, at the age of 53, and it is widely believed that the intense stress that he endured during that period of restraint accelerated his departure.  

At different points in his life, through his struggles against racial injustice and discrimination, Robinson exhibited traits associated with both Dr. King and Malcolm X - just as they probably did with each other.    Let’s use the King Holiday to launch a year long awareness of our rich and complex history.   Let’s not only honor the sacrifices of Dr. King, but of all of those who struggled with him and before him.   Let’s also support the sincere efforts of those who are working to fulfill his dream today from the street soldiers and socially conscious media outlets to the White House commander.   Let’s begin to use the King Holiday as our annual reminder to commit to learning and sharing our entire history, so that eventually not a single one of us will feel compelled to sacrifice our physical and spiritual health for the comfort of others.