Authors: Arnold Rampersad
As Jack and Rachel knew now, there would be no easy cure for their son. He would make progress, then falter; but as long as he returned to Daytop, they could still hope for his eventual recovery. In the meantime, his parents, as well as Sharon and David, stayed resolutely in touch with him. They visited him in Seymour, welcomed him home when he returned, sent him cards and letters and homemade cookies and cakes—whatever they could do to assure him that he was wanted and loved.
As for the Republican National Convention that summer, Jack made no effort to go to Miami Beach early in August to attend it. As expected, the party chose Nixon to run for President. To Jack’s disgust, Nixon then chose as his running mate the governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, a man of impressive looks but little substance, and known in Baltimore to be hostile to blacks. Thus Robinson was eagerly responsive when Humphrey, struggling with Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota for the Democratic nomination, set out to win over the most influential black supporters of Rockefeller, Martin Luther King Sr. and Robinson himself. On August 11, Jack announced that he was resigning as Rockefeller’s special assistant for community affairs to campaign for the Democrats, “
if they will have me.” He was especially incensed by reports that Nixon had apparently given the South, in the person of the segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, veto power over his choice for Vice-President. “
Now he’s sold out,” Robinson said contemptuously of Nixon to a reporter. “He’s really prostituted himself to get the Southern vote.”
The harshest counterattack came from William F. Buckley Jr., in an essay, “Robinson Strikes Out,” in the New York
Post.
“
It is surely time,” Buckley argued, “to put an end to the mischievous national habit of taking seriously this pompous moralizer who whines his way through life as though all America were at Ebbets Field cheering him on against the big bad racist St. Louis Cardinals.” Robinson’s habit of describing himself as “first a black man, second an American, third a Republican” was itself racist. (And indeed, Robinson once would not have ordered things in this way; but he understood now, in the wake of the social turbulence of the preceding years, that for most Americans his skin color was more defining of his identity than his citizenship ever could be.)
“
If that is racism, so be it,” he responded in the
Amsterdam News.
“I am proud to be black. I am also embattled because I am black; but for white Americans of the Buckley ilk, I am only one of millions of blacks who are tired of it!” On August 14, two weeks before the Democratic convention, he roused himself from rest to be present in Harlem for an official visit by Humphrey. At the offices of the Freedom National Bank, standing beside Humphrey, he announced that he was formally endorsing the Vice-President. But this choreographed visit did not go smoothly. On 125th Street, behind wooden barricades, most of about one thousand Harlem folk gave Humphrey a cheery welcome; but others turned on him and on Robinson. “
Get him out of here!” one man shouted as Humphrey stepped grinning out of the bank. “Uncle Tom!” another yelled at Robinson.
Two weeks later, in Chicago, at one of the most tumultuous political conventions in American history, Humphrey was nominated for the presidency. But most Rockefeller supporters, including James Farmer, the former director of CORE, declined to follow Jack’s lead in supporting Humphrey; Senator Jacob Javits of New York called the decision “
precipitate and to be deplored.” Robinson knew well that he was taking a fateful step. In handwritten drafts of a letter to Rockefeller, he pleaded with him for understanding. “
This is perhaps the most difficult moment of my life,” Jack began, before amending the sentence to read “These are difficult times.” His two years as a special assistant had been “personally rewarding”; moreover, he had also seen “a possible breakthrough” in race relations because of the governor’s leadership. But the atmosphere of unity at the Republican convention had been achieved at the expense of blacks; he had to fight it. As for his job as a special assistant, “I would expect to return to my position with you when the campaign is over. I am aware however [of] the politics involved and can only ask if you were Black and searching for dignity could you do any different?”
But this time, Robinson had gone too far. As a top Republican leader, Rockefeller could hardly employ a lieutenant who campaigned for the
opposition. Robinson was an exceptional figure, but reappointing him was probably out of the question. Over the next few years, Robinson continued to support Rockefeller; but he never again held a full-time position with the governor. Perhaps Jack would not have resigned if the job itself had been more rewarding. “
Whatever it was at first, it was no longer rewarding,” Rachel insisted. “Jack had an office and a title but no power at all. Everything had to be referred to people higher up; Jack was simply a possible way to reach the governor, and more and more not a very clear or open way. He had enjoyed much more power at Chock Full o’ Nuts. I think he was ready to go.”
On January 22, 1969, following Nixon’s inaugural address, Robinson sent him a formal letter that made only scant reference to Jack’s earlier support. Accepting the election result, “
we all pray that your years in Washington will be most successful.” Although blacks had not supported him, Nixon should set aside that fact and work for national unity. “For Mr. President, Black people cannot afford a racial conflict; White people cannot afford one. And it’s a fact that America cannot afford one. If we are to survive as a nation, we must do it together. Black people will work for one America if we are given hope. Without hope, the present feeling of despair will lead to worse problems.”
Victorious at last, Nixon ignored this missive. He also ignored a group of about thirty black leaders, including Robinson and Floyd McKissick, who showed up at the White House gates soon after the inauguration to request a meeting with him; the group was kept waiting for about half an hour, then turned away. Nixon still admired Robinson the former Brooklyn Dodger, but he was no longer interested in, or had need for, Robinson as a political player. In this regard, the previous autumn, Jack had suffered another major setback when the New York
Amsterdam News
quietly dropped his column. The loss of this forum, in addition to the severance of his formal ties to Rockefeller, made him truly a private citizen once again.
A few days later, on January 31, Jack celebrated his fiftieth birthday. “
We had a nice party one afternoon,” Rachel recalled, “with lots of family and friends—my brother Chuck and his family, Lacy and Florence Covington, Willette Bailey of course, and the Kweskins, and the Logans with Chipper, their little son, and Marty Stone, Howard Cosell and his family, I think, and others. It was a beautiful day, very cold but clear and bright, with snow crusting on the ground and the pond iced over. We had a big fire going and a nice buffet and drinks for those who wanted them. Then the most amazing thing happened. Suddenly Jack turned away and opened the glass sliding doors that looked over the hillside. Before we knew it he was at the top of the slope and getting onto the kids’ toboggan. Then all of a sudden he
was sliding down the slope, heading for the pond. We held our breath because he really couldn’t steer the bobsled, and there was a big bump at the edge of the lake, but he went over the bump beautifully and out onto the ice and then he just slid all the way across the pond to the foot of the trees on the other side, and he sat there in the bobsled, laughing his head off like a happy kid. We were shocked, he hadn’t been at all well. But it was wonderful to see him be so physical, to do something so daring, so reckless. He was very pleased with himself.”
M
EANWHILE
, S
EA
H
OST SEEMED
to be making some progress. However, in its ability to attract and sign black and Puerto Rican franchisees, the venture was struggling; by the middle of 1969, Harlem had only two restaurants. Once again Jack had proof, if he needed it, of the scarcity of money among black folks. To stimulate sales of franchises to minorities (and make some money for themselves) Jack and a small group of other businessmen, including his brother-in-law Chuck Williams, founded Jackie Robinson Associates. “
We don’t want the company to own stores in the black and Puerto Rican areas,” Robinson said flatly. “We want blacks and Puerto Ricans to own these stores.” Seeking funds from various agencies, JRA then sought to funnel this money in the form of loans to prospective franchisees. Eventually, JRA struck a deal with the Interracial Council for Business Opportunity (ICBO), which was itself funded by the Ford Foundation, for this purpose. JRA, led by Robinson, then began to choose minority prospective franchisees for support.
Within Sea Host, however, Jack was not growing comfortable. A wall separated him from the principals, who were mainly Asian or Asian-American and seemed uninclined to share confidences with him. “
All I know,” Rachel said, “is that Jack complained early that whenever anything important had to be decided, the Asian principals would draw apart—go into a closet, he said, which could not have been literally true—and come to a decision without consulting him. He really had little idea what was going on.” On at least one occasion, when Rachel went with Jack to visit a potential franchisee, she saw the consequences of this distancing. “There were questions Jack couldn’t answer,” she recalled. “He had been left out of the loop within the company. He found it very frustrating.” There were other problems. “
Several of us wanted to be a part of franchising,” Jack’s friend Warren Jackson said, “and we even went to meet with Wah Chin, the head of Sea Host, at his posh office on Park Avenue—Jack was there, and other friends. But really none of us was ready or able to provide hands-on leadership, which is what you need in franchising. I mean, we just knew that we
wouldn’t be in every day, kneading dough or mixing batter. We all went on to other things.”
The combination of his discomfort within Sea Host and his unhappiness with governmental attitudes to blacks made Robinson pessimistic about race relations. Although he was often hard on black leaders, as in calling on Harlem voters the previous fall to dump Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (who was reelected by the usual landslide), Jack was harder still on the inaction or indifference or malevolence of most urban, state, and federal authorities where blacks were concerned. “
I’m afraid we are going to have a conflict such as this country has never seen,” he declared. “I think we’re just a rumor away from it, unless there is concrete action—not by the black community, but by the federal, state, and local governments. The black community has no confidence in the leadership of this country today.… The waiting period is over as far as the black community is concerned. They’re tired of waiting.”
This did not mean that Robinson now endorsed the more radical young black leaders. Openly he talked about his contempt for many of the new celebrity militants. “
My daughter had a picture of Eldridge Cleaver in her room,” he told a reporter, “and I objected to it. She said, ‘But it’s my room.’ I said, ‘But it’s my house, and I want that picture down.’ I caught the devil from my sons. But we sat down and talked about it. You know, if a guy goes out and shoots and kills a policeman, in too many areas he’s a hero. Too many of our people don’t care whether or not a guy has committed a crime.” (The picture was actually one of Huey Newton.) On the other hand, he also loathed the symbols of the American right wing, especially those sponsored by support of the Vietnam War. That summer, Robinson flashed into the news when he launched an attack on the increasingly popular habit, pushed by
Reader’s Digest
and the Gulf Oil company, of displaying decals of the Stars and Stripes. He was still for the war, but the decal, he declared, was an ominous sign. “
I wouldn’t fly the flag on the Fourth of July, or any other day,” he said. “When I see a car with a flag pasted on it, I figure the guy behind the wheel isn’t my friend.”
Nevertheless, Jack remained quietly loyal to the United States military effort. On August 21, 1969, he was the guest speaker at a luncheon in connection with the annual Command Chaplains’ Conference at Fort Meyer, Virginia. In his audience, in addition to the chaplains, were various other high-ranking members of the armed forces, including the Army chief of staff and Vietnam military leader William Westmoreland.
A
WARE OF TIME RUNNING OUT
, Jack pressed ahead with plans for another book on his life, this time an autobiography written with Alfred Duckett. At
one point, publishers would have come to him; now he had to go to them. Accordingly, in June or July he found himself having a business lunch in New York with a young black woman who had just been appointed a senior editor at Random House and was eager to acquire good black authors. (Her first novel,
The Bluest Eye,
was about to appear.) Encouraged by Charles Harris, another black senior editor, Toni Morrison had invited Jack, whom she had never met, to lunch to talk about the project. “
We met at a bistro near Random House on the East Side,” she recalled. “He didn’t eat much. He explained that he had diabetes, he had to watch his diet. He was quiet at first, but it took him just a little while to decide that, yes, he was in smart company. Then he relaxed and became comfortable and informal. He seemed very intelligent and knowledgeable; he had sophisticated views of life, he was warm, funny, and forthcoming.” Morrison found herself enjoying the lunch more than she had expected.
“I already knew a great deal,” she said, “about the way many black men in that position often talked to black women who had a little power, which was to show the women that they really had none. Robinson was totally unlike that. He made no gestures to say, ‘I’m more important than you; you know, you have to accommodate me because I am a man; aren’t you really a secretary?’ He played none of the usual gender games. He respected me, felt comfortable with me. In hindsight, he was one of the few black men I had business dealings with in those days with whom I didn’t have to watch myself all the time.”