I Never Had It Made (11 page)

VI

My Own Man

A
ll along, the Brooklyn Dodger president had been very sensitive to the inner pressures that had been bugging me. He knew that I believed in fierce competition and swift retaliation for mistreatment. Several years after he told me I was on my own, he explained his decision in these words.

“I realized the point would come when my almost filial relationship with Jackie would break with ill feeling if I did not issue an emancipation proclamation for him. I could see how the tensions had built up in two years and that this young man had come through with courage far beyond what I asked, yet, I knew that burning inside him was the same pride and determination that burned inside those Negro slaves a century earlier. I knew also that while the wisest policy for Robinson during those first two years was to turn the other cheek and not fight back, there were many in baseball who would not understand his lack of action. They could be made to respect only the fighting back, the things that are the signs of courage to men who know courage only in its physical sense. So I told Robinson that he was on his own. Then I sat back happily, knowing that, with the restraints removed, Robinson was going to show the National League a thing or two.”

Very soon after my talk with Mr. Rickey, I learned that as long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people who seemed to have sympathy for the underdog. But the minute I began to answer, to argue, to protest—the minute I began to sound off—I became a swellhead, a wise guy, an “uppity” nigger. When a white player did it, he had spirit. When a black player did it, he was “ungrateful,” an upstart, a sorehead. It was hard to believe the prejudice I saw emerging among people who had seemed friendly toward me before I began to speak my mind. I became, in their minds and in their columns, a “pop-off,” a “troublemaker,” a “rabble-rouser.” It was apparent that I was a fine guy until “Success went to his head,” until I began to “change.”

It is true that I had stored up a lot of hostility. I had been going home nights to Rachel and young Jackie, tense and irritable, keyed up because I hadn't been able to speak out when I wanted to. In 1949 I wouldn't have to do this. I could fight back when I wanted. That sounds as though I wanted to get even, and I'm sure that is partly true. I wouldn't have been human otherwise. But, more than revenge, I wanted to be Jackie Robinson, and for the first time I would be justified because by 1949 the
principle
had been established: the major victory won. There were enough blacks on other teams to ensure that American baseball could never again turn its back on minority competitors.

When I reported for spring training I was right on target, weightwise, in excellent condition, and my morale was high. On the first day a sportswriter who interviewed me, quoted me as saying, “They'd better be rough on me this year because I'm sure going to be rough on them.”

Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler had me on the carpet for that statement. I couldn't help wondering if he would have called up Ty Cobb, Frankie Frisch, or Pepper Martin—all white and all given to sounding off—for the same thing. I told the commissioner exactly how I felt and that, while I had no intention of creating problems, I was no longer going to turn my cheek to insults. Chandler completely understood my position, and that was the end of our interview.

During spring training it looked as though there would be definite racial trouble ahead. We were scheduled to play in Atlanta in April. The Atlanta newspapers announced that the Grand Dragon of the Klan had warned the Dodgers that Roy Campanella and I would not be allowed to play because interracial games were against the laws of the state. Dr. Samuel Green was the top Klansman and Earl Mann ran the Atlanta Crackers team. Green and his bedsheet brigade were assailed in the local press for indicating that, if black players came to Atlanta with the Dodgers, there would be bloody violence.

Mr. Rickey predicted that there would be an assault of enthusiasm instead of violence and that we would be threatened by hoards of autograph seekers rather than Klansmen. It was another Rickey prediction that was right on target. The autograph-seeking crowds after that first game were tremendous. Almost 50,000 turned out for each of the three games, and for the Sunday game there were about 14,000 black fans. I don't know whether that disheartened the Klan or not, but there was absolutely no trouble. In a number of other Southern cities that season, we didn't even encounter threats. The fans were accepting integrated baseball, but there were other problems to contend with.

In one game at Vero Beach I had gotten into a hassle with a young Brooklyn farmhand which almost came to blows. Later, during the season, I was thrown out of a game for the second time. The penalty was for grabbing at my throat—a sign that signified an umpire was choking up. “Choking up” meant that the umpire was favoring home teams on decisions.

In acting like this, I wasn't doing anything that players hadn't been doing for years. All typical players with spirit act that way. They throw their hands in the air in disgust, kick bitterly at the ground or at a glove. They shake their heads in disbelief at decisions. They react. Sometimes they get fines. Most of the time, unless they do something terribly violent, there just isn't any aftermath at all.

I received a great deal of personal publicity in 1949. Sometimes, in the dressing room, in the midst of a group of Dodgers, all of us would sound off about something we didn't approve of. A writer outside the door who had heard what we were saying would do a piece telling the world what Robinson was “popping off” about. That was one of the reasons for the excess publicity. Another was that I said pretty much what was on my mind whenever the press interviewed me. Sportswriters seemed to come directly to me whenever there was a hint of a story. They knew I would say what I thought. One of them once told me I represented the difference between steak and hamburger on the dinner plates of some writers. The sportswriters knew I wouldn't back down if I got into trouble—that I wouldn't whine that “I was misquoted.”

It felt good to be able to breathe freely, to speak out when I wanted to. There was also another good element. Many times when I made strong or controversial statements, I was not fighting for a personal thing. I was standing up for my team. I was saying things some of my teammates felt but were reluctant to say. The Dodgers appreciated this, and it was a refutation of the charge that I was making verbal grandstand plays to promote myself.

 

In July, 1949, I was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee headed by Georgia Congressman John S. Wood. He sent me a telegram asking me to come to Washington to testify before his committee “to give the lie to statements by Paul Robeson.” I learned that the committee had also invited other blacks, some prominent lawyers, sociol-ogists, ministers, and educators. I was impressed by the fact that a Congressional committee had asked for my views, but I realized that they must have felt my popularity with black and white sports-loving masses would help them refute the Robeson statement. I was in a dilemma because the statement was disturbing to me in some ways, although I believed I knew why it had been made.

Paul Robeson, the noted singer, an active fighter against racism, had been quoted in the world press as saying that American Negroes would not fight for America in case of a war against Russia. It was not the first time Robeson had troubled the establishment. He was a black man who, in white eyes, “had it made.” But he was an embattled and bitter man. He looked back on a childhood in a city where white people pushed blacks off the sidewalk. He grew up, not in the South, but in Princeton, New Jersey. He had gone to Rutgers University, become Phi Beta Kappa and the captain of a record-making football team. Robeson remembered sitting on the bench during certain football games even though he was the star because a Southern college was playing his team and would not countenance the presence of a black man on the field. Paul was a brilliant law student. When he was graduated from law school and looked for jobs with white law firms (there were few black firms in those days), he found he was discriminated against. Even after he became an eminent artist, he learned with resentment and sorrow that after the applause had died, he was once again a nigger. When he was on tour, hotels found polite excuses—sometimes not polite—for not taking him in. In others that did give him accommodations, he was asked to take his meals in his room.

In 1931 Robeson left his country, announcing that he would live in England. He took his son, Paul, to Russia to be educated. In Russia he found a country where “I walked the earth for the first time with complete dignity.” He had not yet officially espoused Communism, but his statement, from Paris, declaring blacks would not fight Russia for America, had aroused Con-gress and the press.

I was not sure about what to do. Rachel and I had long talks about it. She felt I should follow my instincts. I didn't want to fall prey to the white man's game and allow myself to be pitted against another black man. I knew that Robeson was striking out against racial inequality in the way that seemed best to him. However, in those days I had much more faith in the ultimate justice of the American white man than I have today. I would reject such an invitation if offered now.

The newspaper accounts seemed to picture the great singer as speaking for the whole race of black people. With all the respect I had for him, I didn't believe anyone had the right to do that. I thought Robeson, although deeply dedicated to his people, was also strongly influenced by his attraction to Soviet Russia and the Communist cause. I wasn't about to knock him for being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. That was his right. But I was afraid that Robeson's statement might discredit blacks in the eyes of whites. If his statement meant that
all
black people—not just
some
blacks—would refuse to defend America, then it seemed to me that he had been guilty of too sweeping an assumption. I was black and he wasn't speaking for me. I had served in the Armed Forces and had been badly mistreated. When I couldn't defend my country for the injustice I suffered, I was still proud to have been in uniform. I felt that there were two wars raging at once—one against foreign enemies and one against domestic foes—and the black man was forced to fight both. I felt we must not back down on either front. This land belongs to us as much as it belongs to any immigrant or any descendant of the American colonists, and slavery in this country—in whatever sophisticated form—must end. There are whites who would love to see us refuse to defend our country because then we could relinquish our right to be Americans. It isn't a perfect America and it isn't run right, but it still belongs to us. As my friend the Reverend Jesse Jackson says, “It ain't our government, but it's our country.”

After word got out that I had been asked to testify, Rae and I received an overwhelming amount of letters, wires, and telephone calls. Some sought to dissuade me from going to Washington, others gave advice on what I should say, and still others threatened me with a loss of popularity in the black community and charged I would be a “traitor” to my people if I testified. Obviously some of the mail had been organized by the Communist Party, but there was a considerable amount that Rachel and I judged was sincerely free of political motivation. After we considered all the factors, I decided to testify.

The speech I gave in front of the committee was well-received. However, many of the newspaper articles praising it, also gave the impression that I had put down Robeson hard. That wasn't true. The major points I made were these:

I said that the question of Communist activity in the United States wasn't a matter of partisan politics. I mentioned that some of the policies of the committee itself had become political issues.

I told the committee that I didn't pretend to be an expert on Communism or any other kind of political “ism,” but I was an expert on being a colored American, having had thirty years of experience at it, and I knew how difficult it was to be in the minority. I felt that we had made some progress in baseball and that we could make progress in other American fields provided we got rid of some of the misunderstandings the public still suffered from. There had been a lot of misunderstanding on the subject of Communism among Negroes in this country that was bound to hurt my people's cause unless it was cleared up. Every Negro worth his salt hated racial discrimination, and if it happened that it was a Communist who denounced discrimination, that didn't change the truth of his charges. It might be true that Communists kicked up a big fuss over racial discrimination because it suited their purposes. However, that was no reason to pretend that the whole issue was a creation of the Communist imagination. This talk about “Communists stirring up Negroes to protest” only made present misunderstandings worse.

I then said I had been asked to express my views on Paul Robeson's statement to the effect that American Negroes would refuse to fight in any war against Russia because we loved Russia so much. I commented that if Mr. Robeson actually made that statement, it sounded very silly to me but that he had a right to his personal views. People shouldn't get scared and think that one Negro among 15,000,000 of us, speaking to a Communist group in Paris, could speak for the rest of his race.

I wound up my statement by saying:

“I can't speak for any fifteen million people any more than any other person can, but I know that I've got too much invested for my wife and child and myself in the future of this country, and I and other Americans of many races and faiths have too much invested in our country's welfare, for any of us to throw it away because of a siren song sung in bass.