I Never Had It Made (19 page)

 

Rae and I have never had a deeply serious conflict. We do not have a storybook marriage full of sweetness and light. But we are both very grateful that our love for each other has been strong enough for us to give each other comfort through good and bad times. One of the factors that could have threatened our marriage if we hadn't applied patience and understanding to its solution had to do with Rae's professional career. When Jackie was twelve years old and David was in school full time, Rachel enrolled in New York University and began working for her master's degree in psychiatric nursing. She earned it in 1960. Rae says that one of her motivations in preparing to reenter professional life was crystallized one day when the children were going off to camp. She realized as they left that the day would be coming when they wouldn't be kids anymore. Probably all of them would go their separate ways. She would need something to do to occupy her mind, but, even more important, she did not want to go through her life being known only as Mrs. Jackie Robinson. She has a strong, independent spirit, and she wanted to be accepted as an individual in her own right. To be very honest, if I had my way, Rachel would not have a job. But having my way would constitute selfishness as well as insensitivity to her needs as a person.

Rachel says that I was proud as long as she was going to school. I was working for Chock Full O'Nuts then. We would get up very early in the morning, drive into the city from our Connecticut place, and in the evening I would go to the school and pick her up to drive her home. She studied into the wee hours and on weekends. She frequently went to bed with the kids but would then get up later to do her work. She says I was proud and pleased—and I was—when she was graduated but that when she actually began to go to work every day, my annoyance and resentment began to show. We had discussed the problem and made our agreement, but I know she is right. I really didn't want her to work, even though I knew she was entitled to aspire to her own personal goals. Now I am proud that my wife has had a successful career. Her first job was as staff nurse and supervisor on the administrative staff of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. She didn't have to work late in the day and was generally at home when the children came home from school.

In 1965 Rachel went to Yale University as assistant professor in the School of Nursing. She was also director of nursing in the Connecticut Medical Health Center in New Haven. Holding down both jobs simultaneously meant that she was involved in teaching, clinical work, and administration at the same time. She loved the work. She found it challenging and she particularly liked the contact with students. On her job Rae was known as Rachel Robinson, not Mrs. Jackie Robinson. We still laugh about one experience she had when she first went to work. An article had come out about our family in
Life
magazine. One of her co-workers was looking over the magazine and turned to look at Rachel, then back at the magazine.

“Aren't you Jackie Robinson's wife?” was the inevitable question.

Without even giving it a second thought, Rachel promptly said, “No.”

The denial just slipped out. She was so horrified when she realized what she had done that she promptly went to look for a fellow psychologist at the school. They sat down and discussed the incident. Rachel realized that she didn't really want to deny that I was part of her life but that she wanted to be known and respected as an individual in her own right.

For a while Rae told herself that it was necessary to conceal her married identity because it might make a difference to her patients who were usually accustomed to having those who took care of them remain fairly anonymous. Now she knows that this rationalization was a copout and that what she actually wanted was the assurance of her own identity. After she realized that, she didn't go around announcing that she was Mrs. Jackie Robinson, but neither did she do anything unnatural to hide it. People would discover her private identity when I went to staff parties with her. She told me once, “Now that I am established as an individual, I'm pleased to have people link me with you.” Some of her patients or co-workers often ask about me and she likes to talk about me. She kids me about a habit I have had for years—of constantly saying “we” when I am referring to myself. I hardly ever say “I.” I'm apt to say that “we caught a plane to Cincinnati” even when Rachel hasn't gone along. It's an integral part of my speech pattern.

Rachel has told me, “You don't think of me as separate, and sometimes you have a hard time allowing me to be separate.” She's right about that, and she has reminded me several times in a teasing way of what I said when mail started coming to the house addressed to Professor Rachel Robinson. I asked if that was the proper way to address her.

“Yes, honey,” Rachel answered. “I have a name, too, and there's nothing wrong with people using it.”

Sometimes I think that just about everyone in our immediate family has had an unusual struggle to gain acceptance as an individual. Although our problems were somewhat unique because of my position as a celebrity, we were really going through the crises common to any family—and particularly any black family growing up in today's society. It was the universal conflict of father and son, of growing brothers and sisters, of a man and his wife when she is trying to establish an identity and worth beyond her role as a wife—and it was the problem of an upward mobile black family in a subtly discriminatory affluent northern white society.

XV

On Being Black Among the Republicans

M
y first meeting with Nelson Rockefeller occurred in 1962 during a public event at which we were both speakers. The Nelson Rockefeller personal charm and charisma had now become legendary. It is almost impossible not to like the man. He gives two distinct impressions: that he is sincere in whatever he is saying and that, in spite of his fantastic schedule, power, and influence—at that specific moment of your contact—he has shut everything else out and is focusing his complete and concentrated attention on you.

While I admired his down-to-earth maner and outgoing ways instantly, I was anything but overwhelmed at our initial meeting. I am aware that the enormously wealthy have time to spread charm as they like. They have their worries, but survival is not one of them, as it is with us. I wasn't about to be taken in instantly by the Nelson Rockefeller charm. After all, Richard Nixon had turned the charm on me too (although his is a bit brittle compared with Rockefeller's) and look how that had turned out.

I knew that Rockefeller's family had given enormous sums to black education and other philanthropic causes for black people and that at that time (nearly twenty years ago) a significant number of black college presidents, black professionals, and a significant number of leaders of national stature had received a college education, financed by Rockefeller gifts. While I have no need to detract from the contributions of the family to black education, I felt it certainly must be weighed in terms of what went into the amassing of one of the world's greatest fortunes.

As for Nelson Rockefeller himself, I knew little or nothing about his politics. As far as I was concerned, he was just another rich guy with politics as a toy. Our first chat had nothing to do with politics. In fact, the governor took advantage of the occasion to tell me about a private problem. Since I was an officer of the Chock Full O'Nuts Restaurant chain at that time, he thought I might be able to help him. It seemed the Rockefeller family was unhappy about one of our advertising jingles which assured the public that our coffee was as good as any “Rockefeller's money can buy.” Representations about the family's feeling in the matter had been made through legal and diplomatic channels, but the offensive jingle was still being aired on radio and television commercials. I promised to mention the matter to Bill Black, Chock's president. I was surprised at Mr. Black's reaction. When I reported the Rockefeller concern, he snapped, “Good! Let them sue. We can use the publicity.”

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of that. As far as I knew, I'd probably never be in contact with the governor again. However, I began to change my mind about Rockefeller when I learned the extent of his support for a man I admired deeply, Martin Luther King.

When student sit-ins began in the South and many so-called liberals criticized them, Governor Rockefeller told the press that he believed the protesting youngsters were morally justified. I also learned that, unlike Richard Nixon, who failed to speak out about the Georgia jailing of Dr. King, the governor had promptly wired the President asking for his protection.

I also learned of some of the governor's unpublicized actions. Before Rockefeller became governor, the world was stunned by the attempted assassination of Dr. King by a black woman in a Harlem department store. Rushed to Harlem Hospital, Dr. King, who had been wounded by a letter opener plunged into a spot just below the tip of his aorta, immediately was put under the care of a team of crack surgeons headed by Dr. Louis Wright. The newspapers gave intensive publicity to the fact that the then-Governor Harriman had sped to the hospital escorted by police convoy with shrieking sirens. Harriman ordered every available facility utilized to save Dr. King. Then he stayed at the hospital for several hours, keeping vigil and awaiting word of the civil rights leader's condition. Governor Harriman de-servedly got credit for his concern about a beloved black leader. But it was Nelson Rockefeller who quietly issued orders to have the hospital bill sent to him.

I learned that the governor had made frequent gifts to Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I was on the scene a few hours after hate-crazed bigots burned Georgia churches to the ground. Dr. King asked me to head a national fund-raising drive to restore the churches. Two of the first substantial donations were made by my then-boss Mr. William Black and by Governor Rockefeller. We did rebuild those churches.

Yet with all his goodwill gestures and philanthropies, there was one fact which bothered me deeply about the Rockefeller Administration in 1962. Although New York has, for many years, enjoyed a reputation as a liberal state, the higher echelons of the state government were all white. There were no blacks at top-level, policy-making positions. There was not even one black man or woman who had a direct line to the governor and who could alert him to the concerns and grievances of black people. I wondered if Nelson Rockefeller's generosity to black causes was a compartmentalized activity of his private life, and I was sufficiently curious to write him a letter.

My letter to the governor was a harshly honest letter. I said I felt no self-respecting black man could respect an administration that had no blacks in significant jobs. Governor Rockefeller met my honesty head on. He telephoned me personally and told me how much he appreciated my truthfulness. He admitted that things were not as they should be for blacks in state government and that he wanted to take steps to correct this; he suggested we meet and talk things over within the next few days.

In the course of that telephone call, I bluntly said, “If you don't want to hear the down-to-earth truth about how you are thought of in the black community, let's just forget about it.”

He assured me that he wanted and needed unbiased advice. The meeting, unadvertised in the press and unreported after it took place, was held in a private room at the top of Radio City Music Hall. About a dozen to fifteen people whom I had invited attended. For some three hours we told the governor our grievances about the failure of his administration to include blacks in the political and government action. The people there didn't hesitate to recite harsh facts. He was aware of some of the facts we gave him; other facts seemed to shock him. He accepted our criticism, our recommendations for change, and he acted to bring about reforms. He did not bring any apologists or token black leaders into the meeting to justify himself. He brought an open mind and someone to take notes.

Within a few months after that meeting, the governor had implemented virtually all the recommendations that the
ad hoc
committee had made. Out of that one meeting came some sweeping and drastic changes, some unprecedented appointments of blacks to high positions, ensuring influence by blacks in the governor's day-to-day policy decisions. Some of the governor's top-level people were very unhappy about these changes.

In 1964 Governor Rockefeller asked me to become one of six deputy national directors of his campaign. I had spent seven years at Chock Full O'Nuts. I decided to resign from my job rather than ask for leave. The knowledge I had acquired about the business world, I considered invaluable. I had been criticized by some of my fellow officers in the company who genuinely felt I took the part of the employees too often, that I was too soft on them. Even so I had been given generous raises and benefits, allowed to purchase a healthy bundle of stock, and been elected to the board. I was becoming restless; I wanted to involve myself in politics as a means of helping black people and I wanted my own business enterprises. I had been increasingly convinced of the need for blacks to become more integrated into the mainstream of the economy. I was not thinking merely of job integration. A statement Malcolm X made was most impressive. Referring to some college students who were fighting to be served in Jim Crow restaurants, Malcolm said he wanted not only the cup of coffee but also the cup and saucer, the counter, the store, and the land on which the restaurant stood.

I believed blacks ought to become producers, manufacturers, developers, and creators of businesses, providers of jobs. For too long we had been spending much too much money on liquor while we owned too few liquor stores and were not even manufacturing it. If you found a black man making shoes or candy or ice cream, he was a rarity. We talked about not having capital, but we needed to learn to take a chance, to be daring, to pool capital, to organize our buying power so that the millions we spent did not leave our communities to be stacked up in downtown banks. In addition to the economic security we could build with green power, we could use economic means to reinforce black power. How much more effective our demands for a piece of the action would be if we were negotiating from the strength of our own self-reliance rather than stating our case in the role of a beggar or someone crying out for charity. We live in a materialistic society in which money doesn't only talk—it screams. I could not forget that some of the very ballplayers who swore the most fervently that they wouldn't play with me because I was black were the first to begin helping me, giving me tips and advice, as soon as they became aware that I could be helpful to them in winning the few thousand more dollars players receive as world series champs. The most prejudiced of the club owners were not as upset about the game being contaminated by black players as they were by fearing that integration would hurt them in their pocketbooks. Once they found out that more—not fewer—customers, black and white, were coming through those turnstiles, their prejudices were suppressed.

When Governor Rockefeller invited me on board his campaign ship, I had no idea of any long-term relationship in politics. I saw this as a sign that now was the time for me to enter into a new world of political involvement with a man I respected. At the same time I could be free to pursue some business endeavors that had been proposed to me. I had been approached about becoming a key organizer in a projected, new insurance company, an integrated firm that, I hoped, could be a force in correcting some of the unjust practices of some insurance firms that treat blacks unfairly. At this time the group organizing a new bank in Harlem—Freedom National—had asked me to help put it together and to become chairman of the board, and there were other business ventures in which I felt I might be able to play a vital role. When I submitted my resignation to Bill Black, he understood my aspirations. He didn't want me to leave, and he was genuinely concerned as to whether I was making the wisest move. He tried to persuade me to stay. I appreciated his attitude, but my mind was made up. I joined the Rockefeller campaign headquarters.

One of the first things that became clear to me was that I had not been called on to be the black adviser to the campaign. Often white politicians secure the services of a black man and slot him only for appearances and activities within the black community. Sometimes they do this to avoid letting whites know that they are making a strong pitch for black support. During the Rockefeller campaign I met with groups and made appearances before audiences which were sometimes integrated, sometimes predominantly black, and other times mainly white. On several occasions, when the governor came into town for a meeting with politicians or community people, I would accompany him. At some of the larger meetings, I would be asked to introduce the governor.

I was not as sold on the Republican party as I was on the governor. Every chance I got, while I was campaigning, I said plainly what I thought of the right-wing Republicans and the harm they were doing. I felt the GOP was a minority party in terms of numbers of registered voters and could not win unless they updated their social philosophy and sponsored candidates and principles to attract the young, the black, and the independent voter. I said this often from public, and frequently Republican, platforms. By and large Republicans had ignored blacks and sometimes handpicked a few servile leaders in the black community to be their token “niggers.” How would I sound trying to go all out to sell Republicans to black people? They're not buying. They know better.

I admit freely that I think, live, and breathe black first and foremost. That is one of the reasons I was so committed to the governor and so opposed to Senator Barry Goldwater. Early in 1964 I wrote a
Speaking Out
piece for
The Saturday Evening Post.
A Barry Goldwater victory would insure that the GOP would become completely the white man's party. What happened at San Francisco when Senator Goldwater became the Republican standard-bearer confirmed my prediction.

I wasn't altogether caught off guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition. I was a special delegate to the convention through an arrangement made by the Rockefeller office. That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude toward black people.

A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

The same high-handed methods had been there.

The same belief in the superiority of one religious or racial group over another was here. Liberals who fought so hard and so vainly were afraid not only of what would happen to the GOP but of what would happen to America. The Goldwaterites were afraid—afraid not to hew strictly to the line they had been spoon-fed, afraid to listen to logic and reason if it was not in their script.