Jack Robinson, Branch Rickey and their risky collaboration in Brooklyn Part Two

A white man named Branch Rickey had risen through baseball’s ranks from a player, to a manager to the general manager in charge of baseball teams.? He and Jack Robinson shared many of the same religious beliefs and the same hatred of racism and segregation.? As General Manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Rickey remembered that: “The utter injustice of [segregation] always was in my mind - in St. Louis a negro was not permitted to buy his way into the Grandstand [of the baseball stadium] - you know that - and it has only been in recent years that he has been permitted to go into the Grandstand and of course there was no negro player in baseball - I felt very deeply about that thing all my life.”?? In 1943 Branch Rickey left St. Louis and was hired as the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was pleasantly surprised to find that financial backers of the Dodgers showed some interest in his dream to end segregation in baseball.?

Rickey reminded them that boxer Joe Louis was Black and was popular with both Black and white sports fans, so hiring a Black baseball player seemed a natural next step. Rickey told the backers that their rivals, the New York Yankees had the money to buy the best white baseball players. The only players with talents to match the Yankee players were Black athletes. Creating a team able to beat the Yankees would drive up ticket sales because, for the first time, people of all races would flock to Ebbets Field to see the games. Once Hitler and fascism had been defeated in Europe, Black soldiers and sailors returning home to Brooklyn would be very supportive of the Dodgers and their stand against racism at home.? Branch Rickey’s plan made sense morally and financially to the investors and they agreed to let him move forward, slowly and cautiously.

Over the summer of 1945, Branch Rickey sent three scouts out to watch Black baseball players as they played in front of Black baseball fans in the Negro leagues across America.? Rickey was looking for one player who dominated the game, who excelled at hitting the ball, stealing bases, and making spectacular catches as a fielder.? Rickey made sure that none of the scouts knew that the others were also watching Black ballplayers.? All three came back with the same recommendation: Jack Robinson was the athlete Branch Rickey was searching for.? Rickey’s years in baseball taught him that many players spent their time off the baseball field drinking and gambling.? On the field, they were fierce competitors.? Spiking each other with cleats, and throwing a ball at a batter’s head, often resulted in both teams fighting each other on the field with fans roaring in approval. It seemed an unfair double standard, but Rickey knew that the first Black athlete with the Brooklyn Dodgers would need to be someone different than the typical hard-living, hard-drinking baseball player.

?Rickey began to make inquiries about Jack Robinson’s personal life.? He learned about Robinson’s refusal to give in to racism and sit at the back of the bus while in the Army.? Robinson certainly had a credible reputation among Black people for refusing to submit to racism. He also learned that Robinson was a Christian, and on Sundays when he was home he attended a Methodist church, a church from the same denomination that Rickey attended each week.? Unlike many players who were unfaithful to their wives and girlfriends, Robinson was devoted to Rachel and only to her.? He would often call long distance on the phone or write letters to her each evening, while traveling across the country playing for the Kansas City Monarchs.?

Growing up in Pasadena California and playing sports at the University of Los Angeles, Robinson had played with and against white athletes.? He was not intimidated by anyone and was comfortable playing on a team with people of all races. Robinson was an aggressive baseball player but with the right encouragement, Rickey hoped he would win the hearts of Brooklyn baseball fans. Rickey agreed with his scouts that Jack Robinson could possibly be the baseball player able to end segregation in Baseball. He seemed to have the temperament to be the right person to be the first.? In August 1945, Rickey asked Robinson to travel to Brooklyn to meet with him about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Their meeting together on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights would forever change everything.? What Branch Rickey was asking of Jack Robinson was probably more than what one person should ask of another. In exchange for a chance to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey asked Robinson not to answer back when he was insulted by white players and fans, not to fight back when he was hit by a pitch or spiked in the leg, not to complain when he was denied a hotel room or food at a restaurant because he was Black. Instead, Rickey told Robinson that “when a pitcher insults you, hit the ball harder.? When a player spikes you, steal another base.”? Robinson was being asked to turn the physical pain and anger he felt about racism into brilliant baseball.? This was a big ask.

Rickey also asked about Rachel, and encouraged Jack to marry her as soon as possible.? He felt that Jack would need a strong partner to help him end racism in baseball.? During the conversation and in the days afterwards, Jack got the sense that Branch Rickey was truly interested in him as a person.? Jack had never known his own father, and Rickey seemed to be an encouraging, supportive father figure that cared for him but was not controlling or dominating.?

As soon as the meeting was over, Jack called Rachel. They talked about getting married and taking on Rickey’s difficult proposal.? “We discussed it from every angle and agreed that I should take the opportunity.? We disregarded the fact that I am some sort of guinea pig in this thing and decided then and there that I’d have to be the best guinea pig that ever lived, both on the field and off.” Branch Rickey assured Jack that he was not the only Black baseball player he would hire, catcher Roy Campanella and pitcher Don Newcombe would follow soon after.? Someone had to be the first, and in Branch Rickey’s mind, team Jack/Rachel Robinson was the best equipped to lead the way.

In their minds, Rachel and Jack knew that their lives ahead would be difficult, but never could have imagined the emotional toll of living through the experience.? Rachel recalled that knowing each other for many years before they married was: "Extremely important because we trusted each other and it helped us to bond during that time. There was such an incredible amount of pressure, it might have driven two people apart. But it had the opposite effect on us, it pushed us together."? Jack soon began to think of his ability to powerfully hit a baseball as something he and Rachel did together, saying “we hit a home run that day.”?

Rachel said, “We began to see ourselves in terms of a social and historical problem, to know that the issue wasn’t simply baseball, but life and death, freedom and bondage, for an awful lot of people who didn’t have the rewards that came to us.? At the same time, we had to remember that we were only two young people, who didn’t know much.? Nothing in California had quite prepared us for what was happening, how we were growing.”? Jack wrote: “? I … want to prove to those who resent me or other members of my race that we are not bad people at all.? I want to prove that God alone has the right to judge a person and that He is the one who decides people’s fates.”? He took his role very seriously saying: “I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it--and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist.”?

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When many people think back to Jack Robinson’s years playing baseball at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field they think back with fond memories of Jack and the city of Brooklyn as it was in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Brooklyn in that era was a series of large kid-friendly neighborhoods.? Scott Simon writes: “Manhattan had a landscape of towers and skyscrapers that was identifiable in most places around the world.? But Brooklyn had its own distinct panorama: church spires and three-story brownstones, small parishes and neighborhood shuls, trolley cables spitting sparks and children leaning out to shout over flower boxes, black-topped school yards and [police] precinct houses, redbrick factories and red-lit corner saloons, bare-chested men in shorts and tall black socks tanning their shoulders while sitting on tarpaper apartment house roofs, and drying laundry flapping against fire escapes. Manhattan was New York’s crown, Brooklyn was the city’s heart and lungs…Manhattan boasted that the world came to its doorstep.? But Brooklyn was at the Statue of Liberty’s side door, and much of the world moved in.”

Jason Sokol wrote about Brooklyn fans coming to see a baseball game: “The aroma Hit Them First.? The Smell of Bread rising from the Taystee factory, and cakes baking at the Ebingers [bakery], greeted the fans when they stepped out of the train station.? As the throng pressed closer to the stadium, that scent mixed with roasted peanuts and hot dogs, sweat and grass.? Then came the sounds: the excited yells of children, the vendors who hawked scorecards or newspapers.? Many Brooklyn natives, such as Joel Berger, recalled Ebbets field as “a total sensory experience.”? Nighttime made the stadium a palace, transfixing the eyes.? Joe Flaherty remembered the decadent feel “of walking through Prospect Park to see the rare night game.”? On a balmy evening in midsummer, “all of a sudden and the sky would be lit up… and as you got closer, you’d pick up your pace, and you’d give your tickets and go charging inside.”? Robert Feinstein recalled that it was easy for kids to get tickets to the game: “We had what was known as Elsie Tickets, for the bleachers.? The bleachers were the cheapest seats in Ebbets Field.? They cost 75 cents but if you had Elsie Tickets you could get in to see the games for 25 cents, and all of us had Elsie Tickets.? What Elsie Tickets were, were Borden’s ice cream wrappers.? You needed I believe it was three of them plus a quarter and you got into the game.? Borden’s Ice Cream had its mascot as Elsie the Cow, and litterbugs littered wrappers from ice cream.? Wrappers were all over the area of Ebbets Field, and all you had to do was pick them up, have a quarter and go in and see the games for a quarter.? So I did see many, many games for only 25 cents.” Once inside head cheerleader Hilda Chester rang her cowbell and cheered on her team. A band of amateur horn players struck up encouraging tunes. Scott Simon commented: “Fans followed and admired the Yankees; they cheered for the Giants; they lived and died with the Dodgers.? Ebbets Field was as flesh-and-blood familiar to most Brooklynites as their church, or their synagogue. The Dodgers were community property in a port of entry for immigrants and new arrivals.”? He noted that delicious birthday cakes were dropped off at the locker room for favorite Dodger players. Dodger players lived in the city alongside their fans, riding to Ebbets Field on the subway for practices and games like everyone else.? Jason Sokol noted that “Everyone came as a minority, and they discovered that when they arrived in Brooklyn, everyone was the same: Everyone was poor, everyone was struggling.”

Brooklyn had all the working-class charm that people remembered, and Brooklyn also had a harsher side, both are true.? For a more complete picture of the city Jack and Rachel Robinson were moving to, it is essential to know both sides of Brooklyn in 1947.? White dockworkers workers and factory workers spending long hours next to noisy machines and assembly lines were immigrants from Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as Jewish workers from Poland and Russia, Italy, Syria and Turkey. ?During World War Two, these workers toiled long hours for low-pay building and shipping the military supplies needed to win the war against Fascism. Now in 1946 and 1947, these same workers were going on strike, refusing to work until their pay was increased.? Rain or shine, in hot and cold weather, workers marched in front of closed factories and docks demanding higher pay. Families of striking workers struggled to pay for food and rent. Police fought with strikers trying to prevent strikebreakers from entering the factories and running the machines. Meanwhile, wealthy owners plotted ways to move their companies out of Brooklyn, leaving their workers without jobs.

Throughout the 1940s some people in Brooklyn were shocked by what they saw as a rise in crime.? The streets of Brooklyn seemed less safe to some adults. ?Boys and girls from all ethnic backgrounds were accused of roaming the sidewalks, stealing, vandalizing property, and fighting. The term “Juvenile Delinquent” was used to describe these children. Brooklyn’s leaders interviewed the children and found that they turned to crime because their families were suffering from poverty, there were not enough playgrounds and gyms that welcomed them, their parents were rarely at home (many were working in factories supplying the war effort) and their families were often forced to move frequently.? Others claimed that there was no rise in juvenile crime. The Teacher’s Union blamed Brooklyn’s ?Midtown Civic Union for creating a fake crime wave to push Black people out of the area and move them to “Jamaica Bay Queens.”?The Teacher’s Union accused the Midtown Civic Union of creating pretend fears about Black people the same way Nazis created false fears about Jews in Germany.

More and more people were moving to Brooklyn each year. Thousands of Black families arrived from the American South with few possessions but great hopes. Single Black men and women found their way to Brooklyn, often alone, poor, but with dreams of starting over. Many hoped for relief from Southern racism, joblessness in the South, run-down housing, violence, and senseless murders at the hands of white men. Arriving by train and bus to Brooklyn they found only slightly better conditions. Others came to Brooklyn on the A subway train, moving there from crowded areas of Harlem.?Racist housing policies meant Black people could live in only three sections of Brooklyn: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and Crown Heights.? Knowing this, landlords charged Black people high rents, and at the same time, landlords refused to repair the aging apartment buildings they owned.?

The federal government made things worse by restricting loans to people who owned homes and businesses in these areas.? Government workers created maps with red lines around Black neighborhoods, warning banks against giving loans that would have rebuilt worn-out buildings. Thousands of Black people were forced to live in crowded apartment rooms with broken floors and ceilings, water and electricity in short supply.? They endured rooms cold in the winter and broiling hot in the summer, visited at night by bugs and rats. City trash collection rarely occurred so rubbish and rats were a frequent sight along city streets.? The trolley cars were old and not well maintained. Bedford-Stuyvesant’s public schools were run down, classrooms were overcrowded and its white teachers and principals saw little point in teaching Black students how to excel at school.

To make matters worse, most labor unions were controlled by recent immigrants from Europe who refused to let Black people join.? Most higher-paying skilled labor jobs were denied Black men and women in Brooklyn even though many of them had received excellent training at trade schools and at colleges and universities.? Some of the racist practices common in the South had spread to the northern cities and to California.? Jack Robinson personally experienced this form of racism when searching for a job in his hometown of Pasadena California.? He wrote: “I always thought Pasadena was a great place until I got more experience in life.? Now I realize there is a lot of prejudice there.? But it is accomplished in an underhanded way – the worse kind of bigotry.? I don’t mean to say you can grade bigotry the way you grade milk, but at least in most places, you know where you stand.? In Pasadena, it was always hard for Negro fellows to find work.? They didn’t tell why you weren’t getting the job- but you generally guess it. They are intolerant in lots of other ways? - but I suppose that is the story in many cities, even up north.” Part Three: Anna Hedgeman and Brooklyn's Black activists open a door for Jack and Rachel Robinson