“If I had a room jammed with trophies and awards, and a child of mine came to me and asked what I had done in defence of black people, and I had to tell that child that I had kept quiet, I would have to mark myself a total failure at the whole business of living.”
Fittingly, it’s this famous Jackie Robinson quote that best captures the conviction and drive of baseball’s first black player—the man known as much for his candour as his skill on the field never needed anyone to speak on his behalf. But what many may miss when considering the legacy of the legendary No. 42 is just how hard he tried to keep silent in order to advance the cause he dedicated his life to, and the overall toll that silence took on his mental and physical health.
When Brooklyn Dodgers president and GM Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a contract in 1945, the ballplayer’s personality, strong views and solid marriage to an educated woman were a major part of the appeal. Hoping to improve the chances of the experiment working, though, Rickey ran Robinson through possible scenarios he could face once he entered the big leagues, and stressed that Robinson would have to remain calm and even-keeled while enduring extreme adversity.
“His personality was one of being strong and being vocal and being able to take a position. And so when he had to do what Mr. Rickey asked him to do and be silent in the face of challenges, it was very hard on him,” Robinson’s wife, Rachel remembers. “I worried about it having an effect on his health, because he would be so steamed up and so angry, but he couldn’t get rid of that anger in a public place.”
For Mrs. Robinson, now 93, those memories have come bubbling back to the surface recently thanks to her participation in the upcoming Ken Burns documentary Jackie Robinson, which airs on PBS in April. To this day, she believes that at least part of what caused her husband’s death from a heart attack at 53 years old was the constant stress he was under.
From being denied seats on all of the flights heading to Robinson’s first spring training—their “honeymoon”—to not being able to stay in any of the same hotels as the rest of the team, life in the majors was an uphill battle for both husband and wife. But it was one that Robinson seemed destined to fight.
When he was a young child living with his family on a white street, Robinson once had a neighbour throw rocks at him. As the story goes, he picked them up and threw them right back. When someone at Stanford offered to pay his entire tuition if he chose not to attend a college that would play against the prestigious school, Robinson readily declined. And after returning home following his service in the Second World War, Robinson refused to move seats on a bus and was subsequently arrested. (The charges were eventually dropped.) His fight on the ball diamond somehow seemed like the next logical step.
“One day he had a terrible time at the ballpark and he said, ‘You go on home. I’ll be home in a little while.’ He went to the golf course and hit four buckets of balls,” Rachel Robinson recalls. “He came home feeling different because he had been able to expend some of that energy and some of that anger and think those balls were other people. But it was tough on him. Because of his personality, it was very difficult for him to be restrained and not answer back and not fight back openly.”
Although there were incidents (arguments with umpires, coaches and other players chief among them), the version of Robinson that appeared in the majors was much calmer than the man he’d been in his early twenties. And as led the Dodgers to victory and gradually earned acceptance, his example made it more possible for others to speak out.
“The victims of segregation have learned to present themselves in a way that other people can begin to understand the impact of segregation and discrimination. I hope we can get behind that kind of movement so that our children will be able to identify when something is happening to them that is incorrect and that they will be able to speak about it and not be quiet,” Rachel Robinson says.
Mrs. Robinson acknowledges there has been plenty of progress in Major League Baseball over the years, but says it still isn’t enough. She notes that it’s an honour to have Jackie Robinson Day every April 15—the same day her husband first took the field for the Dodgers back in ’47—because it allows people to remember the battle, but she is quick to point out that there are still very few people of colour working as coaches and managers, or occupying other positions of real authority in baseball, and that needs to change. Just such a job is what her husband always hoped for following his retirement in 1957, but the offers never came. Instead he became MLB’s first black commentator, and continued to fight for equal rights. He also went on to cofound the black-owned and -operated Freedom National Bank.
“The thing that I loved about him was his ability to commit. He was committed to the marriage, he was committed to the family, he was committed to the team, to the experiment. His ability to commit and see it through any difficulties is a sign in any person of their merit and their worthiness,” Rachel says. “We were fighting for something bigger than any one of us, and something that’s so important for not just this generation [but] the next generations. As Jack Jack said, ‘A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.’ And that’s his statement about what his life was about.”