Jackie Robinson by Arnold Rampersad Read Free Book Online Page A

Willa Mae, Jack and these teachers formed “a deep, embedded friendship” that lasted the rest of Jack’s life, long after he became famous. This affection existed despite the fact that the idea of white supremacy was entrenched in the school system. In a confidential survey of Pasadena schoolteachers (still all white) in 1940, almost half would express a preference for schools with no black students at all; not surprisingly, more than ninety percent of the black parents in the same survey believed that their children were not treated fairly in the schools. Eleanor Peters Heard remembered that while Lincoln Elementary School, which she attended, had been fully integrated, in Washington Junior High “they put all of the blacks together.”
    After two years at the Cleveland school, Jack transferred in September 1926 to another elementary school, Washington Elementary, still only a stroll away from home. This change followed a rezoning of the Pasadena school districts when a rise in the black and Hispanic population in northwest Pasadena threatened to leave some schools with white minorities. Then, in 1931, at twelve, he left Washington Elementary and enrolled, as expected, in Washington Junior High School, which shared the same city block. His official transcript at Washington Elementary shows grades of Band C over the years, but with a decline in quality between the fourth grade and the sixth grade, his last year there. The transcript also includes a simple note made by a school official about his likely future occupation: “Gardener.”
    Jack’s precociousness as an athlete undoubtedly helped him to negotiate the traps of racism early in his life. “He was a special little boy,” his sister recalled, “and ever since I can remember, he always had a ball in his hand.” Whether the game was marbles or soccer, he wanted to win, and usually won. Why he needed to win so early in his life is impossible to say, but the desire to surpass and the discipline to achieve this goal were there. “We used to play a game in the schoolyard with everyone in a circle, and you had to dodge the ball thrown at you,” Sid Heard recalled. “Jack would always be the last one left. They’d have to stop the game.” Whites as well as blacks bowed to his gifts; indeed, most of Jack’s classmates seemed able to like and accept one another easily, without much anxiety about differences in race or social standing. He and other gifted young athletes in Pasadena, black or white or Asian-American, competed against one another without allowing race to drive a permanent wedge of hatred or resentment between them. After the democracy he had known as a boy among boys and girls in Pasadena, nothing could convince Robinson that Jim Crow in any sport—or in any other aspect of American life, for that matter—was right or natural.
    Not the least of his good luck was the accident of growing up in northwest Pasadena, which was a paradise for sports lovers. An easy walk from home was the cliff looking down on the natural wonder of Arroyo Seco. Within its expanse was the only public golf course in Pasadena, laid out in 1928, when Jack was nine. There, too, was Brookside Park, with its fine array of sporting facilities for baseball, basketball, tennis, and swimming, with only the Brookside Plunge restricted by Jim Crow. Crowning Arroyo Seco like a trophy was the Rose Bowl itself, the most storied arena in California football. Early, Jack began to hone the skills that would make his phenomenal local reputation not simply as an individual star but as a team player. “When I was in third grade,” he later recalled, “we got a soccer team together that was so good we challenged the sixth grade and beat them. After that, we represented the school in matches.” Completely accurate or not, the story will do to mark the rise of his local reputation as a sportsman, of gifts both physical and mental, from which all the important achievements of his life would