I Never Had It Made (29 page)

I had fulfilled my boyhood dream of providing her with a decent home, a nest egg in the bank and a garden for her to work in and watch green and glorious colored things grow. After we had been able to give her all this, we constantly discovered that she was still sacrificing her own pleasures and security to help others—friends, members of the family, even strangers. Many times I felt that my mother was being foolish, letting people take advantage of her. I was wrong. She did kindnesses for people whom I considered parasites because she wanted to help them. It was her way of thinking, her way of life. She had not been a fool for others. She had given with her eyes as open as her heart. In death she was still teaching me how to live.

XXIV

Epilogue

L
ife, in spite of all the ups and downs, has been very good to me individually. Personally, I have been very fortunate. Why, then, do I insist that “I Never Had It Made”?

It is because I refuse to kid myself about the value of having a comfortable home, about having a little money in the bank, about having received awards and trophies and honors and having had the opportunity to talk and work with some of the most influential people in the world in all phases of activity.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Everything I ever got I fought hard for—and Rachel fought by my side—but I know that I haven't got the right to say truthfully that I have it made. I cannot possibly believe I have it made while so many of my black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare. I cannot say I have it made while our country drives full speed ahead to deeper rifts between men and women of varying colors, speeds along a course toward more and more racism.

Life owes me nothing. Baseball owes me nothing. But I cannot, as an individual, rejoice in the good things I have been permitted to work for and learn while the humblest of my brothers is down in a deep hole hollering for help and not being heard.

That is why I have devoted and dedicated my life to service. I don't like to be in debt. And I owe. Some of my friends tell me I've paid the note a thousandfold. But I still feel I owe—till every man can rent and lease and buy according to his money and his desires; until every child can have an equal opportunity in youth and manhood; until hunger is not only immoral but illegal; until hatred is recognized as a disease, a scourge, an epidemic, and treated as such; until racism and sexism and narcotics are conquered and until every man can vote and any man can be elected if he qualifies—until that day Jackie Robinson and no one else can say he has it made.

I have so many memories.

Rachel and I are not given to sloppy sentimentalism. But we can honestly say that each of us has stood at the center of the other's existence; that we have honored and loved each other; that we have never broken our marriage contract and that we wouldn't trade a day of it—not the sorrows or joys—for all the gold in the world.

Memories.

Of my mother who was a simple, understanding, loving, and courageous woman who gave me both tools and weapons to help in living my life.

Memories of people who have impressed me as vital to the cause of black leadership.

Remembering first observing and getting to know Reverend Jesse Jackson, the country preacher. When he was head of Operation Breadbasket, I accepted his invitation to go to Chicago and be guest speaker at one of his remarkable Saturday morning meetings. Remembering my time as a guest at Jesse's and Jacqueline's home in Chicago, observing this dedicated young leader's almost around-the-clock devotion to his job.

I was proud to become first vice-president when Jesse organized the fast-growing PUSH (People United to Save Human-ity) at the beginning of 1972 after he resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The organization, which some predicted would exist for a brief while and then fail, has made incredible strides. This has been a result of the outstanding leadership of the thirty-one-year-old who is a protégé of the late Dr. King. Bitterness and rivalry with SCLC has apparently dissolved into some semblance of understanding and cooperation. Powerful alliances have been formed with the other civil rights agencies. With Jesse's gift for major fund-raising and inspiring fellowship, the organization has been able to promote something like a million dollars, mostly from blacks themselves, and has been able to buy its own national headquarters in Chicago. Activity on the national scene has included confrontations with large corporations which are not giving blacks their fair share of jobs, agency business, newspaper advertising, public relations work, and philanthropic support. PUSH was one of the major moving forces in the historic Black Political Convention in Gary, and Reverend Jackson rates the great credit for his role in unseating the Richard J. Daley delegation at Miami, although the press has chosen to give most of the praise for this to whites.

I have hopes for Jesse Jackson. I think he offers the most viable leadership for blacks and oppressed minorities in America and also for the salvation of our national decency. I think Jesse's leadership is potentially one of majestic proportions. He is totally dedicated, and if we are to arise out of this deepening pit of polarization between us as a people, it will be by supporting the kind of leadership Jesse Jackson offers.

Memories of Adam Clayton Powell. During Adam's latter years I did not agree with him on many subjects, but in his early career he was one of my idols. I thought he could become a commanding force in the nation. He did for a while and he accomplished a great deal, but it was such a bitter disappointment to see him come to the place where he apparently no longer cared. Racism drove him from the Congress, but Adam, I feel, helped to write his own ticket to disaster.

Memories of leaders! The dean of them all, A. Philip Randolph. Courtly, eloquent. A man of integrity. The late Whitney M. Young, Jr., a family friend and a man much misunderstood because he acted out his role as a racial diplomat in the board rooms and the drawing rooms of the mighty.

Leaders. Some, I think, failed us. With all his gifts, Bayard Rustin, in his latter years, has come across to me as one of those who wants to please white people even if the favors and spotlight he gets cost black people a heavy price as in the race-baiting activities of Albert Shanker.

Angry memories.

The people who write or call or tell me in person that they are about to punish me for expressing my views with which they disagree.

As though they're talking to some school kid! Then they go on to threaten to withdraw their approval of me. One day, twenty years ago, they liked the way I stole home or admired my capacity to be insulted or injured and turn and walk away. For that admiration they have given me, I am supposed henceforth and forevermore to surrender my soul. I am not allowed an opinion. If I become naturally, normally indignant, they describe my mood as one of rage. Look what we did for this guy by admiring him and here's how he repays us—by thinking he has the right to say something we don't agree with. I don't owe any living person my soul, my integrity, my freedom of thought and speech. People who believe they have the right to restrain and repress these freedoms are mentally sick.

Ironic memories!

Thinking about how inept many people of my generation are in judging youth. When I requested a meeting with Black Panthers in Brooklyn, I wanted to talk to them, man to man. I had read about their programs and platforms and found them, in the main, admirable. I believe that most people who have attacked them have not studied their programs. I wanted to hear their response to the main charge that concerned me—that they were initiators of violence. I had a meeting with them in their headquarters in the heart of the black community. I was deeply impressed with them, although not sold on every point raised. But as I came out of the meeting, I saw on the surrounding streets a dramatic example of one of the most serious grievances they had expressed. Groups of white policemen were clustered in the area.

I remember my own dangerous confrontation with a white policeman in the lobby of the Apollo Theater recently. It was a day soon after a couple of police officers had been killed in Harlem. I came from my office at Freedom National Bank a few doors down 125th Street to the Apollo. On my way into the lobby, an officer, a plainclothesman, accosted me. He asked me roughly where I was going, and I asked what the hell business it was of his. He grabbed me and spectators passing by told me later that he had pulled out his gun. I was so angry at his grabbing me and so busy telling him he'd better get his hands off me that I didn't remember seeing the gun. By this time people had started crowding around, excitedly telling him my name, and he backed off. Thinking over that incident, it horrifies me to realize what might have happened if I had been just another citizen of Harlem. It shouldn't be necessary to be named Jackie Robinson to keep from getting brutalized in John Lindsay's Fun City or Dick Daley's Chicago.

Another memory about young people and how we condemn them just on the basis of rumor. When the kids at Cornell University were photographed in 1969 confronting faculty and administration people with rifles, the media and black and white leaders condemned them. I wrote them a letter, asking for their point of view. I received an answer which seemed to indicate that the whole story had not been told. I got some papers to publish their side—but only after that first damning impression against them had been spread. We'd better stop using generation gap as an alibi for alienation. Young and old are guilty of that. We'd better build a bridge over that gap. Just because young people are quieter today, we've no right to assume that the problems are solved.

I hope that some day the pendulum will swing back to the time when America seemed ready to make an effort to be a united state. When and if this happens, it will be because many people of various races and religions have decided it has to be.

I honor the young blacks of sports who have chosen to be deeply involved. Arthur Ashe who, in his cool way, has chosen to storm the barriers; Floyd Patterson, a gentleman who shared a trip to Mississippi with Curt Flood and me. Floyd, I recall, showed a rare, publicly mischievous side. In plain sight of the press and some very uptight Southern rednecks, Floyd sampled water at two fountains—one marked “for colored” and one “for white,” and observed loudly, “Don't taste no different to me.” When Floyd and I went to Birmingham, at Dr. King's request, we encountered some local types who acted as though they wanted to do something violent about our visit. But there were brothers—both nonviolent and the other kind—who assured us that everything would be under control and it was.

I honor Archie Moore for his awareness and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who, after he became a success, never forgot the ghetto from which he came.

There are so many others, and they aren't all black. I'm not buying anti-white attitudes. Too many people who are not black have proven to me that being real isn't qualified by skin color but by character.

Whimsical memories!

The one and only time Rae and I were invited to the White House. It was during LBJ's administration, and my lady was radiant in her beautiful gown. I knew she was awfully pretty and LBJ seemed to think so also. He danced one dance with his former schoolteacher and one with Rachel and then disappeared upstairs to his quarters. There was a certain look in his eyes that made me know how much he appreciated Rachel.

Remembering how a riot nearly broke out with several hundred young black kids up in Harlem. I saw a white man punched and knocked down and left on the street, and a friend and I picked him up, found a policeman, and helped him into a cab. I returned to where the kids were, to be challenged as to whose side I was on. I didn't back down or show any fear (maybe because I didn't really feel any then) and I told them exactly how I felt about violence. I used some of the language of the street to communicate with them. And I heard one of them, evidently a cooler head than some, saying that you don't attack a brother. After the danger point was over, I began to realize that I had done something which could have jeopardized my life. When I described it to David, he gravely
ordered
me not to ever do anything like that again.

Memories! Of David, after Jackie's death, going through with his plan to take out a year from school and travel, virtually hitchhiking around the world. Knowing he didn't want to leave us at that time but realizing that he knew, and we knew, that he had to go. His letters, so full of the excitement and growth he was experiencing.

Of Sharon being capped as a nurse at Howard University in 1971. And hearing Rachel say I acted as if it were a coronation of a queen. Realizing that Sharon had kept her family identity to herself at school. Believing that happiness will be hers because she feels her achievements are proof that she is worthy and can do something on her own.

Of Mother Isum, Rachel's mother, whose love and devotion have helped us all.

A memory of recent date, when
Sport
magazine honored me as most “significant athlete” of the past quarter century, and the way the tears rose to my eyes when Bill Russell, whom I hold in great esteem, said that paying tribute to Jackie Robinson was his only reason for being at the kind of affair he didn't usually attend.

“I never saw him play ball,” he said. “But I would go halfway around the world to honor him because he was and is a man.”

I had a speech to make that day, but I had to just talk instead. What Bill had said threw me completely off-balance. I could not have appreciated those words more from anyone.

 

Finally, as the time draws close to publication date of this book, one of my personal problems has become intensified. I have been having some very serious problems with my eyes, apparently a direct result of my diabetic condition. As has been reported in the press, there was fear among family and friends—and, of course, my own apprehension—that I was on the way to total loss of my sight. Although I have lost one eye and have impaired sight in the other, there has been a remarkable improvement recently.