Smoketown by Mark Whitaker

Author:Mark Whitaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Jackie Robinson gets ready to play the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field during his first season as a Brooklyn Dodger, 1947.

SPORTS

8

“JACKIE’S BOSWELL”

ON A HOT FLORIDA afternoon in March 1946, two Pittsburgh Courier reporters sat in a Greyhound bus station in Daytona Beach, waiting for the two passengers they had been sent to pick up. Billy Rowe had driven from Harlem, where he was settling back into his work as the paper’s entertainment columnist after two years of reporting on black troops in the Pacific. Wendell Smith, the paper’s sports editor, had come all the way from Pittsburgh. With his wide face, tortoiseshell glasses, and ever-present fedora, Smith had a naturally friendly look, but today he seemed anxious. Although they were in Florida working for the paper, the two reporters had been quietly hired to keep an eye on the man who six months earlier had become the most talked about minor league baseball prospect in America. But the recruit was two days late for spring training, and no one knew what had happened to him. Looking around the bus station, Smith and Rowe were relieved to see no other reporters, but as the hours ticked by a small crowd of black citizens from Daytona Beach began to gather. A curious white bystander asked a porter what was going on. “Don’t you know?” the porter answered. “Jackie Robinson is coming in.”

At last, a bus from Jacksonville pulled into the station and Robinson stepped off, accompanied by his bride of three weeks, the former Rachel Isum. Rachel appeared weary, the strain of two sleepless nights showing on her normally radiant face. Her ermine coat, a wedding present from her husband, was stained with the grime of a fieldworker who had squeezed next to her on the bench at the back of the bus. Jackie, his dark face flushed and his double-breasted suit rumpled, looked furious. “Well, I finally made it,” he snapped at the two newsmen. “But I never want another trip like this one.” Rowe grabbed the couple’s valises and showed them to his red Pontiac sedan. “I’m your chauffeur!” he said cheerfully. Robinson was in no mood for friendly banter. “I’ve had better chauffeurs and I’ve had better cars!” he grumbled.

That night, as Rachel went to bed, Robinson stayed up and raged to Smith and Rowe about the indignities the couple had suffered since they boarded an American Airlines plane in Los Angeles two nights earlier. The following morning, the plane landed for a layover in New Orleans. When the Robinsons went to reboard, they were told that they had been bumped “for military reasons.” At an airport restaurant, they were allowed to order sandwiches but not to sit down. Stuck in New Orleans for the night, they could find lodging only in a segregated black hotel with tiny, foul-smelling rooms and plastic mattresses. The next day, they boarded another plane for Daytona Beach only to have it land in Pensacola for refueling. A flight attendant informed them they would have to get off to compensate for the fuel’s weight—just as three new white passengers got on.

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