Read Online Jackie Robinson by Arnold Rampersad - Free Book Online
Authors: Arnold Rampersad
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believer had been paved assiduously throughout his life by his remarkable mother.
A S HE GREW OLDER , Jack turned naturally for his closest companionship away from his older brothers to neighborhood boys nearer his own age. These included youngsters like his cousin Van Wade, a powerful hitter who was often a teammate in baseball; Sid Heard, from his earliest days at the Cleveland School; the brothers Woodrow and Ernest Cunningham, who lived only a block away; and Ray Bartlett, who would play sports with Jack from kindergarten to college and beyond. In addition, Jack’s circle included Japanese-Americans, like the brothers George, Frankie, and Ben Ito, and Shig Kawai, an excellent football and baseball player; Tim and Bill Herrera, who were Mexican-Americans; and such white pals as George Spivak and Danny Galvin, a little fellow, younger than Jack, who was one of the most relentless scorers in Pasadena basketball.
Ernie Cunningham remembered that while Jack took a particular liking at one time to him and Ben Ito, Jack himself was not always liked. “At that time,” he claimed, “Jackie wasn’t a very likable person, because his whole thing was just win, win, win, and beat everybody.” Some, but not all, of these friends resolved themselves at one point into what passed into local lore as the “Pepper Street Gang.” Exactly when, and for how long, the gang operated is not clear—or even how democratic it was. “Our gang was made up of blacks, Japanese, and Mexican kids,” Jack wrote just before his death; “all of us came from poor families and had extra time on our hands.” But others, such as Eleanor Peters Heard, who lived near the gang’s favorite street corner, would recall white members, including Danny Galvin. Another white friend of Jack’s, Warren Dorn, who later became an influentialpolitical leader as mayor of Pasadena and a Los Angeles County commissioner, also claimed to have been a member of the gang.
Only its harshest critics thought the gang dangerous; for a city of its size, Pasadena’s juvenile delinquency rate was well below average. “There was no drugs, no smoking, no liquor, no beating up anybody, nothing of that nature,” recalled Ray Bartlett, who knew everyone in the Pepper Street Gang but was forbidden by his mother to be a member. “We never got into vicious or violent crime,” Robinson insisted, but indulged instead in pranks and petty theft. They threw “dirt clods” at passing cars, “snatched” balls on the golf course and often sold them back to the players; “swiped” fruit at produce stands; “snitched what we could” at local stores. Such activity was enough to make some parents wary, and to bring Jack into direct contact with the police. His first, but not his last, brush with the law came when he was once “escorted to jail at gunpoint by the sheriff” for taking a swim in the city reservoir, which he felt justified in doing because of the rules at the Brookside Plunge. In fact, partly because of his local fame as a schoolboy athlete, the Pasadena police came to know Jack fairly well; at one point, he seemed likely to become, as he himself said, “a full-fledged juvenile delinquent.”
“Hardly a week went by,” Jack wrote, “when we didn’t have to report to Captain Morgan, the policeman who was head of the Youth Division.” Given the degree of racism and segregation in Pasadena, he was lucky in having to deal with Hugh D. Morgan. “About nine feet tall,” as Ernie Cunningham remembered him, the burly, cigar-smoking former football player from Louisiana State University had migrated to Pasadena and joined the force in 1924. A student of juvenile delinquency control at the University of Southern California, Morgan relied on psychology and diplomacy rather than threats or brute force. “He was always ready to give us advice,” Jack wrote in 1949, “and maybe a dollar or two if he thought we hadn’t had any breakfast that morning.” Willa Mae
A S HE GREW OLDER , Jack turned naturally for his closest companionship away from his older brothers to neighborhood boys nearer his own age. These included youngsters like his cousin Van Wade, a powerful hitter who was often a teammate in baseball; Sid Heard, from his earliest days at the Cleveland School; the brothers Woodrow and Ernest Cunningham, who lived only a block away; and Ray Bartlett, who would play sports with Jack from kindergarten to college and beyond. In addition, Jack’s circle included Japanese-Americans, like the brothers George, Frankie, and Ben Ito, and Shig Kawai, an excellent football and baseball player; Tim and Bill Herrera, who were Mexican-Americans; and such white pals as George Spivak and Danny Galvin, a little fellow, younger than Jack, who was one of the most relentless scorers in Pasadena basketball.
Ernie Cunningham remembered that while Jack took a particular liking at one time to him and Ben Ito, Jack himself was not always liked. “At that time,” he claimed, “Jackie wasn’t a very likable person, because his whole thing was just win, win, win, and beat everybody.” Some, but not all, of these friends resolved themselves at one point into what passed into local lore as the “Pepper Street Gang.” Exactly when, and for how long, the gang operated is not clear—or even how democratic it was. “Our gang was made up of blacks, Japanese, and Mexican kids,” Jack wrote just before his death; “all of us came from poor families and had extra time on our hands.” But others, such as Eleanor Peters Heard, who lived near the gang’s favorite street corner, would recall white members, including Danny Galvin. Another white friend of Jack’s, Warren Dorn, who later became an influentialpolitical leader as mayor of Pasadena and a Los Angeles County commissioner, also claimed to have been a member of the gang.
Only its harshest critics thought the gang dangerous; for a city of its size, Pasadena’s juvenile delinquency rate was well below average. “There was no drugs, no smoking, no liquor, no beating up anybody, nothing of that nature,” recalled Ray Bartlett, who knew everyone in the Pepper Street Gang but was forbidden by his mother to be a member. “We never got into vicious or violent crime,” Robinson insisted, but indulged instead in pranks and petty theft. They threw “dirt clods” at passing cars, “snatched” balls on the golf course and often sold them back to the players; “swiped” fruit at produce stands; “snitched what we could” at local stores. Such activity was enough to make some parents wary, and to bring Jack into direct contact with the police. His first, but not his last, brush with the law came when he was once “escorted to jail at gunpoint by the sheriff” for taking a swim in the city reservoir, which he felt justified in doing because of the rules at the Brookside Plunge. In fact, partly because of his local fame as a schoolboy athlete, the Pasadena police came to know Jack fairly well; at one point, he seemed likely to become, as he himself said, “a full-fledged juvenile delinquent.”
“Hardly a week went by,” Jack wrote, “when we didn’t have to report to Captain Morgan, the policeman who was head of the Youth Division.” Given the degree of racism and segregation in Pasadena, he was lucky in having to deal with Hugh D. Morgan. “About nine feet tall,” as Ernie Cunningham remembered him, the burly, cigar-smoking former football player from Louisiana State University had migrated to Pasadena and joined the force in 1924. A student of juvenile delinquency control at the University of Southern California, Morgan relied on psychology and diplomacy rather than threats or brute force. “He was always ready to give us advice,” Jack wrote in 1949, “and maybe a dollar or two if he thought we hadn’t had any breakfast that morning.” Willa Mae
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