president apologized to Jack and the Bulldogs, who had won both the fight and the game.
The rest of the season saw the team record decline, although Jack remained a feared player. PJC finished third in the conference. He ended in second place, by one point, in the race for individual scoring honors in the Western Division of the Southern California Junior College Athletic Association. By this time, he was also in deep trouble.
Within a few days of the Long Beach game riot on January 22, Jack spent a night in the Pasadena city jail. His arrest had nothing to do with the riot. He and a friend named Jonathan Nolan were coming home from seeing a movie when Nolan began to sing a wildly popular song of the day called “Flat Foot Floogie.” They passed a policeman, who felt insulted by the song and decided to challenge Nolan and Robinson. One thing led to another, and Jack ended up in jail. He spent the night in custody; no one at the station bothered to call his mother.
On January 25, at a hearing, Robinson was sentenced to ten days in jail. However, bowing no doubt to the fact that this was Jack’s first arrest, and that he was a football star, the judge suspended the sentence on condition that Robinson not be arrested for two years.
Although the incident apparently did not make the newspapers, it probably became common knowledge in Pasadena. The myth began to takeshape of a Jack Robinson in frequent conflict with the police, young Jack Robinson as jailbird. In 1987, fifteen years after his death, a
Star-News
reporter would write: “There is a story that during his junior college career, Robinson frequently was tossed into jail on a Friday night only to be released for Saturday’s game.” Jack’s brother Mack, openly bitter at Pasadena, either wanted to lend credence to the story or was made to appear so: “All that left a lot of scars,” Mack said in response to this “story.” “This town gave Jack nothing.”
The “story” is almost certainly false, and part of the myth of an antisocial, violent Jackie Robinson that arose, ironically, even as he struggled to assert himself against racism in the major leagues. The myth would often involve tales of Robinson punching white men in the mouth, especially smashing their teeth, as the would-be mythmaker pressed into service the embodiment of black male heroism, Jackie Robinson, against centuries of slavery, segregation, and racism. Even Mack endorsed the myth, as in avowing elsewhere that Jack “had busted many a white boy in the mouth if he was out of line with him,” or in boasting that he and Jack and their brothers had “kicked some white ass” in their youth. “Kids aren’t so tough when you can knock them down with a punch.”
Undoubtedly there were fistfights now and then between Jack and young whites, but probably nothing like the legend of Jack’s brutal aggressiveness. Ray Bartlett remembered Jackie as having a far worse temper than Bartlett himself but being much less willing to fight on the football field. “We didn’t have face masks in those days—your bare face hung out,” Bartlett said. “Jack would see a little blood, and I would see it, and it would make me angry, but Jack wouldn’t react that way. Jack really didn’t fight back like I thought he should have. I didn’t see him as being a real fighter. I’ve always said that what made him such a good runner was that he didn’t want to get hit. You couldn’t get away with anything against him, but he was not dirty and he was not one to start a fight.”
Robinson’s eagerness to talk back to the police became mixed up in legend with the fact of his raw physical power and then became conflated into a habit of brutality when in fact he drew a line early between protest and violence. Hank Shatford of the PJC
Chronicle
in Jack’s time, later a lawyer and superior court judge in Pasadena, found out what the police thought of Jack. “They didn’t regard Jack as a rabble-rouser,”
The rest of the season saw the team record decline, although Jack remained a feared player. PJC finished third in the conference. He ended in second place, by one point, in the race for individual scoring honors in the Western Division of the Southern California Junior College Athletic Association. By this time, he was also in deep trouble.
Within a few days of the Long Beach game riot on January 22, Jack spent a night in the Pasadena city jail. His arrest had nothing to do with the riot. He and a friend named Jonathan Nolan were coming home from seeing a movie when Nolan began to sing a wildly popular song of the day called “Flat Foot Floogie.” They passed a policeman, who felt insulted by the song and decided to challenge Nolan and Robinson. One thing led to another, and Jack ended up in jail. He spent the night in custody; no one at the station bothered to call his mother.
On January 25, at a hearing, Robinson was sentenced to ten days in jail. However, bowing no doubt to the fact that this was Jack’s first arrest, and that he was a football star, the judge suspended the sentence on condition that Robinson not be arrested for two years.
Although the incident apparently did not make the newspapers, it probably became common knowledge in Pasadena. The myth began to takeshape of a Jack Robinson in frequent conflict with the police, young Jack Robinson as jailbird. In 1987, fifteen years after his death, a
Star-News
reporter would write: “There is a story that during his junior college career, Robinson frequently was tossed into jail on a Friday night only to be released for Saturday’s game.” Jack’s brother Mack, openly bitter at Pasadena, either wanted to lend credence to the story or was made to appear so: “All that left a lot of scars,” Mack said in response to this “story.” “This town gave Jack nothing.”
The “story” is almost certainly false, and part of the myth of an antisocial, violent Jackie Robinson that arose, ironically, even as he struggled to assert himself against racism in the major leagues. The myth would often involve tales of Robinson punching white men in the mouth, especially smashing their teeth, as the would-be mythmaker pressed into service the embodiment of black male heroism, Jackie Robinson, against centuries of slavery, segregation, and racism. Even Mack endorsed the myth, as in avowing elsewhere that Jack “had busted many a white boy in the mouth if he was out of line with him,” or in boasting that he and Jack and their brothers had “kicked some white ass” in their youth. “Kids aren’t so tough when you can knock them down with a punch.”
Undoubtedly there were fistfights now and then between Jack and young whites, but probably nothing like the legend of Jack’s brutal aggressiveness. Ray Bartlett remembered Jackie as having a far worse temper than Bartlett himself but being much less willing to fight on the football field. “We didn’t have face masks in those days—your bare face hung out,” Bartlett said. “Jack would see a little blood, and I would see it, and it would make me angry, but Jack wouldn’t react that way. Jack really didn’t fight back like I thought he should have. I didn’t see him as being a real fighter. I’ve always said that what made him such a good runner was that he didn’t want to get hit. You couldn’t get away with anything against him, but he was not dirty and he was not one to start a fight.”
Robinson’s eagerness to talk back to the police became mixed up in legend with the fact of his raw physical power and then became conflated into a habit of brutality when in fact he drew a line early between protest and violence. Hank Shatford of the PJC
Chronicle
in Jack’s time, later a lawyer and superior court judge in Pasadena, found out what the police thought of Jack. “They didn’t regard Jack as a rabble-rouser,”
Similar Books
