A Political Lesson From Jackie Robinson

April 14, 1987|By William Safire, (copyright) 1987, New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — ``He has to do this,`` Jackie Robinson said to us that fall of 1960. ``He has to call Martin right now, today. I have the number of the jail.``

We were at a Midwestern hotel, campaigning for president with Richard Nixon. Jackie was a Rockefeller Republican, but when the New York governor failed to win the nomination, the former baseball player agreed to support the party nominee.

That was a pretty gutsy thing for him to do, considering the entire black establishment was behind John F. Kennedy, but Jackie Robinson had unique experience in breaking through in the white world.

That day, his chosen candidate`s understanding about America`s race relations was being put to the test. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been jailed. Jackie flew out to see candidate Nixon on the campaign trail to urge him to show concern in some tangible way. I took him to Bob Finch, then running the Nixon campaign, and Finch ran him in to see the candidate himself. Ten minutes later, he came out, tears of frustration in his eyes. ``He thinks calling Martin would be `grandstanding,` `` Robinson reported. ``Nixon doesn`t deserve to win.``

Jackie, who had suffered more than his share of abuse from the grandstands, pulled out of the campaign; he remained a New York Republican but never supported Nixon again. John F. Kennedy picked up the telephone, spoke to King in jail and became president. In the closest campaign of modern times, that call--that expression of concern at injustice--might have made the difference, and was one of the ``if onlys`` that Nixonites lived with for eight wilderness years.

Thanks to Jackie, however, a political lesson was learned. In 1968, after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, some of us sought to impress upon the campaigning Nixon that black Americans at that moment deserved a gesture of respect. We urged him to go to the King funeral.

He picked up the phone and called his campaign manager in New York. ``I`m sitting here with Safire, Price, Garment, all the libs,`` he told John Mitchell, ``talking about the King funeral. What do you think?`` He listened a moment and hung up, telling us ``he thinks there shouldn`t be any grandstanding.``

Grandstanding. That was the same word, I pointed out to Nixon, that a bitterly disappointed Jackie Robinson had reported he had heard as an excuse eight years before. Other aides weighed in heavily with appeals to conscience, and a reminder that if elected, he would have to be president of all the people. But the deciding factor, I think, was Nixon`s own memory of that tense conversation with the impassioned black athlete.

The candidate wisely decided to pay a private visit to Mrs. King, and to go to the funeral. (Nixon refrained from marching in the funeral parade

``because that would be grandstanding.``)

This spring, the baseball season starts with a salute to the American who broke the color barrier 40 years ago.

But the Robinson example has a political message as well. No longer is there a significant ``downside`` for any party in any region to paying court to black voters; on the contrary, failure to show concern for minority feelings is now seen as a sign of political ineptitude.

As barrier-breaking competitor, Jackie Robinson symbolized equal opportunity; later, as businessman and political participant, he worked for more actual economic opportunity. He understood that times of strain demand bipartisan expressions of respect and support, and a measure of the progress he helped achieve is that no politician today would consider that