Читать книгу Jackie Robinson онлайн

7 страница из 10

Jackie later wrote a book about his life, titled I Never Had It Made. In it, he said that the man who owned the plantation blamed Jackie’s mother for his father not working for him anymore. He told her she had to leave. She decided she no longer wanted to live in the South. She moved the family to California. They settled in Pasadena. There, they were still very poor. Jackie’s mother earned a little money cleaning houses but it was often not enough. In his book, Jackie says that on some days the family ate only because his mother brought home leftover food from the people she worked for. In an article he wrote for the Washington Post, he said, “We would get to school so hungry we could hardly stand up.” To help his family, Jackie worked to earn extra money. He delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, sold hot dogs at a football stadium, and worked other odd jobs.

Poverty was not the only hardship he endured as a boy. Even though the family was no longer in the South, they still faced bias because of their race. The Robinsons lived in a neighborhood made up mostly of white families. Some of them shouted an ugly name at Jackie and his siblings that referred to his race. Some called the police with silly complaints. Once it was because they said Jackie’s brother’s roller skates made too much noise on the sidewalk. One day, someone burned a cross on their lawn. Burning a cross is something the Ku Klux Klan does to frighten black people. None of these things worked to force Jackie’s mother to move, and the family stayed in the neighborhood.