Jackie Robinson Read Online Free PDF Page B

Grove Avenue, adorned by impressive mansions and effulgent gardens, was commonly called “Millionaires’ Row”; and signs of affluence and taste were everywhere to be seen. An educated black visitor passing through the city shortly before the arrival of the Robinsons in 1920 wrote admiringly of “a civic pride running through all the town,” as well as other features that made Pasadena unmistakably “a city of beauty and harmony.”
    In some ways, its story is a familiar American tale; in other respects, it is more or less original. Familiar enough is the conquest by whites of the Gabrielino Indians, whose unusually pale skin led some people to believe ina race of white Indians but did not save that race from extinction. Their lands, dominated to the north by the stone-faced San Gabriel Mountains and embracing the fertile San Gabriel Valley, then passed from the hands of the Church to a succession of secular owners, who presided over great ranches once a part of Mexico. Where the Gabrielinos, feeding on acorns and squash, used to roam freely, profitable grape vineyards and orange groves, often the property of eastern financial interests, began to flourish in the balmy climate. Then, in 1873, a group of Indiana citizens, sick of midwestern winters, took steps to acquire a California home in the region. By the end of the year, a model community was in the making. Wanting a quaint Indian name for their settlement, in 1875 the founders came up with “Pasadena,” which in a Chippewa dialect is said to mean “the valley,” or “of the valley.” The new community formally adopted this name.
    The founders set lofty civic goals for themselves. They divided the land in a spirit of harmony, built roads with a respect for the natural features of the land, and planted thousands of fruit trees, which led to the area being celebrated as a kind of Eden. The warm, dry climate encouraged sanitariums and hotels and a steady flow of tourists, many of whom returned to stay. Spurning heavy industry, Pasadena wooed the rich and the educated. The city, making the most of its mountains and clean air, factors conducive to geology and astronomy, established what became the major science school in the west, the California Technical Institute, or Caltech. “Sophisticated and wealthy patrons fostered the arts,” one historian has noted, “and Pasadena became an important center for distinctive architecture, painting and sculpture, music, literature and science.”
    For a while, Pasadena was a liberal community, proud of its Indiana abolitionist roots and its civic ideals. The city openly welcomed, first as visitors, then as settlers, Jason and Owen Brown, sons of John Brown, the martyr of the action at Harpers Ferry, in which Owen had fought. But the main test of its liberalism came from its servants and their descendants, of whom there were many. Pasadena was famous for its profusion of private gardens, the most famous of which was that of the beer magnate Adolphus Busch, formerly of St. Louis, Missouri. With its shimmering pools and fountains, winding paths, mossy stone walls, verdant lawns, and quaint little cottages out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Busch Gardens became a magnet for visitors to the town. Built by the rich, such gardens depended on cheap labor. As with the faux plantations of southwestern Georgia, the fantasies of the white rich became a boon to the colored poor.
    At first, the Chinese dominated, until the Exclusion Act of 1882 did its work; then the Japanese, less objectionable to whites, filled the vacancies. By 1920, when the Robinsons and the Wades arrived, blacks comprised thelargest single minority group in Pasadena, although they numbered only about eleven hundred. The black presence dated back to 1883, when a Negro teamster, after driving a herd of cattle out from Nebraska, bought a vineyard and settled down with his family. Other blacks quickly followed in search of work in the homes and gardens of whites. Churches