If you’ve had the chance to see the movie 42, which is in theaters now starring Harrison Ford, Chadwick Boseman and Nicole Beharie, you know a little about Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play major league baseball.
Robinson broke the baseball color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers, who started him at first base on April 15, 1947. In doing so, Robinson challenged the practice of racial segregation and helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement.
Jackie Robinson was also known for his work in the African-American community when he retired from baseball. He was the first black television analyst in MLB, and the first black vice-president of a major American corporation. He was very active in the Civil Rights movement and in the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements, Jackie Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.
Jackie Robinson’s youngest son, David Robinson, sat down with Black Enterprise to talk about his father, the movie ’42’ and African-American empowerment.
BlackEnterprise.com: You live in Tanzania?
That’s correct I’ve been there for 30 years.
You have a coffee company there right?
That’s correct we are farmers and we work with family-owned farms in export. Our coffee brand is called Sweet Unity Farms.
How would you compare your coffee with what’s on the market now?
Our coffee is a 100% Arabica coffee. So it is amongst the gourmet or specialty coffees on the market today. You wouldn’t compare it to Maxwell House or Chock Full of Nuts because those are blended with Robusta coffee, which is a lower quality of coffee.
Before 15-20 years ago, that’s all people drank but in today’s world there is a specialty branch that is 100% Arabica so we’re like Starbucks, we’re like Peet’s. There’s a whole level of gourmet coffees that use only Arabica beans and we use only the top 3 grades of Arabica beans. So quality-wise, we’re in the upper-echelon; and in terms of economic concept and distribution of the proceeds from coffee; we’re the only coffee company coming out of Africa that is a branded finished product that is marketed directly by farmers.
A greater share of the final finished product income goes back to farmers and the development of more rural farming communities in Tanzania.
So you farm yourself?
My family and I started a coffee farm 22 years ago. We have a coffee and food farm and we have 280 acres of land in Tanzania. So, we ourselves farm and we’re members of a co-op of over 300 farmers. We work with co-ops across Tanzania so we export our coffee into America and roast it in North America and sell it as a brand called Sweet Unity Farms.
I know I’ve heard of coffee from Ethiopia but has coffee been a product of Tanzania for a long time?
Yes, coffee was originally discovered as a wild bush in Tanzania sometime around 600 AD; but Tanzanians have been growing coffee since about 1895; and between 1950 and 1990 it was the largest foreign exchange crop that Tanzania grew. Right now, we have over 400,000 small scale, family owned coffee farms.
Is your brand one of many coffee brands being exported?
No. Tanzania grows more than 50 million pounds of coffee per year and most of those coffees are sold as a commodity. They are roasted into Starbucks, Caribou, and Peet’s so they’re bought as a commodity and then roasted under other people’s brands.
So is Sweet Unity Farms the only coffee brand out of Tanzania?
Yes, we’re the only brand that farmers themselves have exported out of Tanzania and imported into America as a finished branded product. We are capturing the value-add in the business by creating our own retail brand.
Where can your coffee be found in America?
You can buy it on the web at sweetunityfarmscoffee.com but we also sell to corporate office coffee programs. The financial services company, Deloitte, for example, has our coffee on many of their office floors. We’re also in certain airports in Florida.
How did you get into the coffee business? What drew you to farming and coffee?
Coming up in the 1960s when African Americans were talking about inclusion and getting involved in a larger and more equitable share of the American economy; coming out of segregation and just growing up in the Robinson family where integration was a way of having the opportunity to display our talents and abilities and be fairly compensated for them; I realized that the issues in this era are now global; and as all companies and all people are seeking to develop their future, they are looking globally.
For example, cars are no longer made exclusively in Detroit. They’re outsourced. Parts are outsourced from everywhere, from China and back to Detroit.
So I had the opportunity to travel to Africa when I was a young man in the company of my mother [Rachel Robinson] at age 15; and I went back for a year at age 19; and traveled to 10 different countries on the continent so when I thought to plan my future and career, I knew that I had opportunities and was comfortable there.
I saw the beauty of Africa. I saw the wealth of Africa, the challenges and the needs and whereas other African-Americans did not have the opportunity, I thought it was good that I went to work in Africa while other African Americans stayed here and developed our economic and political position in America. So now, we have representation on the two continents. There are a number of African Americans in Ghana as well able to develop the economy between Africa and America for our benefit.
Generally, farmers are only the labor portion of the coffee business and only being paid as cheap labor. Now, we are involved in the business of coffee so we’re able to take our African resources, in terms of land and experience in growing coffee, and translate it into economic development; and even in this side in America, the marketing of coffee is also job creation and wealth creation using the African product.
I believe African Americans need to create economic development. We, ourselves, need to create economic development. Just like the founder of [Black Enterprise] saw that African Americans would buy magazines, he had to create a magazine in order to capture that economic development as opposed to Time or what have you getting all the money.
So we went to Africa to create a coffee product and create employment of African-Americans and develop an economic base.
How did you get your ideas about Black economic development?
Prior to going to Africa, I spent ten years working in cooperative housing in Harlem and certainly we’ve all easily been able to see [Black] unemployment and under-employment. Employment and economic development became global in the 1970s and 80s. And so in 1983, I saw that we could try to self-develop and create our own economy through becom
ing global. Of course, I wouldn’t have the same opportunities if I went to China or France or to Germany because those aren’t the places of my ancestors. But in Africa, I’m returning home and there’s an availability of opportunity on our home continent that doesn’t exist where we would be foreigners.In the 1973-1983, I was involved in self-help cooperative housing. We started our own company called United Harlem Growth, Inc., and we bought abandoned buildings and rehabilitated them. The core of the company was 8 families from Harlem. We worked with youth in Harlem. We had job training and skills training in plumbing, electrical arts and carpentry. We worked with 30 or 40 young men in skills training but we were also building our own housing.
You’re not from Harlem though are you?
I am. I was born in New York City, but I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. My parents moved there until I was 2 and when I was 14, then I went to boarding school in Massachusetts at Mt. Hermon. After one year at Stanford in California, I left and went to Africa for a year. I went from West to East Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana trying to look at the best country for relocation.
Then I came back to America and spent ten years in Harlem and went back to Africa for good in 1983.
Was your father, Jackie Robinson, influential in your becoming so Afrocentric and thinking so much about African-American economic empowerment?
Yes. Both his individual life and the concerns he had not only from baseball but after baseball were all about development in the African American community. So that was very much what he taught his children was important; and then growing up in the 60s during the Civil Rights Movement and coming out of the 50s and the desegregation movement; that was very much what people of my generation thought about. We weren’t so much individuals, but members of a race. Racial development was very much the agenda during the 50s and 60s.
I consider [what I do] black development, black self-development, black survival. We have been in crisis from the period of slavery to sharecropping to lack of Civil Rights; and now American blacks are in the very difficult position of being marginalized economically. We have people coming in from South America, Latin America, even from Africa assuming the lower end of labor and jobs. We have people coming in from Asia very much in the universities in sciences and math, and jobs are also being taken by machines; and then jobs are being outsourced to countries like China and India where labor is much cheaper so the African American is in a very dangerous position.
What do you remember about your father Jackie Robinson?
Growing up with Jackie Robinson, he was much more of a father figure than a baseball player because I was not old enough to be conscious of remembering him playing. But he was a strong father figure. And my mother being a strong mother figure, they gave me a tremendous foundation of both strength and desire to continue the struggle that their generation had started.
My father made a point of spending time with all of his children and we had some great quality time. So fatherhood was important to my father and all his children had that very strong foundation that was helpful in our planning of life and confronting some of the problems of life. He also had the money to put me in good schools.
He taught us that material wealth is great – it’s good to have the ability to take care
of your family and house your family; but the greater objective was development of our race. We could expand beyond one’s family to development of African Americans or looking at it globally – black people across the globe which is black people in America, Africa, Latin America and South America – black people, all one people, just different branches of one family.How old were you when your father died?
20.
What were some of the things you remember doing with your dad?
We enjoyed playing golf. I very much enjoyed being his caddy. We had fun on the golf course. We used to love to fish. He’s taken me both ocean fishing off of Montauk, Long Island and we went up to Canada fishing. Those were great moments where it was just me and him, or me, him and my older brother or our cousins. So that was fun.
After his career in baseball, what was his daily life like?
Well, he went to work for Chock Full of Nuts, the coffee company. He was Vice President of Human Resources and then he went on to found Freedom National Bank in Harlem. He was also very active in politics and wrote a column for the New York newspapers on a weekly basis; and lent his strength and fame to the Civil Rights movement. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King. He went out on trips to raise money. When the church was bombed and the little girls were murdered, he was down to show support and also raise money to build churches. Many churches were burnt down so my father went down to help and they created a fund of money to rebuild black churches in the South.
He also enjoyed playing tennis.
What did you think of the movie ’42’
I thought it was historically accurate and powerfully and dramatically presented. Brother Chadwick who played Jackie Robinson did a fantastic job. Harrison Ford was excellent as Branch Rickey.
Did your father ever talk about those days playing with the Dodgers?
My only experience with baseball was going to the old-timers games with him. Every year, the retired baseball players get together and they have 2 or 3 days of games. That was a time when we got to see some of the camaraderie with the old players. But my father didn’t dwell on his past much. He talked more about the contemporary issues in his life.
Stamford, Connecticut was a white area wasn’t it?
Our house was surrounded by woods and lakes on three sides so we had a bit of isolation. It’s something my parents wanted. I integrated the primary school in the area and we had our issues the first year, but after that we worked it out.
Did he ever talk about his time in the Army?
He didn’t speak about it much but he was court-marshaled for refusing to go to the back of the bus on a military bus in an army base.
Your mother is still alive!
Yes. She’s 91, remarkable. It’s so beautiful. My older brother Jackie Jr. died when he was 24 and my sister and I are the only living siblings.
What have you been doing since you’ve been in the States for the release of the film ’42’?
We had a showing of the film with the Jackie Robinson Foundation in New York. It’s been a great time to talk about the film and hopefully, people will be empowered by the film and see that the past generation was challenged and succeeded and we benefit from the fruits of their labor and the challenge still exists. We have an obligation to our children and our grandchildren to continue to expose the struggle so that they have a future.
What do you think about blacks’ economic situation at present, in light of the black presidency?
We’re extremely proud and pleased to have Obama as president. I think it’s a great role model for African Americans. But he’s one individual. And neither a single African American president, nor an American government can alone solve African Americans’ problems. I think we have to create our own economic development. Create our own jobs – because other people are coming to America. So our unemployment numbers are very high, and even when we’re working we have a lot of working poor within the African American community. And psychologically, we have things to deal with in terms of our position in America and coming to terms with the fact that we’re going to have to solve our own problems.
What do you mean by ‘solving our own problems’? Do you mean starting our own businesses?
Yes, I think we’re going to have to start our own businesses. We’re going to have to create alliances with existing businesses. We’re going to have to look globally and create alliances – Africa is a wonderful continent for African-American alliances. We’re going to have to tell ourselves that there is no solution or salvation other than our own planning and our own efforts. And we know that it is possible to be marginalized like the American Indian, so it is very possible to become obsolete in America. So we will have to work to avoid that.
It’s like the game musical chairs. There are only so many seats at the table and the immigrant will work for lower wages and the immigrant has great job satisfaction because he can send $200 back to South America or Africa and feed a family of 4. So even with a low paying job living 4 or 5 or 6 to an apartment, there is a degree of satisfaction because he’s not only eating, he’s supporting his family back home.
The African American doesn’t have that level of satisfaction with the low paying jobs. And also, employers are looking for cheaper labor and labor that will be happy with those lower wages so the employer is hiring the immigrant over the African-American for a number of reasons. That is just an economic reality. That is the capitalist system of seeking the cheapest labor. There’s no complaint about that. Everyone has the right to have their own economic systems, but everyone also has the obligation to find their seat at the table in the game of musical chairs. Without it, you will get put out of the game.
Do you think African-Americans are close to being put out of the game?
I think our unemployment numbers are ranging between 20 and 24 percent average. And I bet it goes to 30 or 40 percent when you add under-employment or the working poor. And the assault on our position is getting worse – and in the future – will continue to happen. So yes, I think we are in a crisis.
We had a much larger African-American economy during segregation. So we are going to have to look toward ourselves as the future goes on. And we’ve also got to have a mind set and a skill set to compete for the jobs being offered by firms that are not African-American and show the potential employer why the African American would be a better employee than the South American, Latin American, African or the Asian.