ONE OF JOHN ROBINSON’S TRAITS WAS DEPENDABILITY. HE remained at his job until a satisfactory replacement could be found, which took almost a month. Before he left, Mr. Fitzgerald called him into the office. “You do good work, Robinson, and you know how to keep your mouth shut, you know what I mean? I got contacts in Chicago that could use a guy like you. Money would be good. What do you say?”
Johnny had to admit the money had been good, but he had been bothered by the fact that he was working for an outfit that, besides running taxis, transported bootleg whiskey after it had been smuggled across the Canadian border. What would my Momma and Daddy think if they knew that? He hadn’t done anything illegal exactly, but he thought it would be better not to have his name going to any of Mr. Fitzgerald’s contacts in Chicago. He had read about the bootlegger wars in the Windy City.
“I thank you, Boss, but I’ve saved my money and believe I can start my own small shop there. That’s what I’d like to do.”
Those friends of John’s who knew the real reason for his move to Chicago thought it was a crazy notion. Giving up a good job and moving to a new city on the chance you can get into a flying school? They thought it was plain nuts. Perhaps among the most disappointed at his departure were several young ladies who had set their sights on Johnny.
John Robinson was never foolish about anything. Determined, independent, smart, often stubborn, he was also possessed with enough common sense to temper his dreams with sensible priorities. In Chicago he took a room on the south side and transferred his savings to a local bank.
After two weeks of looking, he found a small vacant building that had at one time been a combination livery stable and blacksmith shop. It needed work but was suitable for conversion into a small mechanics garage and the rent was right. John set to work. He modified the rear blacksmith shop area that faced an alley with a door large enough to drive a car through and fitted a wide double door onto the front of the building with a window on one side. He purchased a professional mechanics tool set for twenty-five dollars, a welding/cutting set for ninety-five dollars, and a bench vice and electric grinder for four dollars total. He used wire fencing to enclose a storage area for parts and built a long workbench along one wall. The last item he purchased was a sign that said Robinson’s Auto Garage. With pride, he hung it on the front of the building. He was nearly broke, but for the first time he had his own business.
John slept on an old army cot on the second floor, really an attic that had been used for storage. Working nights after closing, he converted the area into living quarters. He gradually furnished the big room with a bed, table, chair, and couch, all bought second hand. He built bookshelves across one end. At the other end he installed a sink, an oil stove, water heater, and icebox. In one corner he walled in a small bathroom with a bathtub and a sink that he had to bend over to use because of the slant of the roof. He did all the work himself using materials bought from a wrecking yard. John knew he would need better quarters come deep winter, but it would do till it got so cold he couldn’t stand it.
At first things were more than a little slow, but with the help of a few friends from Tuskegee and others he had met in the neighborhood, a little business began to trickle in. Most of the customers returned. It was evident to them that the quiet young man from Mississippi knew what he was doing. In the beginning, all his customers were black. Many of them could only afford to purchase used, run-down cars that needed a lot of work. By word of mouth, news got around that the work was good and the price was right. After a few months, white automobile owners began coming to his shop. Robinson’s Garage was going to make it.
John hired an assistant named Jules Tuggle. As chance would have it, Tuggle had moved to Chicago from Mississippi. He was a self-taught mechanic, but John found him competent. Most important to John was having a trustworthy helper. It would give him a chance to get away for a couple of hours now and then.
Robinson splurged and spent twenty dollars on a new suit and pair of shoes. He wore the outfit the first time he applied to the Curtiss-Wright School of Aviation located on South Michigan Avenue. His application was turned down. Not easily deterred, he kept applying. But each time his application was turned down. They never said being black had anything to do with it, and they had various excuses: “The classes are filled up”; “You just missed the beginning of a new class”; “Try us next spring.”
John had heard it all before. He was angry but he could hold his temper when he tried. The rejections made him all the more determined. He discovered that Curtiss-Wright was starting a Saturday night ground school. He had left his home in Mississippi because, as he told his daddy, the only work he was likely to get at an automobile garage there was a sweeping job. Now he applied for and got a sweeping job Saturday nights at the Curtiss-Wright school. It wasn’t easy. Curtiss-Wright had a janitorial staff that worked during the week. John convinced them they needed one man part-time to clean up evenings on the weekend because they were starting Saturday classes and would need clean rooms to begin regular school on Mondays. He told the building manager he needed the job for extra money and would do it for whatever pay was offered to him. The building manager was impressed. John got the job and was paid twenty-five cents an hour for four hours work Saturday nights. On the way home, after his first night shift, Johnny laughed at himself. What would Daddy think if he knew I begged for a sweeping job in Chicago?
There was method to his madness. He would close his shop late Saturday afternoon and rush out to Curtiss-Wright and tidy up all but the room designated for the ground school. Just before class John would enter the classroom and quietly do a little dusting and sweeping at the back. No one paid him any mind. The small class filled less than half the rows at the front of the room.
John listened to every word of instruction. After the class was dismissed, he copied the notes, drawings, and figures that had been left on the blackboards before finishing up the cleaning, emptying the waste baskets, and sweeping the hall before heading home. The class members rarely took notice of him at the back of the room, but the instructor could see him. John approached him the first night and explained why that particular classroom was the last on his cleaning list. He was fortunate that the instructor had a sense of humor. Without his cooperation, John would have very likely been dismissed from his job.
Sometimes the instructor would note John’s presence during class. He might look to the back of the room and say, “You got that, Johnny, or are we moving too fast for you?”
The students would look back with amusement to hear John’s reply. “No, sir. I’m ambidextrous. I can move this dust cloth and my mind at the same time.”
With friends who shared his interest in aviation, John established the Aero Study Group. On Sunday afternoons the group would meet and he would pass on the knowledge he gained while sweeping the back of the Curtiss-Wright classroom the previous Saturday. The field of aviation was growing daily, but was virtually closed to blacks. Nevertheless, John Robinson was determined not only to find a way to enter the field but help others do the same. He would share his knowledge and skills with others for the rest of his life.
John’s friend from Detroit, Cornelius Coffey, would often commute to Chicago to meet with the study group on weekends and talk about the possibilities of learning to fly. One day Coffey suggested that the study group needed a project. Why couldn’t they build an airplane? It seemed a wild idea at first, but the more the group talked about it, the more they convinced themselves they could do it. There were advertisements in aviation magazines for plans for home-built airplanes. John and Cornelius pooled their money and ordered a set of plans for five dollars from the Heath Airplane Company. They also bought a twenty-seven horsepower motorcycle engine off a wrecked bike and rebuilt it themselves. The Aero Study Group now had a real aviation project.