“Must-reading for anyone who would truly understand the foundations of activism among black athletes today and their evolved sense of a broader role and obligation in society beyond athletic proficiency and performance.”
—Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley
“Five African American men enrolled at UCLA in the late 1930s, touching off a revolution in collegiate sports, restoring integration to Major League Baseball and pro football, and bringing diversity to public life. This well-researched, engrossing account brings four athletes into sharp focus as they move from high-school and university athletic fame to national and regional prominence and groundbreaking civic and social achievement.”
—Jim Price, editor, writer, and sports historian
“Those who came before me, detailed in this book, paved the way not only for my life as a minority student-athlete and later athletic director at UCLA; they also provided the opportunity for future generations of Bruins from every walk of life to become barrier-breakers as well.”
—Dan Guerrero, director of athletics at UCLA
“A beautifully written narrative describing how the talent and determination of five remarkable African Americans had such a great impact on history. This book should win awards.”
—Dave Baldwin, genetic researcher and systems engineer and former major league pitcher
The Black Bruins
The Black Bruins
The Remarkable Lives of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett
James W. Johnson
University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln & London
© 2017 by James W. Johnson
Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; jacket image is from the interior, courtesy of UCLA Library archives.
Author photo © Alfred Araiza.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, James W., 1938– author.
Title: The Black Bruins: The Remarkable Lives of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett / James W. Johnson.
Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038821
ISBN 9781496201836 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 9781496204554 (epub)
ISBN 9781496204561 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: African American athletes—United States—California—Biography. | University of California, Los Angeles—Sports—History—20th century. | Discrimination in sports—United States—History—20th century. | Racism in sports—United States—History—20th century. | BISAC: SPORTS & RECREATION / History. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies. | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY).
Classification: LCC GV697.A1 J65 2017 | DDC 796.0922 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038821
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
To my son, Thayer, of whom I am so proud.
To the many mentors whose patience is reflected in this book.
Come listen all you galls and boys
I’m going to sing a little song,
My name is Jim Crow
Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow
—From the song “Jim Crow”
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
1. No Bed of Roses in Pasadena
2. The Kingfish and Woody
3. The High School Years
4. The Little Brother
5. Obstacles to Overcome
6. A Sorry Season
7. An Easy Choice
8. Fitting in at UCLA
9. Under-the-Table Help
10. Filling the Coffers
11. High Expectations
12. A Disappointing End to the Season
13. Decision Time
14. Passed Over by the NFL
15. The Indispensable Robinson
16. World War II Beckons
17. Moving Up in the Ranks
18. Making NFL History
19. The Negro League Years
20. End of the Line at LAPD
21. Leaving Athletics
22. Movie Star in the Making
23. A Promotion Earned
24. Blending In
25. Changing Los Angeles
26. The Civil Rights Years
27. Their Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1. Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson, and Kenny Washington as starters at UCLA
2. Tom Bradley competed in the 440-yard run, the 880, and 1,600 relay
3. Jackie Robinson as a runner for the Bruins football team
4. Jackie Robinson at Bruins football practice
5. Robinson and Ray Bartlett were teammates at UCLA, with Coach Wilbur Johns
6. Robinson as a Bruins basketball player
7. Ray Bartlett was a valuable backup runner
8. Woody Strode worked as a gas station attendant while at UCLA
9. Ray Bartlett served for twenty years on the Pasadena Police Force
10. Kenny Washington (13), Woody Strode (34), Bob Waterfield (7), Jack Finlay (17), and Nate DeFrancisco (10)
11. Kenny Washington meets with California governor Earl Warren
12. LA mayor-elect Tom Bradley reaches into the crowd in 1973
13. Woody Strode as a powerful gladiator battling Kirk Douglas in Spartacus
14. After retiring from the Pasadena Police Force, Ray Bartlett devoted his time to civic and religious endeavors
15. Jackie Robinson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962
Acknowledgments
If you are a writer, especially of long-ago sports heroes, two sources are invaluable—the Internet and the libraries. They make the writer’s job so much easier. The material I gathered for this book came from a bounty of information from those two sources. While the Internet can be surfed at home, libraries have to be visited to cull out the books that pay tribute to the young stalwarts.
The Internet is invaluable because so much has been written about the subjects of this book as individuals, but the athletes have had little written about their times together. So piecemeal one puts together biographies and melds them into one story. And one looks at multiple numbers of articles and essays that can be compared against each other to arrive at an accurate picture. So Great Google in the Sky, thanks for all you contributed to this effort.
The librarians, ah, what a pleasure it is to work with them. Sure, that’s their job, but when one pestered them as much as I did and they were still smiling, one can’t help but feel gratitude. The librarians at the University of Arizona went out of their way to accommodate this helpless author. The photo librarians were no different. Thanks to Simon Elliott and Amy Wong at the UCLA library, Don Liebig at the school’s photography department, Anuja Navare at the Pasadena Museum of History, and John Horne at the Baseball Hall of Fame, who were cooperative to a fault.
I’d be
remiss if I didn’t credit at least the following authors for their books, which were invaluable in my research: Arnold Rampersad (Jackie Robinson), Woody Strode (Goal Dust), and Gregory J. Payne and Scott C. Ratzan (Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream).
I’m indebted as always to Rob Taylor, the sports editor at the University of Nebraska Press, who once again took a chance on one of my manuscripts. This will be the fourth book Rob has overseen, and his suggestions have been right on the nose when it came to making each book better. He is a most patient editor, given my rambling prose. Courtney Ochsner, associate acquisitions editor, kept me on task and was patient with my efforts to fathom the mysteries of the photography and who owns the rights thereto. She no doubt saved me from big trouble by assuring that the owners of picture rights gave me permission to use them. Anyone who thinks the work is over when a manuscript is submitted better think again. The work has just started. Courtney’s tolerance showed even when I threw up my hands—via email—and said I had had enough. She waited that out, and we again got down to business. Bojana Ristich was a superb copy editor who sharpened the words and corrected grievous errors.
Numerous friends also supported me in this effort, particularly Jerry Guibor, a copy editor par excellence who kept me from making some serious mistakes in both grammar and facts. Jim Price also found typos that had escaped me, while Don Carson, Mark Woodhams, Ron Navarette, Mark Walker, and particularly my wife, Marilyn (who had to listen far too much and too often about the manuscript until it was sent off to Rob Taylor) expressed their enthusiasm and support for the project.
So thank you all. It’s trite to say I couldn’t have done it without you, but what’s one trite saying (I hope!) in the whole book?
Introduction
Expectations were high at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the fall of 1939, when sixty football players turned out for practice for the coming season. The Bruins’ new coach, Edwin C. “Babe” Horrell, gathered the players on a beautiful fall day on the practice field perched on a hill above Los Angeles. If the wind blew in the right direction, the sweet salty smell of the Pacific Ocean, seven miles away, wafted across the field.
UCLA’s expectations were heightened not only by a new coach, but also by the return of two stars for their senior season. In addition, the Bruins welcomed two junior college All-Americans from nearby Pasadena Junior College.
The upcoming season also had an important subplot: the two seniors and two All-Americans on the sixty-player roster were African Americans. That was an unprecedented number on one team at a time when perhaps no more than thirty-eight African American players were on traditionally white football teams across the country, virtually none of whom received much playing time. Three of the black players were starters; the fourth earned plenty of playing time. “Three African American players out of eleven in the starting lineup was highly unusual for the time,” says Kent Stephens, curator and historian for the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana. Twenty-two years later, it still wasn’t common to see even two African American starters on most college football teams, Stephens notes.
The black players on the UCLA team made it the most racially integrated squad in college football history at the time. “We have yet to find another single coach in the history of football that has had the guts to play three of our race at one time and have [four] on the squad,” a reporter for the Chicago Defender, a newspaper for black readers, wrote later in the year. Moreover, the season had started with five players; Johnny Wynne left the team but it is unclear when. The four players were Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett. A sixth African American, Tom Bradley, who was an all-city football player in Los Angeles, could have joined them; instead he chose to focus on track, his first love, and academics at UCLA.
The four black football players participated in multiple sports: Robinson and Bartlett played football, basketball, baseball, and track; Washington played football, baseball, and track; and Strode played football and track. “We were a tough group of dead-end kids,” Strode said.
The four had a lot more in common than just the fact that they were black athletes. They were movie-star handsome and dignified. Three of them appeared in motion pictures during their careers. All of them, except Robinson, took racism against them in stride, although they didn’t like it. It was what Negroes—that’s what they were called then—did. Just go along to get along.
How did it come to be that these athletes chose UCLA? Mainly UCLA was trying to make its mark in athletics. Since its inception in 1919, the university had few athletic accomplishments. Just a few years earlier UCLA was playing such schools as Pomona, Occidental, and Whittier Colleges, whose teams were considered less than top-notch. Other schools, such as the University of Southern California (USC), rejected African American players. If the USC Trojans did recruit one, he often sat on the bench no matter how talented he was. As Edwin Bancroft Henderson wrote in his 1939 book The Negro in Sports, “Where scholarships are the means by which many a poor boy gets to and stays in college for athletics, some of the bigger scouting colleges make it a policy not to subsidize college life for more than one good colored athlete per team.”
UCLA sought the best players regardless of color. “[UCLA] wanted to compete with USC for the local football dollar,” Strode said. “I don’t think UCLA made a conscious effort to bring some black kids into the program; the effort was to bring in some top-notch athletes.” That was one reason the four young athletes chose UCLA. They also selected it because they grew up in Los Angeles. They lived at home. They wanted to play before the hometown crowd. Most colleges didn’t recruit nationwide as they do today.
The USC Trojans didn’t want them. In Kenny Washington’s case, “they were interested in sitting him on the bench so none of the other schools could have him,” Strode said. If they played elsewhere, they might have had to travel to schools in the Jim Crow South. Texas Christian University, the University of Missouri, and Southern Methodist University played UCLA in the Los Angeles Coliseum, but for the most part the Bruins played schools on the West Coast. Said teammate Don McPherson: “We couldn’t play in Texas because we had black guys on our team. They couldn’t stay in the hotels or eat in the restaurants, so we didn’t travel there.”
UCLA had a more tolerant atmosphere for African Americans. “Whatever racial pressure was coming down in the City of Los Angeles, the pressure was not on me in Westwood,” Strode said. “We had the whole melting pot, and it was an education for all of us. . . . I was just like any other athlete. And I worked hard because there was always the overriding feeling [that] UCLA really wanted me.” Said the Bruins’ graduate manager Bill Ackerman: “Perhaps the whole tradition of newness here in the West has been instrumental in keeping our attitudes toward racial differences genuinely healthy and providing our student body with a bold, non-discriminatory outlook.”
They received lucrative benefits. “UCLA ended up taking care of me and my whole family while I was in school,” Strode said—including twenty dollars under the table. It’s no stretch that Washington probably did even better.
What made their appearance on the UCLA campus extraordinary was more than their athletic prowess. All, with the exception of Wynne, whose career is unknown, became highly successful after leaving the campus.
They weren’t the first. Ralph Bunche, a basketball player who graduated in 1927, went on to earn a doctorate at Harvard and won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to write the United Nations charter and his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. UCLA graduate James LuValle won a bronze medal in the 400 meters in the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. He went on to earn a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology and retired as the laboratory administrator for the chemistry department at Stanford University.
Jackie Robinson was best known for breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Less known is that Washington and Strode integrated the National Football League a year before Robinson’s fea
t in 1947. Strode became a ground-breaking movie star. Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles and the first in a major city in which the population held a white majority. Bartlett was a respected civic leader throughout southern California. If there was any other group of athletes at one school and at one time that so profoundly affected the social, athletic, and political climate in the nation, it doesn’t come to mind.
Perhaps none of these athletes would have had a chance if it hadn’t been for the black press, civil rights groups, the Communist Party, progressive white activists, and “radical” politicians who mounted campaigns to integrate sports as part of a larger movement to improve conditions across America for African Americans.
It was never easy for the African American athletes, either at UCLA or later in their professional careers. They had to overcome the overwhelming presence of racial prejudice to succeed. And did they ever!
Prologue
The Negroes who migrated came out here to escape the hate down South. To them, the Far West was just like the Promised Land. That’s why my parents moved out here.
—Woody Strode
Of the five superb black athletes who would be enrolled at UCLA, three were born in the Southern California area and two had migrated from the South. Those two—Jackie Robinson and Tom Bradley—and their families were trying to escape from Jim Crow, only to discover that racial discrimination existed in Los Angeles as well, with the distinction that it was more subtle but at the same time equally oppressive.
With African Americans leaving the discrimination of the South during the Great Migration, many of them headed for the land of milk and honey called Los Angeles. Undoubtedly they bought into the belief that they were heading for a racial paradise, a notion that was propagated by the praise heaped upon the City of Angels by W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1913. He called Los Angeles “wonderful,” noting that “nowhere in the United States is the Negro so well and beautifully housed, nor the average efficiency and intelligence in the colored population so high.”
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