The Black Bruins

by James W. Johnson

  The mainstream and the black press were outraged that Washington had been left off the squad. The California Eagle noted that several organizations protested his absence, including “sports scribes, labor unions, college societies, leading citizens and others.” One labor union noted that it was obvious he had been left off the team “solely because he was a Negro.” The UCLA Student Committee wrote that leaving him out was “unsportsmanlike, un-American and a threat to democratic procedure.” The California Eagle remarked that if players selected for the team had “not learned . . . the spirit of tolerance and fair play then education . . . is a failure.”

  Even the lieutenant governor of California, Ellis E. Patterson, who called himself an “old football player,” joined the cry. In a letter to the Los Angeles Sentinel, Patterson wrote that the snub “was not the sentiment of the majority of the people. Such prejudice is un-American. If we believe in Democracy there must be equal justice to all people irrespective of color and creed.”

  Governor Culbert L. Olson, however, refused to get into the fray, claiming he didn’t have enough information to determine why Washington had been overlooked and said he doubted Washington would have accepted because he wanted to play baseball at UCLA. But Washington had made it clear before the selections were made that he was foregoing baseball that spring. A month after the East-West Shrine Game, Washington was the guest of honor at the Islam Temple Shrine luncheon in San Francisco, an afterthought and a minor salve on a major wound.

  Washington received some consolation for being snubbed by the East-West game when he was selected to play for the College All-Stars against the Green Bay Packers, the National Football League (NFL) champions, in a charity game in 1940 sponsored by the Chicago Tribune. In a scrimmage nine days before the game, “the fleet, shifty Negro half back,” Washington, “stole the show,” the Tribune wrote. “Washington’s running measured to the tall tales of his prowess which have been told by the Southern California boys, Los Angeles neighbors of Kenny.” Charles “Buckets” Goldenberg, the stocky guard who met Kenny Washington head-on on the 1-yard line but was bowled over as Washington scored, termed the former UCLA star “the finest man on the college squad,” the Tribune reported. Another Green Bay player, end Carl Mulleneaux, said he did not believe a “better back ever would play on the college side in the All-Star game,” the Tribune wrote.

  The Packers beat the All-Stars 45–28 in front of 85,567 fans at Chicago’s Soldier Field, with Washington accounting for one touchdown. Jimmy Powers, a New York Daily News columnist, noted that Washington had played in the Tribune’s charity game with no problems. “He played on the same field with boys who are going to be scattered throughout the league. And he played against the champion Packers. There wasn’t a bit of trouble anywhere. Kenny was tackled hard once or twice especially after he ran a kick-off forty-three yards right through the entire Packer lineup. But that’s routine treatment for jack-rabbits. You slam your opposing speed merchants about, hoping to wear them down. Kenny took it all with a grin.”

  What Chicago Bears coach George Halas saw of Washington impressed him. Halas kept Washington in Chicago for a week while he tried to get the NFL to reintegrate the league, but he didn’t succeed. (African Americans had played in the NFL in its early years but were kept out from 1933 to 1946.) Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, a noted bigot, was the lone holdout. After all it had been Marshall’s idea to ban African Americans from playing in the NFL, and he was not about to back down now.

  The prevailing thought has always been that Washington was kept out of the NFL because he was black. But in the opinion of another sportswriter, Fay Young of the Chicago Defender—a black sportswriter at that—Washington may not have been good enough to play in the league. Young agreed that Washington’s offensive prowess was excellent but believed he was lacking on the defense side: “[Washington] just wasn’t in there to nail the Green Bay ball toters when the chance was his.” He said one missed tackle “was the kind of play one would expect to see in a high school contest.” Young added that players for traditionally black colleges were just as good as Washington and were much better on defense. “Washington’s play didn’t stamp him of the caliber of an all-round player whom we expected to see—and far from the caliber which is demanded by the professional football clubs.” Young wrote that if anyone were to break the color barrier, he would have to “stand head and shoulders above the rest.” About the color barrier, Young concluded, “As it is we will have to wait another year to put Jackie Robinson in there in the starting lineup and then watch things hum.”

  NBC broadcaster Sam Balter blasted the NFL’s black ban. In an “open letter” over the airwaves he asked NFL owners why “nobody chose the leading collegiate ground gainer of the 1939 season.” He remarked that those who had seen Washington play agreed that he was “not only the best football player on the Pacific Coast this season, but the best of the last ten years and perhaps the best in all that slope’s glorious football history—a player who has reduced to absurdity all the All-American teams selected this year because they did not include him—and all know why. . . . You have scouts—you know this better than I—you know their unanimous reports: he would be the greatest sensation in pro league history with any one of your ball clubs—you got that report. He was No. 1 on all your lists.” Balter expressed bitter disappointment “on behalf of the millions of American sports fans who believe in fair play and equal opportunity.” He concluded by offering air time to owners to explain why neither Washington nor another black player, Brud Holland, was “good enough to play ball on your teams.” The offer was rejected.

  “There are ten teams in the league that can use this one hundred and ninety-two pounder without a doubt were there some way to remove the Ifs, Ands and Buts that the managers and owners and coaches of these teams hide behind when confronted by the facts,” the American Negro Press wrote. In December 1940 African American journalist William A. Brower in the magazine Opportunity put the blame squarely on the owners. “There is no record of any authenticated commitment by them on the issue [of a color barrier],” Brower wrote. He added the “action towards the Negro somewhere along the line is transparent.”

  What Washington was facing was often equated with the color ban in Major League Baseball, and while they had a commonality, there also were differences. African Americans had been blocked from playing baseball from the late 1800s until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Professional football was a newer sport, with the NFL established in 1920. For the first thirteen years several talented black players such as Duke Slater, Joe Lillard, Charles Follis, Henry McDonald, Fritz Pollard, and Paul Robeson suited up for the pros. One school of thought had it that players from the South wouldn’t want to play with African Americans, a reason that was never proven. That color barrier remained in effect until 1946.

  After football Washington found himself searching for a way to make a living. Over the next two or three years he tried acting in movies, playing semi-pro football, and becoming a policeman all while trying to finish his studies at UCLA.

  Washington took a short venture into the boxing ring, but little is known about his success other than that he didn’t last long. The crooner and movie star Bing Crosby thought Washington might make it as a prizefighter. As his promoter, Crosby no doubt believed that because of Washington’s gridiron fame, he would be a big draw in the ring. “He needs experience, of course,” Crosby said, “but in my opinion he might be heard from as a fighter in less than a year. And there is no doubt but what he will be a big drawing card.”

  Crosby sent Washington to a veteran manager and trainer, George V. Blake, who gave him a workout and a good review. “I think well of Washington’s chances,” Blake said. “He looks like he has very good prospects. He showed speed and punch. . . . He is a very intelligent fellow and picks it up quick, and with it he has the speed and the build. In fact he looks way above the average for one of his limited experience. He likes to fight,
which is a good thing. What he showed me in a couple of rounds of boxing was plenty.” Blake said Washington “might be heard of” within the next year. Apparently not.

  It appears that Washington had other thoughts for a career. He signed a contract with Million Dollar Productions to star in a movie playing the hero in a football scandal movie. His uncle Rocky was his agent. A promotion poster from the film While Thousands Cheer gives a good indication just how far blacks could go in sports and entertainment in the 1940s. The film had a low budget and a nearly all-black cast, and it was designed for an exclusively African American audience. Kenny Washington’s co-star was actress-dancer Jeni Le Gon, one of the few African American actors under contract in Hollywood.

  The sixty-four minute black-and-white film had Washington playing a star football player at a fictitious college who hopes to lead his team to the “Peach Bowl,” the championship playoff game of the Western Conference. But a mobster tries to bribe him with $25,000 to not play in a key game leading to the playoff game. He turns the mobster down and goes on to be the hero of the movie. Washington invited the entire freshman team at UCLA to attend the final showing of the film, as well as former classmates and alumni. The Los Angeles Times apparently didn’t review the movie.

  In mid-September 1940 Washington played for the semi-pro Chicago Black Panthers, which had a black coach and a black squad. They beat an all-white team 42–0 in the inaugural year. After the game Washington jumped on a plane and returned to Southern California, where he and June Bradley of Long Beach, California, were married in a private home. Nine months later he finished his studies in history and physical education and graduated from UCLA. Immediately afterward he left for a film role in Acoma, New Mexico, where the British war opera Sundown, which also featured old friend Woody Strode, was being filmed. They played officers of the British-controlled Kenya, Africa district. The film starred George Sanders and Bruce Cabot.

  While Washington was earning his degree, he was named an assistant coach of the UCLA freshman team. It was another move that broke a racial barrier. No black man had ever been a coach of any kind at a major college. The black newspaper Plaindealer of Kansas City, Kansas, in an editorial praised UCLA for hiring him, calling it a demonstration “to the world that the color-line should be wiped out and a democracy can be practiced. . . . It took a lot of gumption and real sportsmanship on the part of UCLA authorities to make the ‘General’ their frosh coach.” The Plaindealer noted that Washington was appointed more than “just to kick the Kluxers in sports in the pants.” He was picked because he was “a tireless worker, patient, and one of the brainiest players on the West Coast.”

  Washington was “an inspiration to all youth. . . . He knows the game at which he is so adept. We take this opportunity to suggest that it would be entirely fitting that he become a member of the coaching staff at the Westwood institution,” the California Eagle wrote. For Washington, the coaching job was a chance to bring his enthusiasm for the sport to the fledgling class of 1944–45. It also was a chance for Washington to be on campus so he could finish his degree.

  After leaving UCLA Strode landed a job with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office as an investigator. He had hoped to get into coaching and never thought of becoming a professional athlete. But Strode was soon out of a job after less than a year when the district attorney lost his reelection. He didn’t mind. “The D.A.’s office was using me, but I was too naïve to notice,” Strode said. Then he was lured into playing in two exhibition football games for the Hollywood Bears in the Pacific Coast Professional Football League at $750 a game. (Washington was paid $1,000 a game to play as well.) They were to play the game as college all-stars against semi-pro players. “The guys who played football after college played because they loved the game,” Strode said. Everybody had regular jobs, and after work they would practice at Griffith Park.

  Washington and Strode were making more money than some NFL players, primarily because they took home a cut of ticket sales. Crowds reached twenty thousand or more at their games, drawn in part by Washington and Strode. Strode would get paid after each game. “That’s all the money I needed,” he said. “The money gave “my family some decent food and at least some measure of comfort in the home,” Strode said.

  Strode and Washington led the Bears to an 8-0 record. Washington was exempt from the military because of damaged knees. He was playing for the Bears when he went to make a cut, planted his foot to push off, and his leg collapsed. “I could hear that thing go clear across the field; it sounded like a guitar string popping,” Strode said. “I used to laugh about that; Kenny wasn’t physically fit for the armed services, and he ended up making a fortune playing football during the war,” Strode said.

  After graduation Washington looked without success for a head coaching job at one of Los Angeles’s high schools. With the help of his uncle Rocky he landed a job as an officer on the Los Angeles Police Department. He was one of 147 new officers on the force. Said the American Negro Press, an international news agency, “Persons who break the law when Kenny is pounding a beat had best not run as the former football great is a vicious tackler.”

  Washington and Strode continued to play football for the Hollywood Bears in the fall of 1941. In one game they beat the league rival Los Angeles Bulldogs 24–7, a team that featured former Stanford quarterback Frankie Albert, who later played the position and coached the San Francisco 49ers.

  Washington’s knees were so banged up he missed the entire 1942 season. Strode played that year while Washington went on tour with the United Services Organizations in 1942 and 1943, entertaining troops. He became used to talking with the segregated black athletes stationed throughout the world. Strode said the idea behind the tour was “to keep the black soldiers quiet by promising them things would get better after the war.”

  Mulling over the war, Strode recalled that World War II was a racial war “and what it did was pull the blanket off America’s race problems. . . . The Negro American [Press] said, ‘I fought for liberty; now I want to enjoy some,’” Strode wrote in his autobiography. That certainly was true for him, Washington, Robinson, Bartlett, and Bradley. Their time was coming.

  15

  The Indispensable Robinson

  “Jack was dedicated to being the best athlete he could possibly be because he saw that as an escape.”

  —Ray Bartlett

  The 1940 football season held great promise for UCLA—and Jackie Robinson. This season he would be the star, the player who would draw attention now that Kenny Washington had used up his eligibility. The Daily Bruin wrote that Robinson’s “colossalness is almost universal knowledge among football fans all over the country.” It said he was “beyond a doubt the Coast’s No. 1 candidate for All-America honors” and that he would be “the greatest drawing card in the nation.”

  Robinson became a one-man show in the 1940 season for the Bruins, who lacked the versatility of the previous year’s team. He was so valuable to the team that coaches would run behind Robinson in practice yelling to his teammates, “Don’t hit him, don’t hit him,” to avoid injuries. Robinson was almost indispensable to the Bruins; no one on the team was capable of stepping into his spot. His value to the team made him a marked man. The Bruins’ opponents recognized they had a better chance of winning if they knocked Robinson out of the game. In a game against the University of Oregon, the Ducks knew about the dangerous Robinson. The Oregonian reported that Robinson “was inevitably double teamed, face-guarded, blanketed, hornswoggled, clotheslined, and otherwise neutralized.”

  “There were a number of games where [opponents] just crucified him,” said former teammate Don McPherson. “They just knocked the hell out of him.” They ganged up on him to the point that he was held to 3.64 yards per rush for the season. Some of the toughest linemen had graduated as well, making it difficult for Robinson to get past the line of scrimmage. But once in the open field he was extremely dangerous. For the season he had 19 punt returns for 399
yards, an average of 21 yards a return. That was a college record for many years. Despite the difficulties Robinson finished second in the conference in total offense. His standing earned him only honorable mention as an All-American.

  Ray Bartlett also figured prominently in the Bruins’ chances. Coaches “figure he’ll prove as able a decoy as Jackie and probably as potent on pass catching, blocking and occasional ball packing,” a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote. “But will he come through on defense? Horrell thinks so, that his experience at end will have polished his tackling and that his basketball playing will have sharpened his eye and glued his hands for pass defense. He didn’t do a bad job during limited service last fall.”

  In the season’s opening game against SMU at the Los Angeles Coliseum, Robinson returned a punt 87 yards for the Bruins’ only score in a 9–6 loss. They led 6–0 going into the fourth quarter but could not stop the Mustangs from scoring a TD and a field goal. Bartlett started at right halfback but didn’t carry the ball. He was used primarily as a blocking back. Afterward Coach Madison Bell and the entire SMU team congratulated Robinson and Bartlett for their play.

  Next the Bruins fell 9–6 to the Santa Clara Broncos, who kicked a field goal to win the game. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the backfield of Robinson and Bartlett, plus two others, “ain’t got it.” Robinson had trouble passing, continually trying to escape the Broncos’ pass rush. The Bruins ran for only 35 yards and passed for a dismal 63 yards. Santa Clara punted the ball away from Robinson except once, when he returned the pigskin for 24 yards.