The Black Bruins

by James W. Johnson

  Going into the USC game, Spaulding was feeling the heat from former players and school officials for the 2-5-1 record for the season. It was his thirteenth season as head coach, and although he had brought the team a long way toward respectability, it wasn’t enough. Sure, there had been some injuries, and one of his best players had left the team to devote more time to his studies. In midseason his players asked Spaulding to let Washington call the signals. His players were loyal to him, but the drumbeat calling for his ouster never let up.

  In a preview of the USC game, the Los Angeles Examiner reported that “if one man can lick a football team, Kenny Washington looks like the man to do it. But if you are going to stick to the theory that a TEAM should beat a MAN, then you have to take Howard Jones’ Trojans.” Perhaps Washington’s greatest game in his sophomore season came against the Trojans. If it had been any other team than USC, Washington would not have played. He was beat up. He was playing sixty minutes of every game. “My ribs are really hurt,” he told Strode. Washington still found time to pose for a picture of himself passing the ball in the Los Angeles Times. The headline read, “Westwood’s Chocolate Soldier.”

  The best the Bruins had been able to do in their nascent rivalry was to tie USC 7–7 the year before. They took the field before eighty thousand fans in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on December 4. It was turning into another no contest. USC was taking it to the Bruins offensively and defensively, holding a 19–0 lead with nine minutes to go.

  The Trojans had limited UCLA to 25 yards rushing and 46 passing. Los Angeles Examiner sportswriter Maxwell Stiles wrote after the game that Spaulding had told Washington, “You’ve simply got to go back in there and do whatever you can.” “‘I’m ready boss,’ replied the gallant son of African forefathers.” Considering the state of sportswriting in those days, it seems likely that both of those quotes came from Stiles’s vivid imagination. And it’s difficult to believe that Washington would have referred to Spaulding as “boss,” a term usually associated with what slaves called their masters.

  Down three touchdowns, the Bruins made their move after recovering a fumble on USC’s 44-yard line. After an incomplete pass, Washington threw a pass to Hal Hirshon, who grabbed at the 10-yard line and ran in for the score. Now it was 19–7. The Trojans didn’t panic; in fact, they chose to kick off after the TD, a move that the rules allowed in those days.

  With the ball on the Bruins’ 28-yard line after the kickoff, Hirshon told Washington, “Kenny, I can beat their safety.” Washington gave him the okay and told him, “Run as fast as you can, as far as you can, and I’ll hit you.” Washington dropped back to his own 15-yard line and lofted a spiral 62 yards into Hirshon’s hands at the 12-yard line. “I saw the pass coming,” Hirshon said, “and for a moment I was afraid it was going over my head, but Kenny had the range all right ’cause it just dropped in my arms just like that.” The distance was verified by a Fox-Movietone newsreel. Hirshon ran in for the score. Few players, if any, had thrown a pass that far in those days. (Washington had a bazooka for an arm. Strode remembered when teammates and Washington would have contests to see whether anyone could throw a football out of the Coliseum. “Kenny got seventy-eight rows; there are about eighty rows altogether. Try that with a baseball sometime; I’ll bet you only get halfway.”)

  “In the winking of an eye, black lightning struck the desolate scene,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Black lightning in the mighty right arm of Kenny Washington, spectacular Bruin pass thrower.” USC wasn’t going to make the mistake of kicking off again; it decided to receive the kickoff. The Bruins’ defense held, and after a punt UCLA took over at its own 43. Washington then ran for 17 yards, then 10, and then 7 more. The Bruins were on the Trojans’ 14. But after three downs when they barely moved the ball, Washington dropped back to pass with just over a minute to go, spotted Strode at the 4-yard line, and rifled a pass that Strode couldn’t handle.

  “I saw the ball coming at me like a bullet,” Strode stated. “And like a bullet it went right through me. . . . When Kenny threw the ball, he threw it hard. . . . If I couldn’t get it, nobody could. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Coach Spaulding went to the USC locker room to see USC coach Jones. He knocked on the closed door, but no one answered. Finally Spaulding yelled out, “You can tell Howard it’s all right to come out now. Kenny’s stopped passing.”

  A Los Angeles Times reporter visited the Bruins’ locker room, where Washington and Strode were consoling themselves. He couldn’t help himself when he started writing his story about what transpired in the locker room. “Naked as a couple of chocolate cherubs as they sat dejectedly. . . .” began the story.

  At season’s end Washington was named the team’s most valuable player for leading the Bruins in rushing (530), passing (495), and total yards (1,025). He would continue that pattern his next two years. Strode led the team in receiving.

  In the spring of 1938 Washington turned out for the baseball team, the first African American to don a Bruins’ baseball uniform. The genes of his father, Blue Washington, showed up too. He hit .454 that year and followed that up with a .350 average his junior year, along with stellar defense at shortstop. Apparently, for unknown reasons, he didn’t play baseball in 1940. So he never played on the same field as Robinson. Rod Dedeaux, who coached USC baseball for forty-five years and scouted for the Dodgers, said he thought Washington had a better arm, more power, and more agility than Robinson.

  Strode said Robinson was faster than Washington, “but Kenny could throw and he could hit.” He pointed out that Washington and future New York Yankees star Joe DiMaggio were the only ones to ever hit a home run at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Washington hit a home run at Stanford that some said was the longest ever hit in that Sunken Diamond during the 1939 season. The homer cleared a tree near the center-field fence at the 425-foot mark.

  “If a kid had [Washington’s] ability today, they’d be waving million dollar contracts in his face. But back then, in the thirties and early forties, the hurdles were just too great for a black kid to make the major leagues,” Strode said. “Next to me, Jackie [Robinson] was the best competitor I ever saw,” Washington said, “but when he became a baseball star it kind of shook me up. I outhit him by at least two hundred points at UCLA.” “Kenny’s future in baseball . . . seemed much brighter after his brief exposure to the college game than did mine,” Robinson commented years later.

  7

  An Easy Choice

  “It just burns me up that a Negro can’t play football at places like Notre Dame. But we’ll show ’em; you just wait till next fall and we’ll show ’em.”

  —Frank Robinson, Jackie’s brother

  While Washington was tearing the cover off the ball at UCLA, across town in Pasadena, Jackie Robinson graduated in midyear from Muir Tech and enrolled in Pasadena Junior College (PJC) for the spring semester. It was common for students of his time to enroll in junior colleges (now called community colleges or simply colleges). In fact the goal of Pasadena high schools was to lead students to the junior college. Robinson had several reasons for wanting to go to PJC: he would be immediately eligible to play sports, whereas at a four-year university he couldn’t play for the varsity until he was a sophomore; it would better prepare him for the rigors of a four-year school; tuition was free and he could live at home; PJC had a reputation for excellence; the school was one of the most liberal junior colleges in the area—most activities were opened to African Americans; his older brother Mack was attending the school; and he received no offers from four-year schools.

  Robinson looked up to Mack, whom he had also followed to Muir Tech. When Jackie arrived at PJC, he played in the shadow of his brother, who was the best amateur sprinter in the United States. He had assumed that title after Jesse Owens, who had won the gold medal in the 200 meters in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, turned professional. Mack had won the silver behind Owens.

  Mack almost didn’t make the Olympics
. He didn’t have the money to attend the trials for the U.S. team. Finally a group of businessmen raised $150 for him and a teammate. Two factors kept Mack from winning the gold: he didn’t have the coaching that Owens had, and he couldn’t afford to buy new track shoes. “Jesse got the coaching,” he said. “I didn’t. . . . And I could not even get the new pair of spikes I needed.” He donned the worn-down spikes he had worn all season at PJC. Mack Robinson also said Owens had the “distinct advantage” of running in the inside lane. He said he was closing the gap on Owens before Owens crossed the finish line. Owens broke the world record in a time of 20.7 seconds, a record that stood for two decades. Robinson finished second, 0.4 seconds behind Owens. “It’s not too bad to be second best in the world at what you’re doing,” Robinson said, “no matter what it is. It means that only one other person in the world was better than you. That makes you better than an awful lot of people.”

  When he returned to Pasadena, Mack felt unappreciated. “If anybody in Pasadena was proud for me, other than family and close friends, they never showed it. I was totally ignored. The only time I was noticed was when somebody asked me during an assembly at school if I’d race against a horse.”

  At PJC Mack participated in the 100- and 220-yard sprints, the sprint relays, the low hurdles and the broad jump. Jackie was going to focus on baseball, with some track thrown in on the side. Mack set a national junior college record of 25 feet 5 1/2 inches that spring and then transferred in 1938 to the University of Oregon, where he won a number of national collegiate and Amateur Athletic Union titles. He quit Oregon in his senior year to return home to help support his family.

  Mack couldn’t find a decent job. He was seen sweeping downtown streets while wearing his Olympic sweatshirt with a big “USA” on the front. “I never did understand those people,” he recalled years later. “I had to take whatever I could get.” Mack was fired when a judge ordered all swimming pools opened to African Americans and the city retaliated by firing all black workers, including Mack. Jackie said that incident broke Mack’s spirit.

  Four years after the Olympics, Cullen Fentress, sports editor of the California Eagle, checked in on Mack. He was out of work, and Fentress lamented that something was “radically wrong with a system wherein an athlete is the toast of a race, a nation and the world one year and a few years later a ‘forgotten man.’” He noted that despite all the acclaim for the African Americans’ athletic success, it did little to put food on the table.

  After Jackie broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, it was Mack who fell in his shadow. “I am getting awfully tired of being referred to just as Jack Robinson’s brother,” he said as late as 1968. “Why even last year, when one of my sons was killed, the story only mentioned that Jackie Robinson’s nephew was dead.” Over the years, though, Mack became beloved in Pasadena because of his dedication to the city and its children. The city finally came around and honored Jackie and Mack with nine-foot-high busts that cost $325,000 in a grassy area across the street from City Hall. The post office was named after Mack in 2000. The stadium at Pasadena City College (as Pasadena Junior College was renamed) also was dedicated to him in 2000. He was honored as one of the most distinguished alumni of the University of Oregon and is in the University of Oregon Hall of Fame and the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.

  While Mack was setting records at PJC, Jackie began to focus on baseball with the Pasadena Bulldogs. He showed some flashy fielding at shortstop and was the team’s leadoff batter. He had a good eye for the strike zone, rarely striking out, and he would cause havoc when he got on the base paths. In the second game of the season against Modesto Junior College, Robinson stole second, third, and home. The Bulldogs went on a fourteen-game winning streak, but they lost a championship game to Compton Junior College. Robinson was considered the best shortstop in the league.

  During track Jackie was the second best broad jumper behind Mack. Jackie couldn’t beat his brother, but he improved steadily, and by the end of the track season he had jumped 23 feet 9½ inches. Mack had set a national junior college record of 25 feet 5½ inches. Jackie and Mack enjoyed their competitive brotherhood.

  That fall Robinson turned out for football at PJC, which had a new coach, Tom Mallory, a former star at Pasadena and USC who had been coaching high school in Oklahoma City. About ten Oklahoma players followed him to Pasadena, none of whom had ever played with or against an African American. Three blacks were to start at Pasadena: Robinson; Ray Bartlett, a pass catcher; and Larry Pickens, another end. A fourth African American, Jim Wright, also was on the team.

  At one point the players from Oklahoma refused to play with the African Americans, so the black players walked off the field. “We had played with Caucasian guys here in Pasadena, so it wasn’t a problem for us [black players],” Bartlett recalled. “It was a problem with them. But it seemed to kind of level itself out.”

  A boyhood friend of Jackie’s, Jack Gordon, who was playing basketball nearby, asked the African Americans why they were leaving practice. “They don’t want to play with us,” came the reply. About the Oklahoma players, Gordon said, “I don’t think they had ever been out of Oklahoma, their talk was just thick, thick, thick southern drawl. Man, you knew where they were coming from.”

  When Robinson and Bartlett threatened to quit the team and transfer to rival Compton Junior College, Mallory put down the rebellion. “Coach Mallory laid down the law,” Robinson said, “and the Oklahoma fellows became more than decent. We saw that here was a case where a bit of firmness prevented what could have grown into an ugly situation.” Robinson “was touchy about the racial issue,” Mallory said. “We didn’t have too many black players on the team in those days. Some people would say that they didn’t want to play against ‘the nigger.’ I saw what an athlete he was and I wanted him.”

  Bartlett, who also would earn All-American junior college honors, recalled a different scenario. He said the players from Oklahoma refused to block for Robinson during practices. At one practice Oklahoman Dick Sieber saw Robinson race downfield behind his block. “You can sure carry that ball,” Sieber said. Said Bartlett, “I think that broke the ice, and we really started to come together as a team at that point.” From that Robinson learned the value of protesting injustice and realized that being an athlete gave him a platform to fight against it. He put it to good use his entire life.

  Robinson was clearly going to be the best player on the field for Pasadena, but on the second day of practice he chipped a bone in his right leg and wrenched his knee. He was out for a month. The team lost its first four games. When Robinson returned, he sparked the Bulldogs with spectacular runs, passes, and punt returns as they won the remainder of their games. On a trip to play Phoenix Junior College, the black players were banned from staying at the same hotel with their teammates. “We had to stay in a place that was like a house converted to a hotel,” Bartlett said. “I remember the name of it well: the Rice Hotel. The black players refused to take the rooms. I don’t remember any of us going to bed,” Bartlett said. “I think we just sat up and talked in the lobby areas and maybe we slept sitting up in the chairs.”

  At season’s end a white player received the team’s most valuable player (MVP) award over Robinson, but Jack just shrugged it off.

  While Robinson mixed freely with whites and blacks at the school, he did not entirely escape racial overtures. Shig Kawai, a Japanese American athlete at Pasadena, played football and basketball with Robinson. He remembered that “a lot of time you would hear ‘Get that Jap’ and ‘Get that nigger.’ We had to hear these other teams making racial remarks all the time.” Bartlett was not exempt from racism. “I felt that because I was a Negro I was being passed over, not considered, for many things. All the clubs were white.” Once on a trip with the track team to Sacramento he and another team member were denied service at a restaurant because they were “colored.”

  Racism was no stranger to basketball, for which Robinson turned out as soon as football
season was over. He and Bartlett were starters for the Bulldogs, and it didn’t take them long to realize they were being mistreated by other teams that were virtually all white and all-white officials. As the best player, Robinson was pounded by opposing players without calls from the referees. Robinson fought back. Once he smacked a player in the face with the ball, bloodying his nose. No foul was called, and he had no further problems in the game.

  In a game against the Vikings of Long Beach Junior College, a substitute Viking guard, Sam Babich, continually harangued Robinson with racial remarks. He dug an elbow into Robinson’s stomach, and Robinson jabbed him back. “See you after the game,” Babich said. “That’s up to you,” Jack replied. When the final whistle blew, he punched Robinson in the face. Robinson jumped on top of him, flailing away. Fights broke out in the stands before order was restored. The Pasadena Chronicle reported, “Robinson, besides coming off with high point honors for the evening, also came off top man in his personal war with Sam Babich, substitute Viking [guard].” The Long Beach student body president later apologized to Robinson and the other Bulldogs. He asked Robinson whether he would shake Babich’s hand and Jackie agreed, but the other player “refused to soil his white hands on me.” The student body president apologized and hoped that Robinson wouldn’t hold it against the entire student body. Ray Bartlett said he became fighting mad at the bad sportsmanship in games but that Robinson sloughed it off. “Jack really didn’t fight back like I thought he should have,” Bartlett said. “I didn’t see him as being a real fighter. I’ve always said that what made him such a good runner [on the football field] was that he didn’t want to get hit. You couldn’t get away with anything against him, but he was not dirty and he was not one to start a fight.”