Coach Horrell was upbeat after the loss. “We’re coming along all right. It was a tough one to lose. I plan to go ahead with the same backfield combination.” Broncos coach Buck Shaw had nothing but praise for Robinson. “Naturally, we had expected more trouble from Jackie Robinson, but he still gave me enough scares for one evening,” he said.
Los Angeles Times columnist Dick Hyland was not sold on the talents of either Robinson or Bartlett. He was particularly hard on Bartlett, who he said, “looked very . . . mediocre” in the SMU game. “Bartlett was not up to snuff, there was no doubt about that,” he wrote. But he noted that Bartlett had been an able substitute the previous year against UC Berkeley when Robinson was injured.
Despite Horrell’s support for Bartlett as part of his backfield, Ray was on the bench for the Bruins’ next game against the Texas A&M Aggies at the Coliseum, another loss for punchless UCLA, 7–0. The only score came from All-American John Kimbrough, who ran in from 9 yards out. Robinson, who was moved to the right halfback position, carried the ball only three times for 9 yards. Angry UCLA fans accused the Aggies of dirty play by using “back-alley tactics” in an attempt to put Robinson and several other Bruins out of the game.
The Bruins lost their first three games by a total of 13 points. They scored only 12. It wasn’t going to get much better. The UC Berkeley Golden Bears were up next, and Robinson would be sidelined with a hip injury suffered when he was knocked around by the Aggies. He was starting on the bench, and Horrell wasn’t sure he would play at all. Bartlett was back in the starting lineup. Once again the Bruins fell victim to a late field goal, losing 9–7 this time. The Bruins got to the 5-yard line in the final minute but couldn’t push across the winning TD. Robinson never got in the game.
Next up was Oregon State at the Coliseum, and the results weren’t much different as the Bruins lost 7–0. Robinson started on the bench but entered the game later, although he didn’t show much of his talent as he was still suffering from the hip injury.
The undefeated Stanford “Wow Boys” were next in line for the Bruins at the Coliseum. The Indians were under the guidance of Clark Shaughnessy, who reintroduced the T-formation that season. The flashy formation baffled PCC opponents, and UCLA was no exception. The origin of the term “Wow Boys” apparently came about because of the team’s colorful uniforms and a play on words of Stanford’s three-time Rose Bowl teams, the Vow Boys, who vowed never to lose to USC, a promise they kept.
The Bruins were ready for the Indians. Horrell held secret practices and indicated the Bruins would pass the ball more. “We’ll open up,” he said. “All of our former cripples are now in good shape. If we lose, no alibis.” Robinson would be starting at right halfback.
The Stanford Daily “welcomed” Robinson with a cartoon that showed a Stanford Indian waving a tomahawk while traveling in a race car headed on the road to do battle with the Bruins. On a hill above the race car, a Bruin is pushing over a boulder while saying, “O.K. Jackie Boy. Let Him Have It!” On the road in front of the car stands an African American man, clearly a reference to Robinson, getting set to push a plunger down on TNT. The stereotypical caricature with the addition of a tail, replies to the Bruin, “Yas suh boss.”
The cartoon was typical of the brazen attempts to characterize blacks as still unequal. Another example occurred on September 20, 1940, when an Associated Press story carried a typographical error. The Stanford Daily ran the story with the error, which claimed that Kenny Washington, then playing for the Hollywood Bears, had broken away for a “330-yard run.” The headline over the story read, “Kenny Washington Sho’ Do Travel.”
The Bruins gave the Indians all they could handle but still came up short 20–14. Robinson kept UCLA in the game with his terrific all-around play. On one play a Stanford punt rolled to a stop at the 16-yard line, and Indians gathered around it. Out of nowhere Robinson streaked, in scooped up the ball, and took off running. At the UCLA 45, All-America fullback Norm Standlee grabbed Robinson by the leg, but he broke free, looped back to the UCLA 35, and then headed toward the goal again. He was finally tackled at the Stanford 43 for a 41-yard return. Robinson may have covered 100 yards during the return. He also had a 40-yard punt return keyed by a Bartlett block. But the Bruins’ drive stalled.
With the Bruins trailing 20–7, Stanford was on the move again until Robinson stepped in front of an Albert pass at the UCLA 20 and returned it to the 33. Robinson ran the ball three times after dropping back to pass, moving the ball to the Indians’ 19. He then threw a touchdown pass to end Milt Smith with a minute to go—not enough time as Stanford ran out the clock.
Shaughnessy said about Robinson, “Once a year is too much for me with that boy on the other side. A very dangerous back. One of the best I have ever seen. We saw two of the best backs on the Coast out there today. Robinson and Standlee.” The Los Angeles Times described Robinson as being a “tormentor of old getting away not once but several times on those typical dipsy do dashes that send everyone into hysterics.”
The 0-6 Bruins next headed to Eugene, Oregon, to take on the Ducks, who would hand UCLA its worst defeat of the season, 18–0. Coach Tex Oliver was apparently worried enough about Robinson to lock reporters out of practice. The Ducks took great advantage of typically horrible conditions on a rainy afternoon and a muddy Hayward Field. This was UCLA’s only game outside California, and Coach Horrell said afterward that many of his players had never played a game in the rain. To top it off his starting quarterback, Ned Mathews, suffered a knee injury in the second quarter, forcing Robinson to move from halfback to quarterback—a position at which he wasn’t very good (he completed 2 passes in 11 attempts for 13 yards and 1 interception). On UCLA’s last drive he was tackled for a 12-yard loss, throwing the ball halfway into the mud in frustration.
Although the Ducks bottled up Robinson, “the Negro boy nevertheless kept them in a constant sweat lest he break away. He was frightfully dangerous even on the shoe-deep wet turf,” a sportswriter for The Oregonian wrote. The reporter pointed out that Robinson was hard to tackle. “To stop him, they had to grab him above the waist, or still better around the Negro boy’s neck and headlock him out of bounds. . . . When he finally left the game late in the fourth period, the customers not only heaved sighs of relief but gave him the tribute of a cheer.”
As Los Angeles Times sportswriter Al Wolf put it, the only real excitement came when Ray Bartlett and Oregon’s Bill Regner got into a fistfight. It was unclear whether the fight was owing to a racial issue or just hot tempers. Wolf noted that Bartlett “exhibited a fair left jab and [Regner] a pretty good roundhouse right.” The Bruins made only one first down in what was described as a “hog wallow.” Wolf wrote that the Bruins “didn’t seem to have their hearts in the [game].” The Bruins blamed “that cold, wet, slimy mud which utterly bogged them down,” Wolf added. Robinson had 38 yards on 15 rushes, and Bartlett gained only a yard on one carry.
Robinson and his teammates were now 0-7. Back home UCLA finally found its groove against Washington State with a 34–26 victory. The Bruins scored just two points shy of what they had scored all season. And they allowed the most points to an opponent in any of their games.
They had to come from behind 20–6 to do it, and it was all thanks to the heroics of Jackie Robinson. “They had everything in the ball game except the bearded lady and free lunch,” Wolf wrote. Robinson scored 3 TDs, passed for another, set up a fifth, and kicked 4 conversions. He accounted for 339 yards of total offense. On defense he intercepted 3 passes. His touchdowns included a punt he ran back for 60 yards “by doing figure eights all over tarnation” and a 75-yard touchdown run. “I still marvel at the way Jackie Robinson evaded three Cougar tacklers who apparently had him cornered on his first touchdown run,” remarked Bob Ray, a Los Angeles Times sportswriter. “They all wound up falling flat on their faces, grabbing nothing but night air. Jackie has more than a change of pace—it’s a chance of space.”
The following week against the Unive
rsity of Washington the Bruins were back to their old habits, getting trounced by the Huskies 41–0. The Huskies wound up second in the league with a 6–1 record, behind undefeated Stanford. Washington led only 7–0 at halftime, but the Bruins fell apart in the second half. Robinson was a marked man and had little impact on the game. Nor did Bartlett. Robinson inexplicably left the game early, dressed hurriedly, and headed home before his teammates ever left the field.
Coach Horrell had little to say after the game except that he was looking forward to the USC game the following weekend. “If we can get some of our cripples back and regain our spirits we have a chance,” he said. The Bruins’ chances against the Trojans didn’t look good. Certainly the game might have been considered a rivalry, but it was nowhere near the rivalry that exists today between the two schools. The Bruins had never beaten USC—and they weren’t going to do so on this date either.
As Robinson bowed out, the press heaped plaudits on his two years as a Bruin, calling him one of the most feared backs in the PCC and one of the outstanding players in the country. But newspapers noted that he was not the same player without Washington to take some of the pressure off him.
The Trojans weren’t about to let Robinson beat them. Practice revolved around how to stop the fleet running back. And they planned to punt away from him to keep the ball out of his hands. One of the ways USC prevented Robinson from handling the ball was to keep possession with long, grinding drives that ate up the clock. The Trojans won 28–12 while throwing only 4 passes. They had touchdown drives of 67, 62, 61, and 34 yards, all without throwing a pass. The Bruins had led the game 6–0 on Robinson’s 6-yard touchdown run. The loss marked the end of a long season for Robinson. The Bruins finished the season with one victory and nine defeats.
Robinson thought of dropping out of school, but in the end he decided to play one more season of basketball. Coach Wilbur Johns was glad to have him back, noting that if Robinson had not devoted so much time to football, he could have been “the greatest of all basketball players.”
It turned out to be another hapless year for UCLA basketball, despite Robinson’s once again leading the Southern Division of the PCC in scoring with 133 points. After a game at UC Berkeley the Daily Bruin complained that Robinson was “viciously treated.” Racial taunts from Berkeley fans marred the game. They abused Robinson because of his race, and he provoked the crowd by talking back instead of laughing off or ignoring the taunts. The fans chanted, “Take the nigger out of there,” “Down with the colored race,” and “Look out, eight ball,” according to Tom Berkley, a black UCLA graduate and former track star currently attending Hastings Law School.
Again Robinson was left off the all-conference team; every player from Stanford’s championship team was named to the first team. Robinson was chosen for the second team. The Daily Bruin called it a clear case of prejudice. Berkeley coach Nibs Price, who had praised Robinson the previous season, left him off his first, second, and third teams. “It’s purely the case of a coach refusing to recognize a player’s ability purely out of prejudice,” one person was quoted as saying.
Robinson decided he had had enough and quit UCLA short of his degree. He wanted to earn money to help his mother, who was still just getting by. He also wanted to find a decent job and wasn’t convinced that a college degree was all that important. “I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job,” he said. “I felt I was living in an academic and athletic dream world. . . . My brothers, their friends and acquaintances, all older than me, had studied hard and wound up as porters, elevator operators, bellhops. I came to the conclusion that long hours over books were a waste of time.”
Robinson also realized that baseball was his weakest sport. UCLA officials begged him to stay and graduate, even offering him financial help. His mother begged him to stay in school, but to no avail. Jackie remarked, “I wanted to do the next best thing—become an athletic director. The thought of working with youngsters in the field of sports excited me.” He also was acutely aware that professional sports—the NFL, the National Basketball League, and Major League Baseball—were off limits to a black athlete.
The day Robinson departed UCLA, the Daily Bruin wrote, “Yes it was his speed, his lightning-like reactions that brought the oohs and aahs from the crowd and dollars through the box office. Whether the Bruins won or lost, the people would still come just to watch him. . . . Few can deny that he brought spirit and hope to a Bruin student body that had only known pessimism.”
In his senior year Robinson met his future wife, Rachel Isum, at UCLA. Ray Bartlett had introduced them, and now they were a steady couple. (“He was big, he was broad-shouldered, he was very attractive physically, and he had pigeon toes you couldn’t miss,” she said at the time.) Rachel was shocked when she heard Jackie was leaving school. It was the first she had heard of it. “I was aghast,” she said. “I tried to talk him out of it. He was so close to finishing. He put it all on mother Mallie, that he wanted to help her financially, because she was still working very hard. But I think he would have left in any case. He had had enough.” Jackie and Rachel’s relationship and marriage proved a bedrock of strength for Robinson during the tumultuous times ahead. Her calm demeanor helped keep in line Robinson’s often heated temper. Their bond of mutual support was steadfast throughout their marriage.
One of Rachel’s observations about Robinson is telling. She noted that Robinson almost always wore a white shirt. “I thought to myself, ‘Now why would he do that? Why would anyone that dark wear a white shirt?’ It’s terrible. He wore his color with such dignity and pride and confidence that after a little while I didn’t even think about it. He wouldn’t let me. He was never, ever, ashamed of his color.”
Newspaper sports pages effused over Robinson’s career. George T. Davis, a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, wrote that “Jackie Robinson will go down in history as the greatest all-around athlete in Pacific Coast history.” Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Times’ Al Wolf wrote, “There may have been better footballers, better basketeers, better baseballers and better track men, but cudgel our memory as we will we can think of nobody more able in the four put together.” Of the great all-around athletes like Bo Jackson, Jim Thorpe, Deion Sanders, and Glenn Davis, none had ability at such a high level as Robinson.
16
World War II Beckons
“Things I had been doing all my life I could not do now.”
—Woody Strode, on his life in the military
It didn’t take Robinson long to find a job. The National Youth Administration (NYA) hired him as assistant athletic director at its work camp in Atascadero, California, on the coast about midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for $150 a month. The NYA was founded in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide jobs, job training, and relief. Robinson was hoping that the job would help him prepare for a future career.
The NYA saw a need to announce his hiring as news because he was a black man in a position of authority over whites. (Only 2 of the 109 boys were African Americans.) The NYA reported that it was “fortunate, indeed to secure the services of this outstanding athlete.” Robinson found the job rewarding, working with boys and men ranging in ages from sixteen to twenty-five from poor or broken homes. “I realized that I had been no different than many of these kids, who would make good if given half a chance,” Robinson said.
While he was working at the NYA camp, UCLA held its annual football banquet, during which Robinson was given the coveted award for outstanding service to the university. Robinson had sent a letter ahead of the banquet saying, “Thank you,” and it received loud applause.
Only once during his time on the job was Robinson subjected to racial discrimination. A white associate took him along to a camp dance, but when they sought entrance, Robinson was turned away, and the two left.
Because of the war in Europe the government closed all NYA projects in July 1941 as the
United States moved closer to joining World War II. The job had lasted less than six months.
Robinson was having trouble finding another job when he was invited to play in an annual charity football game sponsored by the Chicago Tribune that matched an all-star college team against the NFL champion Chicago Bears. The all-stars practiced three weeks leading up to the game. “It took one scrimmage to establish the Negro boy’s rightful place among the All-Stars,” the United Press reported. Babe Hollingbery, the Washington State coach who was helping prepare the team, called Robinson “the best athlete I ever saw. Why, he could play shortstop on a major league team right now, and he is plenty uncanny on a basketball court.”
In one scrimmage “the lithe, twisting” Robinson broke away for a 60-yard touchdown run. A Tribune story made no mention of his race. But he wasn’t in the starting lineup come game time. Ironically two of his teammates played for Tennessee, the school that had hoped to avoid playing against black players in the Rose Bowl.
On August 28 the Bears beat the all-stars 37–13, a game in which Robinson caught a 36-yard touchdown pass in front of 98,203 fans at Soldier Field. “The play easily was the most thrilling of a thrilling game,” the Tribune wrote. The Bears were wary of Robinson. “The only time we were worried was when that guy Robinson was on the field,” Bear defensive end Dick Plasman said in 1977.
Robinson then sought a job in professional football, but not the in the NFL, where some of his all-star teammates, such as Heisman winner Tom Harmon, would ply their trade. Robinson landed a spot on the semi-pro Los Angeles Bulldogs’ roster of mostly white players. He played one game before pulling up lame in the first quarter and sat out the rest of the game. A week later he and Ray Bartlett received offers to play for the Honolulu Bears, a semi-pro football team. They would work construction during the week and play football on Sundays. Robinson received $100 a game plus the construction job money. “The construction job was a very important part of the package,” Bartlett remembered. “We could use the extra money, because we were both trying to help our mothers. But because the construction job involved defense, it also meant we wouldn’t be drafted—at least, not yet.”
The Black Bruins Page 14