The Black Bruins

by James W. Johnson

  Robinson said he would miss the game. “I love baseball, and I’ll miss playing the game. Every inning is a new adventure in baseball. I’ll miss that kind of fun. I’ll even miss my rhubarbs with the umpires. I’ll miss some of the players I’ve known, but I’ll miss the game more. You play baseball for pleasure and for money—not to make friends. I don’t regret any part of the last ten years.”

  For his career Robinson batted .311 while leading the Dodgers to six National League pennants and a World Series championship. He stole 197 bases, including 19 of home plate—Ty Cobb holds the Major League record with 54—and hit 137 home runs. Robinson was one of only two players during the span of 1947–56 to accumulate at least 125 steals while registering a slugging percentage over .425. He walked 740 times while striking out only 291 times. That he put up such terrific numbers is testimony again to what an outstanding athlete he was, perhaps the best all-around athlete in U.S. sports history. Nor can one dismiss the fact that Robinson had all the motivation he needed to succeed, for if he failed, black athletes would be set back for years, perhaps decades, in making further strides toward integrating baseball.

  “Baseball was just a part of my life,” Robinson would say. “Thank God that I didn’t allow a sport or a business or any part of my life to dominate me completely. . . . I felt that I had my time in athletics and that was it.” It was time to move on.

  25

  Changing Los Angeles

  “As well as anybody could say that they are colorblind, I really believe that is a fact of my life.”

  —Tom Bradley

  With his election Bradley was not only the first African American mayor of Los Angeles, but he also was the mayor of the largest city in the country with an overwhelming white population. He would serve twenty years during a time of vast growth in the Southern California city. As the dominating figure in Los Angeles politics, he helped bring consensus toward improving the city. These accomplishments overshadowed problems that arose toward the end of his administration.

  “He came from the liberal reform section of the Democratic Party. . . . He built bridges to whites and to other groups. He reached into other worlds, but he did it without ever losing his commitment to the black community,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, a political scientist at California State University, Fullerton.

  As he had throughout most of his life, Bradley continued to bridge racial barriers during his five terms as mayor. His administration thrived on building coalitions between blacks and Jews. For example, during the 1973 mayoral campaign Bradley attended the meeting of a key Jewish group that he was courting. A staffer, Blair Levin, noticed that many of the men were wearing yarmulkes. Levin had one in his jacket and offered it to Bradley. The candidate stuffed it into his pocket. During the event, his opponent, Sam Yorty, was offered a yarmulke, and he put it on. When Bradley was called to speak before the group, he too was offered a yarmulke, but he said, “I have my own,” and he donned it. The room broke out in laughter. “It sent a message not of pandering—‘I am one of you’—but rather, ‘We are all in this together,’” Levin recalled.

  The Los Angeles Times wrote upon Bradley’s death that he had been “key to the racial peace that the rapidly diversifying city enjoyed during most of his hold on the mayor’s office. He opened doors for minorities and women to serve on city commissions, to rise in the ranks of City Hall employees and to share in city contracts.” The Times described Bradley as “a tall, dignified figure with a quiet, sometimes nearly expressionless demeanor [and] never a firebrand. He preferred to work quietly behind the scenes.” That demeanor led to unflattering nicknames such as “the Sphinx of City Hall” and “Mayor Automaton” that did not sit well with his backers.

  One colleague remarked, “Some people make the mistake of underestimating [Bradley] in this area; they confuse his quiet approach with indecisiveness and think that he can be molded to fit others’ expectations, but that is not Tom Bradley.” He was a listener, another one said. “He is able to grasp more of the detail and the context of the problem than most people.” A staff member commented that after reading a long list of items that needed attention, Bradley sat in silence. Finally the staff member got up to leave. Bradley stopped him and asked, “Don’t you want to know my response to your list?” The staffer recalled, “That is how he is at times; you don’t know if he is paying attention, when all along he is right with you and afterwards gives you a response that not only answers your questions, but raises others.”

  The first obstacle Bradley had to overcome was the opposition of powerful business owners, but he pushed through a redevelopment plan within a year that wooed them to his side. The plan called for construction of several skyscrapers in the downtown financial district. Bradley’s leadership also contributed to the establishment of the outlying Century City on the city’s west side and the Warner Center in San Fernando Valley, both of which proved to be huge financial successes. Bradley was in the forefront of developing the Los Angeles light rail system and the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

  Under Bradley’s administration strong efforts were undertaken to improve the black community. A shopping center was built in Watts, the first since the area had been largely abandoned by businesses after the 1965 riots. Bradley persuaded the Produce Market to stay in the city, and he succeeded in saving shopping centers in two inner-city areas threatened with decay—the Slauson-Vermont neighborhood and the Crenshaw district. Bradley’s experience in the LAPD also helped him deal with the tumultuous times during the tenures of controversial police chiefs Edward M. Davis and Daryl Gates. During Bradley’s administration Los Angeles saw its first homosexual rights law in 1979 and efforts that led to the discovery of AIDS in 1981.

  Despite his high approval rating, Bradley was going to get a familiar challenger as he sought to retain his mayoral position in 1981. Former mayor Sam Yorty announced he would seek a return to the mayor’s office, and the racial innuendos began all over again. For example, Yorty told a Chamber of Commerce meeting that “black people are really racist [because] they vote for black people because they are black.” He also attacked Bradley for allegedly supporting the mandatory busing of children as an answer to segregation despite Bradley’s consistently being on record as opposing busing.

  During the campaign a Los Angeles Times poll gauged Bradley’s popularity statewide if Bradley were to run for governor in 1982. The poll found that he had the support of 85 percent of the respondents. Those who didn’t back Bradley were mostly “law-and-order oriented voters who are pro-police, anti-gun control, pro-death penalty and who are hostile to the courts.” The Times analysis also suggested that a candidate “capable of mounting a major law-and-order campaign” could cause Bradley trouble. It also suggested that race could play a part in voter preference. “Political strategists have speculated [that] the fact that Bradley is black with a reputation as a Democratic liberal could hurt him in a statewide race against a well-financed conservative Republican candidate.” The poll turned out to be quite prophetic.

  Bradley handily won the race for mayor, earning 64 percent of the vote in the primary, thereby putting aside any need for a runoff. It was by far his biggest margin since he was elected in 1973. With popularity like that it took little for Bradley to set his sights on the state capital, Sacramento, even though publicly he was only a “possible” candidate. Then in January 1982 Bradley jumped into the gubernatorial race. “I want to revive the promise and opportunity of the American Dream,” Bradley said.

  Bradley easily captured the Democratic nomination for governor with 67 percent of the vote; the next closest candidate gained 24 percent. He was the first and only African American to head the gubernatorial ticket in California. Bradley’s Republican opponent in the general election was California attorney general George Deukmejian, who had squeaked by Lieutenant Governor Mike Curb. Curb charged Deukmejian with smear tactics in the last week of the election that pushed him over the top. Such tactics would pr
ove to play a dominant role in deciding the general election race.

  A day after the primary Bradley proposed that the two opponents sign a “fair campaign code,” but Deukmejian quickly rejected the proposal. It was going to be a gloves-off election. While Bradley’s campaign focused on what he planned to do as governor, Deukmejian kept up a steady stream of negative tactics. Bradley appeared unconcerned about the race issue because he had successfully fended it off in earlier elections. Deukmejian’s campaign manager claimed Bradley’s race would not be an issue, thereby reminding or informing voters that Bradley was an African American.

  A Bradley staff member charged that the Deukmejian campaign had raised the topic of Bradley’s race in an “effort to skirt discussion and debate on the real issues. . . . As long as they could keep the public and the journalists’ minds off the real issues and the records, they could hope to benefit by playing to people’s stereotypes and fears.” The race issue, however, received no attention in the campaign until the final days.

  The black community was upset that Bradley thought that the black vote was a sure thing and that he campaigned lightly for its votes. That was a mistake because there was a the weak minority vote in what turned out to be a tight race. Bradley focused on the voters outside Los Angeles for the most part, spreading his beliefs in the California Dream. “[For] people of every race, creed, and color—I want them to know if they work hard, they can achieve. They can look at Tom Bradley and say, ‘If he can do it, so can I.’”

  About a month before the election, when Bradley seemed to have a comfortable lead, Deukmejian’s campaign manager, Bill Roberts, tried to explain why he was unconcerned that his candidate was behind in a California poll. Roberts believed 5 percent of the people who had been questioned had lied to the poll takers to conceal a racial bias that would keep them from voting for a black candidate. Once again race became the fodder of headlines throughout the state. Roberts told the press, “You will not get the truth from people regarding the race issue. . . . If we are down only five points or less in the polls by election time, we’re going to win. . . . It’s just a fact of life.” Roberts said the polls couldn’t be trusted because “if people are going to vote that way, they certainly are not going to announce it for a survey [poll] taker.”

  Bradley was stunned. “It’s an insult—not to me, but to all the people of California—to suggest that in 1982 people will vote for governor based on something other than the merits of the candidates.” To one backer it didn’t matter what Roberts’s motive was “because it is the effect that counts, and race is now an issue.” Former U.S. senator John Tunney, a Democrat, responded similarly: “If you go up and down the state saying that something is not an issue, such as race, it finally becomes an issue in the public’s mind.” Former Democratic governor Pat Brown was blunter: “Let’s make this perfectly clear. The whole thing was planned from the beginning by Roberts and Deukmejian.” Deukmejian disclaimed that he might be seeking the anti-black vote, but he and the press continued to keep the issue alive, despite the plethora of bigger issues facing the state. Roberts resigned four days after he made his statement, but the damage was done.

  Bradley had led the polls by 49 to 42 percent right up until election night. As one pollster put it, Bradley was “the kind of guy that a lot of whites who fear they might be prejudiced would like to vote for.” A Bradley staff member put it this way about the Deukmejian campaign: “It was a subtle, effective racist campaign.” That Bradley lost led to the so-called “Bradley effect,” a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some U.S. government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. In effect that is what Roberts had said.

  Bradley came close to beating Deukmejian, losing by slight more than 50,000 votes of the 7.7 million votes cast, a margin of .67 percent, the narrowest margin in races for governor in California. If elected, he would have become the first black in the nation to win a gubernatorial election. The closeness of the race gave some credibility to Roberts’s claim.

  Bradley never had the chance to give the speech prepared in the event he won. In part it said, “Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot become anything you want to be in the world, don’t let anyone tell you that something is impossible. Stay away from the drugs, study hard, work hard, do not ask for any favors, play by the rules and dare to dream. . . . Look at me the grandson of slaves and know that in California anything is possible. California is the place where impossible dreams can come true.”

  A disappointed Bradley tried to put the race behind him by returning to City Hall and focusing on his mayoral duties. One of the duties was to successfully lure the 1984 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles. Bradley called the securing of the Olympics the “highlight of my entire political career. . . . First of all, it was very difficult to get the Games. I had opposition from politicians and from the public in Los Angeles.” The Olympics turned out to be a resounding success that produced a $250 million surplus for the city.

  Bradley is credited with making Los Angeles “a Jewel of the Pacific.” The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are among the busiest ports in the world. LAX became the third busiest airport in the nation. More than 60 million passengers annually passed through its gates. Because of his successes Bradley was gaining national attention. President Jimmy Carter sounded him out for secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a position that he turned down. Walter Mondale considered him as a vice presidential candidate when he ran for president against Ronald Reagan in 1984.

  Bradley was not one to give up. He never took his eyes off the big prize—the governorship—because retreating was not in his nature. His daughter Loraine remembered glancing at a photo in Bradley’s home office of him running the 440-yard dash while at UCLA. She remembered asking her father when she was a young girl why he had such a determined look in the picture. He told her, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

  In the 1986 election Deukmejian swamped Bradley by a margin of 24 percent. Bradley may have been dejected, but he showed the kind of sportsmanship in politics that he had shown in athletics. “I want you to know the indomitable spirit of this old warrior will never die,” he told supporters after the election. A Deukmejian campaign official noted that Bradley lost because he had chosen to attack the governor, a stance that was “not credible with the electorate. It was out of sync with the mood of the voters.” Bradley had the misfortune to run against an exceedingly popular governor. The year before the election the governor had a 73 percent approval rating. In addition, no sitting governor had been defeated in a reelection bid in the previous forty years. Deukmejian also outspent Bradley by a two-to-one ratio. Also Bradley was hurt by Deukmejian’s claim that he was soft on crime.

  Bradley was back at his job early the next day. He told reporters that he was delighted to still have “one of the best jobs in the world.” He made it clear that despite having said he would serve only for two terms, he would seek a fifth term in 1989.

  His resounding rejection by California voters in the 1986 gubernatorial race notwithstanding, Bradley was elected mayor for a fifth term. But his political mojo was waning. Environmental issues, his reluctance to condemn the Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, and losses by key Bradley supporters in bids for reelection to the City Council weakened his political strength. He also was embroiled in more than a dozen investigations of his finances based on a $42,000 fee he had accepted while serving as an adviser to two banks doing business with the city. He was exonerated of any wrongdoing.

  One of Bradley’s most difficult problems came during his last years in office when riots broke out in South Central Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, after a jury acquitted four Los Angeles policemen of excessive force in arresting a black man, Rodney King. More than fifty people had been killed in the rioting. At one point Bradley
boarded a helicopter to survey the damage from the air. According to a bodyguard, Bradley was deeply shaken by what he saw. “Flying above the city in a helicopter, witnessing the city erupt in flames and in complete chaos, a city in which he loved and proudly served for fifty-one years, just tore him up deeply,” the bodyguard said. “All that hard work comes down to this. I think he was saying to himself, ‘My time as mayor has come to an end.’ He was just too proud to cry.”

  Five months later Bradley admitted, “The April unrest tore at my heart, and I will not be at peace until we have healed our wounds and rebuilt our neighborhoods.” Then he announced he would not seek a sixth term. “Let us all, every one of us, pledge to make Los Angeles a beacon of mutual respect, justice and tolerance from this day forward.”

  In 1993 Bradley stayed true to his promise and declined to seek a sixth term. Despite his many accomplishments, only 42 percent of respondents to a Los Angeles Times poll believed Bradley would be remembered as an “above average” mayor. At the age of seventy-six Bradley was showing no signs of slowing down. He went to work for the downtown law offices of Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison, specializing in international trade issues. As was his habit, he was usually the first to arrive in the morning and stayed late at night. Bradley didn’t miss the media attention. “I had enough exposure in twenty years to last a lifetime. If my name was never printed again, it wouldn’t bother me.”

  In March 1996 Bradley was stricken with a heart attack. Doctors performed triple bypass surgery, but less than a day after the surgery he suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak clearly for the rest of his life. Two years later he died of a heart attack at the age of eighty.