The Black Bruins

by James W. Johnson

  Among the crowd attending: Tygiel, The Jackie Robinson Reader, 220.

  Robinson was selected: Boston Globe, January 26, 1962.

  At the induction: http://baseballhall.org/discover/remembering-jackie, accessed November 11, 2015.

  Not long after the induction: Long, First Class Citizenship, 150.

  Robinson’s Hall of Fame plaque: http://baseballhall.org/discover/remembering-jackie, accessed November 12, 2015.

  The next year: Jackie Robinson with Duckett, Baseball Has Done It, 26.

  Between 1965 and 1972: Pederson, Jackie Robinson, 89.

  After he died: Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 462.

  Toward the end of his life: G. D. Johnson, Profiles in Hue, 290.

  He became a drug counselor: Jackie Robinson with Duckett, I Never Had It Made, 245.

  On June 17, 1971: Falkner, Great Time Coming, 338.

  Robinson turned down requests: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1997.

  The Dodgers could honor him: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1997.

  Robinson made one final public appearance: Kahn, Rickey & Robinson, 274–75.

  Irving Rudd, one-time publicist: Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1999.

  In part he said: Linge, Jackie Robinson, 149.

  In a tribute to Robinson: Williams with Sielski, How to Be like Jackie Robinson, 194–95.

  27. Their Legacy

  “A life is not important”: Pederson, Jackie Robinson, 94.

  As the Los Angeles Times put it: Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1998.

  Dr. Martin Luther King: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/our-god-marching, accessed January 18, 2015.

  Jim Murray: Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1991.

  What would Robinson say: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1997.

  Robinson’s efforts: Boston Globe, March 2, 2005.

  According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin: Williams with Sielski, How to Be like Jackie Robinson, 212.

  Lester Rodney: http://www.thisgreatgame.com/lester-rodney.html, accessed November 17, 2015.

  Robinson stressed: Jackie Robinson with Duckett, I Never Had It Made, 95.

  Close friends like Dodgers teammate Don Newcombe: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/28518376/, accessed January 18, 2016.

  Robinson changed issues: Dorinson and Warmund, Jackie Robinson, 212.

  Perhaps a not so flattering legacy: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/886332–50-most-hated-players-in-baseball-history, accessed November 21, 2015.

  After Robinson’s death: http://www.jackierobinson.org/impact/impact/, accessed November 7, 2015.

  A tribute to Robinson: Email, Dr. Damion L. Thomas, museum curator of sports, Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, November 16, 2015.

  Often described as a man of quiet determination: http://www.tombradleylegacy.org/, accessed July 20, 2012.

  California state historian emeritus Kevin Starr: Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1998.

  Although Bradley lost two races: Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2015.

  In 2005 Antonio Villaraigosa: http://www.tombradleylegacy.org/, accessed July 20, 2012.

  In 1993 Bradley participated: http://www.tombradleylegacy.org/mission-accomplishment.html, accessed November 12, 2015.

  Here’s how Strode saw his career: Strode and Young, Goal Dust, 252.

  Author Terence Towles Canote: http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2014/07/why-woody-strode-mattered.html, accessed November 15, 2015.

  Strode was inducted: Strode and Young, Goal Dust, 254.

  Strode’s son Kalai: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/333896%7C0/Woody-Strode-8–5.html, accessed January 10, 2016.

  Kenny Washington could have been: Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2011.

  Adam Rank, an NFL media writer: http://www.nfl.com/halloffame/story/0ap2000000341520/article/kenny-washington-belongs-in-the-hall-of-fame, accessed January 18, 2016.

  “He was a very proud man”: http://www.stlouisrams.com/news-and-events/article-1/The-Legacy-of-Kenny-Washington/d6ba4c71-fa7b-4fd4–8209-fd44b84900b6, accessed November 7, 2015.

  Ray Bartlett’s legacy: http://www.pasadena.edu/about/history/alumni/bartlett/bartlett.cfm, accessed November 21, 2015.

  In 2008 Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich: Pasadena Star-News, June 25, 2008.

  Bibliography

  Oral Histories

  Bradley, Thomas. “The Impossible Dream.” Transcript of interview by Bernard Galm, July 18, 1978. Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

  Campbell, Robert, and Blanche Campbell. “Town and Gown Booksellers Oral History.” Interview by Joel Gardner, University of California, Los Angeles, Oral History Project, 1980.

  LuValle, James E. “Dr. James E. LuValle, 1936 Olympic Games, Berlin, 400-Meters, Bronze Medalist.” Transcript of interview by George A. Hodak. Amateur Athletic Foundation, June 1988.

  Published Works

  Ackerman, William C. My Fifty Year Love-in at UCLA. Los Angeles: Fashion Press, 1969.

  Allen, Maury. Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered. New York: Franklin Watts, 1987.

  Allison, Jay, and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick. This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. New York: Holt, 2006.

  Allswang, John M. “Tom Bradley of Los Angeles.” Southern California Quarterly 74, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 55–105.

  Angell, Roger. This Old Man: All in Pieces. New York: Doubleday, 2015.

  Barber, Red. 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1984.

  Bishop, Ronald. “A Nod from Destiny: How Sportswriters for White and African-American Newspapers Covered Kenny Washington’s Entry into the National Football League.” American Journalism 19, no. 1 (June 3, 2013): 81–106.

  Bogle, Donald. Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood. New York: One World Ballantine Books, 1995.

  Cohane, Tim. Great College Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties. New Rochelle NY: Arlington House, 1973.

  Cottrell, Robert C. Two Pioneers: How Hank Greenberg and Jackie Robinson Transformed Baseball and America. Washington DC: Potomac, 2012.

  Covey, Cyclone. The Wow Boys: The Story of Stanford’s Historic 1940 Football Season, Game by Game. New York: Exposition Press, 1957.

  Demas, Lane: Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights and American College Football. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.

  —. “On the Threshold of Broad and Rich Football Pastures in Integrated College Football at UCLA, 1938–41.” In Horsehide, Pigskin, Oval Tracks and Apple Pie: Essays on Sports and American Culture, ed. James A. Vlasich, 86–103. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2005.

  —. “Sports History, Race and the College Gridiron, a Southern California Turning Point.” Southern California Quarterly 89, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 163–93.

  Denenberg, Barry. Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson. New York: Scholastic, 1990.

  Dorinson, Joseph, and Joram Warmund. Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream. Armonk NY: Sharp, 1998.

  Eig, Jonathan. Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

  Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration. Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

  Falkner, David. Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

  Flamming, Douglas. Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

  Gates, Henry Louis, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American Lives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

  Hamilton, Andrew, and John B. Jackson. UCLA on the Move during Fifty Golden Years 1919–1969. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1969.

  Johnson, George D. Profiles in Hue. Bloomington IN: Xlibris, 2011.

  Joh
nson, James W. The Wow Boys: A Coach, a Team, and a Turning Point in College Football. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

  Kahn, Roger. The Boys of Summer. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

  —. Rickey & Robinson: The True Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball. New York, Rodale, 2014.

  Kaliss, Gregory John. Everyone’s All-Americans: Race, Men’s College Athletics, and the Ideal of Equal Opportunity. Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

  Kemper, Kurt Edward. College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

  Lamb, Chris. Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

  Levy, Alan H. Tackling Jim Crow: Racial Segregation in Professional Football. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2003.

  Linge, Mary Kay. Jackie Robinson: A Biography. Westport CT: Greenwood, 2007.

  Lomax, Michael. “Jackie Robinson: Racial Pioneer and Athlete Extraordinaire in an Era of Change.” In Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes, ed. David K. Wiggins, 162–79. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

  Long, Michael G., ed. Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life after Baseball. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013.

  —, ed. First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson. New York: Times Books, 2007.

  Manchel, Frank. “The Man Who Made the Stars Shine Brighter: An Interview with Woody Strode.” Black Scholar 25, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 37–46.

  —. Every Step a Struggle: Interviews with Seven Who Shaped the African-American Image in Movies. Washington DC: New Academia Publishing, 2007

  Mann, Arthur. The Jackie Robinson Story. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1950.

  —. “Say Jack Robinson: Meet the Dodgers’ New Recruit.” Colliers, March 2, 1946, 67–68.

  Mantle, Mickey, and Robert Creamer. The Quality of Courage: Heroes in and out of Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books, 1999.

  Martin, Charles. Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, 1890–1980. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

  McBride, Joseph. Searching for John Ford: A Life. New York: St. Martin’s, Griffin, 2003.

  McRae, Donald. Heroes without a Country: America’s Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

  Moffi, Larry. Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947–1959. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books, 2006.

  Morehouse, M. Maggie. Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.

  Neuberger, Richard L. “Purity League.” Collier’s, November 9, 1940, 18–63, 64–66.

  Oliphant, Thomas. Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers. New York: Thomas Dunn, 2005.

  Oriard, Michael. King Football, Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

  Payne, J. Gregory, and Scott C. Ratzan, Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream. Santa Monica CA: Roundtable Publishing, 1986.

  Pederson, Charles E. Jackie Robinson: Baseball Great and Civil Rights Activist. Edina MN: Abdo, 2009.

  Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams. New York: Gramercy Books, 1970.

  —. Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  Piascik, Andy. Gridiron Gauntlet: The Story of the Men Who Integrated Pro Football in Their Own Words. New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009.

  Rampersad, Arnold. Jackie Robinson: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.

  Riordan, Jim. The International Politics of Sport of the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 1999.

  Roberts, Chris, and Bill Bennett. UCLA Football Vault: The History of the Bruins. Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2008.

  Robinson, Jackie, with Alfred Duckett. Baseball Has Done It. Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 2005.

  —. I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson. New York: HarperCollins Books, 1995.

  —. “Now I Know Why They Boo Me.” Look, January 25, 1955, 23–28.

  —. “Why I’m Quitting Baseball.” Look, January 9, 1957, 99–102.

  Robinson, James Lee, Jr. Tom Bradley: Los Angeles’s First Black Mayor. Los Angeles: University of California, 1976.

  Robinson, Rachel, with Lee Daniels. Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Abrams Publishing, 1996.

  Robinson, Sharon. Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America. New York: Scholastic Press, 2004.

  Ross, Charles K. Outside the Lines: African-Americans and the Integration of the National Football League. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

  Rowan, Carl T., with Jackie Robinson. Wait Till Next Year. New York: Random House, 1960.

  Rudd, Irvin, and Stan Fischler. The Sporting Life: The Duke and Jackie, Pee Wee, Razor Phil, Ali, Mushky Jackson and Me. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

  Sides, Josh. L.A. City Limits: African-American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

  Silber, Irwin. Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003.

  Simon, Scott. Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. Hoboken NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2002.

  Smith, Thomas G. Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins. Boston: Beacon Press, 2011.

  —. “Outside the Pale: The Exclusion of Blacks from the National Football League, 1934–1946.” In From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line, ed. Chris Lamb, 117–47. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1d9nhwr.28.

  Sonenshein, Raphael J. Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

  Springer, Steve, and Michael Arkush. 60 Years of USC-UCLA Football. Stamford CT: Longmeadow Publishing, 1991.

  Starr, Kevin. Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003. New York: Knopf, 2004.

  —. The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  —. Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

  Stout, Christopher T. Bringing Race Back In: Black Politicians, Deracialization, and Voting Behavior in the Age of Obama. Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press, 2005.

  Strode, Woody, and Sam Young. Goal Dust: The Warm and Candid Memoirs of a Pioneer Black Athlete and Actor. New York: Madison Books, 1990.

  Swain, Rick. The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2006.

  Thomas, Evan. Being Nixon: A Man Divided. New York: Random House, 2015.

  Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

  —. Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, and Baseball History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

  —, ed. The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives on an American Hero. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.

  Van Leuven, Hendrik. Touchdown UCLA: The Complete Account of Bruin Football. Huntsville AL: Strode Publishing, 1982.

  Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

  Wiggins, David K., and Patrick B. Miller. The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African-American Experience in Sport. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

  Wilkins, Roy. “Wrong Color.” Crisis, January 1940, 17.

  Williams, Pat, wi
th Mike Sielski. How to Be like Jackie Robinson: Life Lessons from Baseball’s Greatest Hero. Deerfield Beach FL: Health Communications, 2005.

  Wilson, John R. M. Jackie Robinson and the American Dilemma. New York: Longman, 2010.

  Young, A. S. (Doc). “Pro Football Discovers the Black College.” Ebony, September 1970.

  Index

  Page numbers refer to the print edition.

  Aaron, Hank, 189

  Ackerman, Bill, xiii, 36, 37–38, 44, 45, 64, 93

  African American population, early Los Angeles, 2

  Albert, Frankie, 89, 114, 119

  Alexander, Ted, 135

  Alston, Walter, 207

  Anderson, Carl, 13

  Angell, Roger, 220

  Antonovich, Michael, 240

  Atherton, Edwin H., 72–73

  Babich, Sam, 59

  Baker, Dusty, 208

  Balter, Sam, 107, 110–11

  Barber, Red, 192, 193, 233

  Barney, Rex, 194

  Barrymore, Ethel, 171

  Bartlett, Bob (son), 173, 174

  Bartlett, Fay (mother), 12

  Bartlett, Ray, xii, 13, 24, 66, 76, 81, 82, 84, 116, 123; 1939 football season, 84–98, 102, 103; 1940 football season, 116–22; academics, 64; college recruiting, 63–64; death of, 174; discrimination at Pasadena Junior College, 57–58; family 12; grand marshal, Rose Parade, 173; Honolulu, 127; legacy, 231–32, 240; military service, 128; police officer, 173; refused food at Stanford, 89; respected civic leader, xiv, 173–74; on Robinson’s sports prowess, 82; track, baseball at Pasadena Junior College, 61