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Monday, February 1, 1999

To mark his 80th birthday, and Black History Month, we take a look back at a legend, friends, colleagues, and admirers say... Here's to you Mr. Robinson

REMEMBERANCE:

By Scott Street

Daily Bruin Contributor

The Civil Rights movement may be over, but did it accomplish what we tend to think?

Quick, who was Jackie Robinson? In 1989, 20 African American major leaguers were posed the same question.

"I don't know anything about Jackie Robinson," said then-Seattle rookie Ken Griffey, Jr.

"Jackie Robinson?" said Phil Bradley. "What year did he die? I wasn't old enough to remember him."

Of course, most people are aware that Robinson was the first African American to play major league baseball.

He was also UCLA's greatest athlete, the school's first and only four-sport letterman (in baseball, basketball, football, and track and field).

"I competed with Jack in all four sports until (I attended) UCLA," said Ray Bartlett, who recently represented Robinson as Grand Marshal in January's Tournament of Roses. "I had to drop track and lettered in three sports, but what Jack did was unheard of at the college level."

"We were both long-jumpers," fellow friend of Robinson and former Navy Athletic Director William S. Busik said. "He would leave a baseball game and jump into his track gear in the car and go to the track meet."

Robinson had a knack for achieving the impossible, whether it was on the baseball field stealing home or on the field of the Coliseum, where in 1939 he averaged an astounding 12.24 yards per carry and in 1940 led the Bruins in both rushing and passing. He also led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring in basketball, even though the Bruins finished last in the conference - if only John Wooden would have had Robinson to electrify Pauley Pavilion.

But even though Robinson was a great athlete, he was never an athlete just for athletics' sake.

"He was a great scholar," said Busik. "(Jackie) was as smart as anyone I knew."

"He was an author, civil-rights advocate, bank president, YMCA leader, dedicated churchman, faithful husband and father and a true role model for the youth of America," said Sam Mardian, Jr., former mayor of Phoenix and friend of Robinson's since the fourth grade. Robinson not only broke baseball's color barrier, but also the military's - before President Truman had desegregated the armed forces.

During World War II, he earned a commission of second lieutenant. In 1944, a bus driver at a Southern military post ordered him to sit in the back of the bus. When Robinson refused, he was court-martialed. Not until a decade later would an Alabama woman named Rosa Parks refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, receiving nationwide attention.

"His contribution to the country went far beyond athletics," Mardian said. "He helped make civil rights and the work of Martin Luther King possible."

UCLA flourished during Robinson's career. In 1939, the Bruins completed their only undefeated football season in school history (with four ties, including a 0-0 tie against USC).

But even at his alma mater, Robinson's legacy is fading.

Though USC was the dominant university in Los Angeles in the late '30s, UCLA was a forerunner of integration - in athletics and academics. With Robinson and Kenny Washington, the Bruins' backfield exhibited two of the greatest African American athletes in NCAA history.

Even the "sophisticated prejudice" that Bartlett used to describe Pasadena politics nearly vanished at UCLA.

"There was some racial prejudice in Pasadena, even though we played on integrated teams," said Bartlett. "It was a sophisticated prejudice that came from the City Council down, but it wasn't as prevalent at UCLA - especially compared to the southern universities."

"There was no direct discrimination from the staff, and we didn't experience much prejudice with the students. Some players on the team showed (discrimination) but they just stared at us, and we knew they weren't going to be our friends."

Though the university did not keep records of enrollment, Bartlett estimates that there were no more than 30 African Americans at UCLA at the time, which would have been less than 1 percent of the 4,000 enrolled students.

As responsible as Robinson was for opening the door to African Americans in professional baseball, he was equally responsible for the entry of African American collegiate athletes in the mid-1950s, notably at southern universities which had previously banned them.

"The changes in recruiting processes at universities in the mid-1950s were due to Jackie," said Busik, at the time head football coach at the Naval Academy. "He was responsible for (African American) athletes getting better educations."

When Robinson died in 1972, he had only begun to witness the beginnings of affirmative action in the University of California, the hard-earned fruits of a devotion he had carried through his career at UCLA, with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and beyond.

What would he have thought of the electorate's abrupt decision to end the practice in 1996?

"I feel very strongly that Jack would not have approved of ending affirmative action," Bartlett said. "He worked in civil rights long before Martin Luther King. He had to hold his temper because Branch Rickey asked him to, but he believed there shouldn't be any kind of discrimination."

"Jackie died at age 53 of diabetes," said Mardian. "I'm convinced he gave his life for the cause he believed in 'Equal Justice' for all citizens."

Jackie Robinson would have celebrated his 80th birthday on Jan. 31. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in1962, again, the first African American to be so honored.

Who was Jackie Robinson? For one, he was a Dodger and a Bruin. He has been described by his friends as everything from a great competitor to just a nice, decent kid.

Most of all, he was a man on a mission, as described by his widow Rachel, a UCLA alumna. He was a diplomat of humanity, an African American kid who grew up with white friends in a time when they had to eat in separate restaurants.

The integration of schools was due as much to Robinson's pilgrimage as to the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.

Even though the generations which profit from his struggles forget him, and even though an electorate can change in one day what he worked a lifetime for, as long as there is even an affirmative action debate at UCLA, Jackie Robinson's legacy will remain intact.

UCLA Archives

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson would have celebrated his 80th birthday on Jan. 31.

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