To mark his 80th birthday, and Black History Month, we take a look back at a legend, friends, collea

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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