• 6 •
By the end of basketball season at UCLA in his senior year, Jackie had become disgruntled with school. His failure to make the first team All American in football and the poor records of his teams on the gridiron and basketball court were discouraging. Although Jackie worked part-time as an assistant janitor in a campus building and at a used textbook store in Westwood, Jackie felt that he did not sufficiently contribute to his mother’s finances. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Jackie had come to the conclusion that education would not help a black man get ahead in a Jim Crow world.
Jackie would later write, “I could see no future in staying in college, no real future in [professional] athletics, and 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.”
UCLA coaches, his mentor Karl Downs, his mother, and Rachel all attempted to talk Jackie out of leaving school before graduation to no avail. Rachel said, “I tried to talk him out of it. He was so close to finishing. He put it all on Mallie, that he wanted to help her financially, because she was still working so hard. But I think he would have left in any case. He had had enough.”
Doing the “right thing” was always important to Jackie. On March 3, 1940, he went into the UCLA registrar’s office and formally withdrew from the university. Instead of being a “dropout,” he departed with an “honorable dismissal.”
Then Jackie looked for work. The Broadway Clowns, a traveling basketball team organized in 1934 by former Harlem Globetrotter Al “Runt” Pullins, offered Jackie a job. So did a professional baseball team in Mexico. Jackie turned down both offers. In addition to their low wages, Jackie was well aware that there was no chance to advance to the major all-white professional teams.
Pat Ahern, the athletic director for the National Youth Administration who knew Jackie and his sports accomplishments, offered him a job as assistant athletic director at their NYA camp at Atascadero, California, about a six-hour drive north of Los Angeles. Jackie accepted the position of organizing sports activities for students at the camp, founded in 1935 as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to combat the Depression, so that their time out of class was productive as well.
Jackie enjoyed his time with the NYA group members, a mixture of races who came from poverty and difficult backgrounds—many having been in trouble with law enforcement before coming to the camp. Jackie saw a lot of his teenage self in his students and appreciated both their situations and his time with them. No one expressed concern about a black man being in charge of white teens. The only overt racism he experienced was being turned away from a camp dance.
World events soon overtook the purpose of the NYA. With World War II already raging in Europe and Asia and the likelihood of the United States joining the conflict, war-related industries and other employers were in need of manpower. With jobs abundant, the NYA no longer had purpose. By summer the NYA began closing their program and turning over the facilities to the U.S. Army.
Jobless, Jackie accepted an invitation to join a college all-star football team in Chicago for a gridiron game with the Bears—the reigning National Football League champions. On August 28, before a crowd of 98,000 at Soldier Field, the college all-stars held their own until near the end of the game when the Bears scored three quick touchdowns. Jackie caught a 36-yard pass for a touchdown, causing a Bear defensive player to say after the game, “The only time we worried was when that guy Robinson was on the field.”
After the game, most of the college all-stars went from Chicago to teams in the all-white National Football League. Jackie, however, returned to Southern California where he joined the Los Angeles Bulldogs in a match against the Hollywood Bears before a crowd of 10,000 at Gilmore Stadium. Both teams were predominantly white except for Jackie playing with the Bulldogs and former UCLA teammate Kenny Washington playing for Hollywood. This game was important for Jackie in two ways. One, it was his first time to get paid to play football. Two, he reinjured his right ankle—the one that he had initially hurt at PJC. Not only would this cause him to leave the game early but also that ankle injury would be an important factor in his future.
Despite that recurring ankle injury, a week later Jackie accepted an offer to play for the Honolulu Bears of the Hawaii Senior Football League. His old friend Ray Bartlett also agreed to play for the Bears and sailed with Jackie aboard the SS Matsonia to the Islands. In addition to a salary of $100 per game, the Bears promised the players jobs as construction workers near Pearl Harbor when they were not practicing or playing. According to Bartlett, “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 Honolulu Advertiser greeted Jackie with a full-page photograph of him on the gridiron and informed its readers of the arrival of the “Century Express.” An advertisement encouraged readers to come to the games and “See the Sensational All-American Half-Back Jackie Robinson.” While the fans were enthusiastic, the Waikiki hotels were not so welcoming to Jackie and Bartlett. Turned away from accommodations because of their color, they had to rent an apartment in Honolulu’s Palama Settlement district.
The Bears worked out and played their games at night because of the day-time tropical heat. This left ample time for their construction jobs. Jackie did not take to the manual labor and quickly got crosswise with his foreman. According to Bartlett, Jackie either quit or was fired after a few days on the job.
The Honolulu Bears played a six-game schedule against other island city teams and those from army and navy units. Jackie performed well early in the season with 20,000 paying to see his first game. As the season progressed, however, Jackie’s ankle injury slowed his running abilities and the Bears’ overall performance. By the final game of the season on December 3, the Bears drew a paying crowd of only 600.
Jackie was more than ready to return to California to see his mother and Rachel. He boarded the homeward-bound SS Lurline on December 5, 1941. Two days later, Jackie was playing poker with fellow passengers when the crew began painting the portholes black. The captain informed his passengers that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that they would sail in blackout the remainder of the voyage to avoid a submarine attack.
The Lurline made it safely into Los Angeles, and Jackie, having moved back in with his mother on Pepper Street, looked to take advantage of recent events in the job market. African American leaders had pressured President Franklin Roosevelt into providing measures for fair and equal employment for black workers. In June of 1941, the president signed Executive Order 8802, banning discriminatory employment practices by Federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work. The order also established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce the new policy.
With the executive order and the need for workers to fill the expanding industries preparing for war, Jackie quickly found a job with Lockheed Aircraft as a truck driver with a salary of $100 per month. He was happy to contribute to his mother’s household expenses, but he knew that he would soon have to make a decision about the draft, military service, and his future.