Jackie Robinson, College Basketball Coach

Fifty years after Jackie Robinson shattered baseball’s color barrier, Central Texans recall his time here as a basketball coach

By Eric Enders
Published in the Austin American-Statesman (April 15, 1997)

AUSTIN, TEXAS— It was spring 1945 and the basketball team for Sam Huston College had just returned to Austin after a monthlong road trip playing against other black colleges in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. Jackie Robinson, the team’s 26-year-old player-coach, was about to make a momentous career change.

“Upon our return from the tour, we met up in Jackie’s office, and he was sorting his mail,” said Waco resident Harold “Pea Vine” Adanandus, who was then the team’s trainer. “He had received a letter from the Kansas City Monarchs. He showed me the letter, and they wanted him to play ball. They offered him a $500 bonus and $250 a month. He asked me, `Vine, what would you do?’ “I said, `Well, Jackie, I didn’t even know you played any baseball.’ And he said, `Yeah, I play a little.”’ So in early April 1945, Robinson left Austin to play a little baseball for the Monarchs, the most successful team in the Negro Leagues. Two years later, on April 15, 1947, Robinson debuted at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, shattering a barrier that had excluded African Americans from major-league baseball since before the turn of the century.

Tonight, during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ game against the Mets at Shea Stadium, Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, will join President Clinton in a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of that game. The first pitch will be thrown out by Jesse Simms, Robinson’s grandson, who will play football at UCLA this fall, just as his grandfather did.

Baseball was just one of Robinson’s four sports at UCLA. He also ran track and earned All-America honors in football and basketball. But when June Harden Brewer met him, he was just another soldier who came to Austin every weekend from nearby Fort Hood. Brewer, then a student at Tillotson College (which would merge with Sam Huston to become Huston-Tillotson College) and later the first African American woman to attend the University of Texas, soon realized there was something special about 2nd Lt. Jackie Robinson.

“I was always impressed with his warmth and friendliness,” Brewer said. “Even before he achieved his fame, there was something about him that I revered, and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t visualize baseball opening at that time to an African American, but I felt that he would achieve something special.”

'A DISCIPLINARIAN COACH’

Robinson’s time in Texas began when he was at Fort Hood, where he was court-martialed in 1944 for refusing to move to the back of a military bus. Because Army regulations had just been revised to prevent such blatant discrimination, he was found not guilty and given an honorable discharge on Nov. 28, 1944.

Soon after, the Rev. Karl Downs, president of Sam Huston College, offered Robinson the basketball coaching position. Downs had been Robinson’s pastor when the future star was growing up in Pasadena, Calif. Robinson visited Downs in Austin almost every weekend while he was at Fort Hood, Adanandus said.

“He’d just come down and have dinner with the president,” Adanandus said. “And we didn’t know it at the time, but the president was also recruiting Jackie to coach the basketball team. We didn’t know who our basketball coach was going to be. Just before the season started, he came in and went right to work.”

“He was a disciplinarian coach,” said D.C. Clements of Waco, a player on the team. “He believed we should be students first and athletes second. If you cut a class or anything like that, he would put you off the team or give you some laps. He was a great coach and a great teacher. He was way ahead of his time.”

In addition to coaching the Dragons, Robinson also played in the team’s practices and in exhibition games against nearby military teams. Adanandus said the team won most of its games, “but we won all of them when Jackie played.”

“We were undefeated with Jackie,” Adanandus said. “Any time the team seemed to be getting behind, Jackie would have to go in. He liked to play around the basket, rebounding and all that. He was tough around the basket. He was just an exceptional athlete, and you could tell he still wanted to play. He wanted to play, but he’d have to sit on the bench when we were playing those college teams.”

“We used to hear from him a lot after he left,” Clements said. “He was always sending us a letter or a card, advising us and encouraging us to continue in school.”

Although Robinson coached only one season at Sam Huston, he instilled a sense of pride in his players, said Tex Moten, an Austin resident who was a friend of Robinson’s.

“He was more than a basketball coach,” Moten said. “He was a symbol of that spirit that helps to create human dignity. He was a man of impeccable pride and personality. He had no respect for racism, none whatsoever. He was totally unafraid of facing situations that society said black people didn’t belong in.”

LEADING THE WAY

During Robinson’s first season with the Monarchs, Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey sent a scout to evaluate Robinson’s ability and bring him to New York for an interview. At an owners’ meeting, Rickey had proposed to integrate baseball, but the owners vetoed the proposal 15-1. However, Rickey was determined to integrate even without official approval, and he chose Robinson to become the first African American player in modern major-league history.

“My grandfather loved intensity,” said Rickey’s grandson, Branch B. Rickey, now president of the Triple-A American Association. “And Robinson was an athlete with a conspicuous fire, with a skill level, and a maturity, and a demeanor that just radiated.”

After a year in the minor leagues, Robinson became the starting first baseman for the Dodgers. Seven years before the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, and eight years before Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, the integration of baseball had begun.

“You’ve got to remember, when Branch signed Jackie to that contract, Martin Luther King was a sophomore at Morehouse,” said Buck O’Neil, a teammate of Robinson’s with the Monarchs. “This started the civil rights movement rolling. Jackie actually changed our way of thinking, because we had become accustomed to the segregated ways.”

FACING HATRED

Early in his career Robinson endured racial epithets, death threats, beanballs and intentional spikings on the base paths. Players from several teams, including some of his Dodger teammates, threatened to strike rather than play alongside him.

“Jackie would get threatening letters occasionally,” said Carl Erskine, a Dodger pitcher who was Robinson’s teammate for nine years. “I can remember being picketed at the hotel by the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta one time.”

Despite the obstacles, Robinson was named 1947 Rookie of the Year and became baseball’s biggest drawing card since Babe Ruth. After his success, baseball owners and executives in other sports followed Rickey’s example and began signing African American players. Social considerations aside, Robinson revolutionized the way baseball was played. He was the first player to combine the speed of Ty Cobb with the run production of Ruth. He unnerved pitchers with his daring base running. He stole home more often than most players stole, period.

“It was exciting to watch him, because he’d defy you,” Erskine said. “He was daring, but he was so quick that he was intimidating. That’s why he was so valuable. He could really upset the other team.”

Robinson retired from baseball in 1956, when his skills were eroding and the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. He became active in the NAACP and in politics, and founded the first black-owned bank in New York.

“He got a lot of press because he was controversial, and in later years he spoke out on almost every issue,” Erskine said. “Jackie would speak his mind, flat-out and strong.”

FORGOTTEN LEGACY?

Fifty years after his debut, Robinson’s contributions to baseball and America are getting more attention than they did during his lifetime. Major League Baseball announced in February that it was dedicating the 1997 season to Robinson.

But despite the anniversary hoopla, some of the friends Robinson left behind in Austin are concerned that his legacy is being forgotten.

“I think too many people today have forgotten what he did and overlooked the things that were revealed by his doing it,” Moten said. “Thank heaven for a person who had the integrity, forethought, interest and intelligence that Jackie Robinson had.”

Brewer said she still cherishes the memory of her brief acquaintance with the future legend, and to her— and many other African Americans— Robinson represented more than just success in baseball.

“He was playing a game that should have required that a person not be emotionally upset, and he was able to succeed in spite of that,” Brewer said. “African American people experienced victory with his victory. Every time he played, I felt I was the one hitting the home run.”

EricEnders.com Home
Baseball · Books · Film · Music · Photography