NFL
By: Bill Carroll
Ray Walter Bartlett, Sr. passed away on June 22, 2008. When he left this planet he had accomplished an amazing amount and had done so in a shockingly quiet way. Ray Bartlett was born on October 27, 1919 in Los Angeles, California, to Vincent and Fay Bartlett.
Ray Bartlett had a father who sold real estate, and his mother was a nurse. When his mother told him the racism he faced would “all change one day,” he didn’t believe her, Ray Bartlett told The Times in 1996. “But I felt that things could be changed through the system. That’s what I worked for.”
At 19, he started volunteering at the Pasadena YMCA, which allowed Blacks to clean the facilities but not use them. His ties to the group would span more than 60 years, and he eventually served as president of its board.
Ray Bartlett lettered in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field with Jackie Robinson at both Pasadena Community College and UCLA. Ray Bartlett and Robinson were Pasadena’s first All-American and All-Southern California selections in football in 1938.
Ray Bartlett began in the crude canvas tents that served as classrooms at what was then the Pasadena Junior College campus. The classrooms, which were located where the V building now stands, were not exactly an optimal learning environment.
“They were heated in winter, but boy was it hot in the summer,” says Bartlett, who matriculated into [what was then known as] Pasadena Junior College during the tenth grade. At the time, the school included both high school and college classes on the same campus. Once he graduated from the twelfth grade, he was able to move up to the newly renovated C, D, and E buildings, where college courses were taught.
Ray Bartlett was a dedicated and versatile athlete, he starred on the college’s baseball, football, basketball and track teams. His first appearance in the college’s annual, “The Campus”, was in 1936 as a freshman standout who led the baseball team in batting. “Bartlett . . . is an outstanding Bullpup, and future laurels may be his,” an article in the Campus said about his athletic performance. The prediction came true: Bartlett was eventually named to the All-Southern California team his senior year, along with his lifelong friend, Jackie Robinson.
That year, Robinson and Bartlett were the kings of the Pasadena gridiron, leading the Bulldogs (the mascot that was later passed on to Pasadena High) to 11 straight victories and the Southern California championship. They also held the Western Conference title along with Santa Monica City College. The 1939 Campus gushed over the two football heroes, hailing Robinson’s over 1000 rushing yards and their All Southern California nominations.
Ray Bartlett played on conference champion teams in football, basketball (guard), and baseball (outfielder). In 1939, he won the conference pole vault title for the Bulldogs track and field team. The pair led the 1938 Pasadena Junior College. Bulldogs to the state championship with a perfect 11-0 season.
In Bartlett’s yearbook that senior year, there was a little note written under the picture of Robinson, the now legendary Dodger. It said: “To a sweet player. Luck and happiness, here’s hoping you come over next year. Sincerely, Jack.” Robinson was, by then attending UCLA, and he had hoped Ray Bartlett would join him there.
Even the White press noted the incredible success of Robinson and the Bruins, but it ignored the historic, groundbreaking contribution of the four Black UCLA football players to what was, not yet, in 1939, as it is today, America’s most-watched spectator sport. Thankfully, the same can’t be said for the Black press, which in 1939 was nearing the height of its popularity and power. (Circulation of Black newspapers in the United States numbered in the millions)
With Robinson, Washington, Strode, and Bartlett leading UCLA to the school’s first undefeated season, they were largely responsible for changing the fortunes of what was, in the 1930s, a commuter school with five buildings, no dormitories and very little football tradition. The national spotlight was, for the first time, on the Bruins football team.
Those same Black newspapers, that were part the winds the created the initial waves of the Great Migration, would also, soon join the winds of change that helped Jackie Robinson to erase MLB’s color line, also kept millions of Black Americans appraised of every last detail of UCLA’s extraordinary and unprecedented football achievements during the 1939 football season.
The backfield of this 1939 Bruins 11 was made up with three of the four players being Black men. Also, a total of four Black men on one squad, at a predominantly White campus, which was quite unusual at the time. While the Bruins had four Black players, the rest of the country combined, outside of the HBCUs, had possibly only a few dozen Black varsity players.
At UCLA, Jackie Robinson joined Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, who later enjoyed an acting career. The fourth Black player on the Bruins in 1939, Ray Bartlett who played multiple positions on offense and defense and was a reserve at fullback and halfback. Every member of the Gold Dust Trio was a star in some way, even after UCLA’s 1939 season. Bartlett lettered as a halfback in both 1939 and 1940.
Each of the three men that started in the 1939 backfield for the Bruins would star in the collegiate limelight at UCLA but they all had a had in impact on America, even after they left the school’s gridiron. The “Gold Dust Trio.” changed UCLA and college football forever. The three teammates were Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, and Kenny Washington.
At season’s end, UCLA was second place in the Pacific Coast Conference, [later the Pacific {Pac for short} 8, 10, and 12 Conference. The title and the trip to the Rose Bowl rested on a tilt versus cross-town rival USC that had had national implications. The Bruins played the third-ranked Trojans to a scoreless tie in front of 103,000 enthralled fans, so the Bruins were ranked #7 in the final AP Poll.
Unfortunately for the Bruins the tie breaker of who would represent the West Coast in the 1940 Rose Bowl went to the Trojans, who later overcame Tennessee in the big game. By the time those undefeated Bruins reached their final game of the season, a decisive showdown with USC would determine which of the teams would play in the Rose Bowl.
All of the most influential Black newspapers like the: New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Atlanta Daily World, the Baltimore Afro-American, the Cleveland Call and Post, the Norfolk Journal and Guide and the California Eagle had transformed the 1939 UCLA football squad of Jackie Robinson, Kenny Washington, Woody Strode and Ray Bartlett into what was nothing short of Black America’s team.
From ‘The Black Bruins: The Remarkable Lives of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett,’ by James W. Johnson “During the years before Washington, Strode, Robinson, and Bartlett joined the Bruins, the UCLA athletic program had accumulated a net loss of $249,187 for all sports. But football was the biggest revenue producer, and those revenues soared from 1936 to 1940. That’s not to say that revenues rose dramatically because of the black players alone but because of the better teams on which they played a major role. Certainly, their exciting athletic ability proved a huge drawing card.”
Woody Strode remembered that a new audience flocked to the UCLA football games, because of the Black players: ‘If we drew one hundred thousand people to the Coliseum, 40,000 of them would be Black; that was about every Black person in the city of Los Angeles. We received a lot of attention from the press and that added to our exposure.’ ”
It was in 1940 when Ray Bartlett introduced Robinson to, his future wife, a nursing student named Rachel Isum. A year passed before Ray Bartlett returned to the mainland and UCLA, where the Robinson’s married February 10, 1946. Soon after, The two Pasadena Junior College teammates, who had lead UCLA football to new heights, went on to play for Francis J. “Brick” Brickner’s professional football team in Hawaii.
Together, the athletes had sailed to Hawaii in 1941 to play semi-professional football with the Honolulu Polar Bears. At season’s end, Robinson returned to California but Bartlett stayed to work in construction. Days later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology, in 1944, It was while there that Bartlett’s career in the Army started. With a quite literal bang. Two days after Robinson returned to the mainland, on his way to baseball immortality, Bartlett was caught up in the frenzy and horror of World War II, he witnessed first hand the attack on Pearl Harbor. The next morning, Bartlett and other construction workers were brought to the harbor.
“We had to retrieve the bodies of dead American Navy men from the water,” Bartlett said in a Pasadena City College biography. “I saw the USS Arizona burning in flames for days after the bombing.”
He eventually served two years of active duty in both the European and Pacific theaters. serving in an all-Black unit in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. As a member of the Army Reserves, he also served in the Korean War.
He then returned to his hometown, joining the Pasadena Police Department, where he reached the rank of detective. In his years as a police officer, Bartlett remained a member of the U.S. Army Reserve Corps, serving in Korea and the Berlin Wall crisis. He retired from the armed forces as a Chief Warrant Officer in 1979.
Ray Bartlett spent a distinguished 20-year career in the Pasadena Police Department. The same year Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Bartlett became only the second Black member of the Pasadena Police Department, The LA Times reported in 1996.
After his career as a Pasadena police officer, Ray Bartlett followed it with a six-year stint as a deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor, Warren Dorn and worked as a public information officer for the Los Angeles County Fire Department before retiring in 1980.
In a statement, L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called Bartlett a “trailblazer” who “served our country and our nation, with honor and integrity.”
Ray Bartlett was a pioneering member of the Pasadena City College Foundation Board, where he served for more than 20 years. A bronze bust of his likeness is immortalized in PCC’s Court of Champions, a pantheon that includes busts for 16 of the college’s most famous athletic alumni. Bartlett is also a member of both the PCC Sports Hall of Fame and the California Community College Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
Ray Bartlett, while at UCLA, joined the Eta Pi Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. He was a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, a seven-term past chapter president, and an icon in the Pasadena community. He attended Pasadena High School (PHS) and achieved numerous academic, civic, athletic and service accolades during his life.
Ray Bartlett was inducted into the California Community College Sports Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1999, Bartlett was honored to represent his friend Jackie Robinson who died in 1972, as the Grand Marshal at the Tournament of Roses Parade. He was touched to be chosen to stand in for “my friend . . . while riding down the streets of my hometown,”
Ray Bartlett, who grew up in Pasadena, later recalled. “That was so special and fantastic.” Also that year, Bartlett was chosen as one of PCC’s 75 Distinguished Alumni during the college’s 75th-anniversary celebration.
Sources:
Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait
Rachel Robinson, Author, Lee Daniels, With, Roger Wilkins, Foreword by Abrams: ISBN 978-0-8109-3792-5
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