“We cannot get away from the fact that the era in which we live is an era of mass thought and mass action, an era of mass production and mass destruction, and era of mass media and mass communication. … More iconoclasm would be a good thing in our machine society: good in our newspapers; good in our television and our radio; good in our politics; and good in our academic communities. The refusal to take things for granted, the insistence on understanding the reasons for accepted dogma, the determination to inquire into the facts and to form one’s judgement for oneself is the mark of a good citizen as well as an educated man.”

–  from the 1963 Pomona College Commencement address by John B. Oakes, editor of The New York Times editorial page.

With the new Jackie Robinson movie 42 hitting theaters today, it’s worth recalling two visits the hall of famer from Pasadena made to the nearby Pomona College campus in the days before he became a star for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The first account comes from the Pasadena Star-News’ Rose magazine recalling how Robinson, along with Ted Williams, played in a big high school baseball tournament in Pomona, and then attended the tournament’s banquet at a Pomona College dining hall, where the speaker was Will Rogers.

Afterward, everyone rushes up to get Will’s autograph. Everyone except Jackie Robinson. He goes over and asks Sam the chauffeur for an autograph. Soon, the line to get Sam’s autograph is as long as the one in front of Will. All because of Jackie. So I kind of got the impression that this is a special kid.”

And then there is a Los Angeles Times article recounting how Robinson, as a student at Pasadena Junior College in 1938, competed in the Southern California JC track championships held at Pomona College, setting a new record in the long jump.

Pasadena track Coach Otto Anderson obtained permission for Robinson to take three jumps in a row, before the other competitors. Robinson’s series was 23-5 1/4, 24-7 and 25-6 1/2, breaking his brother Mack’s national record by an inch.

Then he jumped into a waiting car and was driven to Glendale by close friend Jackie Gordon–changing into his baseball uniform on the way–and arrived in the third inning to help Pasadena clinch the conference championship, 5-3.”

This is scanned from the 1950-51 student handbook. Some buildings — Holmes, the old Coop — have come and gone; many others remain in place. The big surprise for me was learning there once was a hockey field near the Greek Theatre.

 The O.J. flowing in campus dining halls these days doesn’t come from frozen concentrate, nor was it born thousands of miles away in Florida.

Instead, three times a week for much of the school year, John Adams ’66 sends to campus a load of 1,500 lbs. of Valencia oranges grown in his century-old family grove, the last of its kind in the city of Rialto, 25 miles east of Claremont.

For the College, the deal offers a chance to serve local produce and provide healthier food—previous juice concoctions contained corn syrup and food coloring. For Adams, it provides a stream of income to plant new trees.

So Adams is leaving some of the Valencias—typically picked in summer—on the trees longer and longer, which only adds to their sugar content. Then, it’s into the dining-hall juicers.

While the oranges Adams provides from his grove aren’t the prettiest-looking, they sure are sweet. “They’re so much better than the large, perfect oranges in the stores,” says Adams, who this spring is also growing veggies for the College.

Trees, Ph.D.s and … country? Claremont is a long way from Nashville, but this school year brings two country superstars to Bridges Auditorium, with new-fangled sensation Taylor Swift having performed in the fall and old-timer Willie Nelson here tonight. That inspired us to do some digging and discover that over the years, a surprising number of country crooners—from Larry Gatlin to Linda Ronstadt to Johnny Cash—have played Pomona. But the College’s greatest country-western moment so far brought two legends on the same day in 1973 when Kris Kristofferson ’58, accompanied by his good friend Cash, came to campus to receive an honorary doctor of fine arts degree.

Sagehens who greet the morning with a groan rather than a chirp can take heart in one silver lining: there used to be a 7:30 a.m. class slot. Back in 1930, The Student Life chronicled the campus debate over a proposal to push classes all the way back to 8 a.m.

The Dec. 3, 1930 issue of TSL reported that members of the Courses Study Committee were “carefully studying the matter” and would bring their findings in front of the faculty once they had properly surveyed the situation. TSL of Jan. 20, 1931, would then report a new schedule taking effect the following year, with classes beginning at 8.

And in making their case, the sleep-seeking students got an assist from an editorial, written by Clifford N. Hand,  that appeared in Pomona College Magazine:

“The spectacle, always available at 7:29 a.m.–of students frantically crossing College Avenue, manipulating a sandwich with one hand and making final and necessary adjustments of raiment with the other, is not edifying. And a bunch of sleepy students taking notes from a sleepy prof is not inspiring to either party. There are those who opine that this is the best hour of the day, but the weight of evidence seems to indicate that the majority holds otherwise.”

Hand goes on to concede that “of course, students and instructors could retire early enough to get the eight hours rest required by hygienic law but college academic and social program makes this difficult for both.”

These days, 8 a.m. is still the earliest class slot, a realm occupied by Organic Chemistry, some elementary language classes and various P.E. courses.

But walk on College Avenue at 7:30 a.m., and you won’t see a soul.

Related Links

• The Student Life newspaper
• 1931 on the Pomona College Timeline

 San Antonio Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich has been chosen, once again, to coach the Western Conference in the NBA All-Star Game set for Feb. 17. Before he gained fame with the NBA by leading the Spurs to four championships, Popovich coached the Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team from 1979 to 1988, as seen here (he’s in the center) in this undated photo.

With the announcement this week that Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 will give the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 21, it’s worth taking a look back at her time in Claremont.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of her husband, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was shot in the back outside their Jackson, Miss., home on the morning of June 12, 1963, while Myrlie and their three children were inside.

The next year, Evers-Williams decided to move to Claremont, as she recounted in a 1965 piece for Ebony magazine titled “Why I Left Mississippi.” In that piece, she wrote that she found purpose in speaking engagements, but was like the “walking dead” when she returned to her house and the memories. Ultimately, it was the welfare of her children, particularly her oldest son who was nine at the time, that prompted the move:

“They were awake that terrible night, and heard the thunderous roar of the death shot. They saw their father lying in a scarlet pool of blood as his life ebbed away,” she wrote. “… So it was that in the spring of 1964, while on a speaking engagement in California, I asked friends to ‘look around’ for a house for me.”

She chose Claremont, Evers-Williams wrote, for the college town atmosphere, and more specifically because it was home to Pomona College, where she enrolled. Her time in Claremont received widespread media attention — in 1965 alone her life here was featured in Look, Good Housekeeping and in the Ebony magazine cover story, as the Claremont Courier noted in a story about the stories.

Evers-Williams told Look that she had to wake at 3 a.m. to juggle the demands of school, raising kids and writing down her memories of Medgar. “Someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas,” she told the magazine. “I told them: a secretary.”

While still a Pomona student, Evers-Williams wrote a book (with Peter Williams), For Us, the Living. After graduating in sociology in 1968, Evers worked for several years at The Claremont Colleges, starting at the new Center for Educational Opportunity. In 1970, she ran for Congress as a Democrat, losing in the largely Republican district that included Claremont.

She went on to work for ARCO as national director of community affairs, served as a commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and, in 1995, she was elected chair of the NAACP’s national board of directors. The next year, Pomona College awarded her an honorary degree and she delivered the Commencement address in Bridges Auditorium, where she had graduated nearly three decades earlier.

Cecil Sagehen looking very intense at the homecoming football game in Oct. 1978.

Announcement seen affixed to the wall this morning in the Coop Fountain:

DAY OF SINCERITY

This Wednesday, December 5, some students will be participating in a day of sincerity—one full day free from any intentionally ironic humor, commentary, and affectation. All interested are invited to participate in this day as well.