I recently discovered the newsletter of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the famous basketball player, now retired. I subscribed and found his take on various events in the news both well-written and most enjoyable. I'm not surprised, as I've read some of his books and followed his on and off-the-court career for years.
We go way back, Kareem and I. I'm about 6 months older than he, and we shared some of the same classes in college at UCLA. Most noteworthy were the two African-American history classes taught by Dr. Ron Yakaki in 1967 and 1968. These were among the first Black history courses in the University of California system. As history majors at UCLA, it was probably inevitable that our paths would cross in a classroom or two.
Occasionally I'd see Kareem on campus walking to class like any other student. He was hard to miss. I recall he often walked with a woman who may have been one of the cheerleaders. She was barely 5 feet tall.
Years later, I realize how special those courses were. Of course back then they were listed as History 176, History of the American Negro. They must have been titled by some academic dean who hadn't read Malcolm X and didn't know, as Malcolm said, "Negro attaches you to nothing. there is no place called Negroland." Soon afterward, the preferred term became Black, with a capital B.
Dr. Takaki's lectures were stimulating and very informative. We were learning things that had been missing from our education for years. Probably the day I recall most was the afternoon that Kareem stood up, all 7 feet 1 1/2 inches of him, and announced to the class that his name was no longer Lew Alcindor. He had a copy of Life Magazine with him that featured a profile of him. He explained to the class that though the article in Life referred to him as Lew Alcindor, it was wrong, his name was now Kareem Abdul Jabarr and he was now a Muslim. That was not surprising as we all knew about the conversion of Muhammad Ali and other sports figures.
I've often wondered what happened to some of my classmates from those two history courses. I became friendly with a young African American man named David Morris who, I think, was headed for the clergy, and a Latino man named Gerald Padilla, who was then a graduate student in history. Gerald used to say that the chances of his marrying a Latina were greatly reduced because he was an intellectual and the statistics for Latina graduate students were virtually non-existent. He worried about that.
There was another classmate from those two courses that crossed my mind the other day. Her name was Wallace Albertson. She was the wife of Jack Albertson, the actor (Chico and the Man, Days of Wine and Roses), and had put together a little discussion group in their home in the Hollywood Hills. It was an attempt to bring together a diverse group of people to rationally discuss key issues and learn from each other. As I recall, some of the other participants in Dr. Takaki's classes and those discussions had entertainment industry connections. There was Eddie Anderson Jr., the son of the famous Eddie Anderson who played Jack Benny's man Friday named Rochester.
UC Berkeley got most of the national attention in those days, but the UCLA campus was the site of a number of big anti-war demonstrations, the all-campus People's Park Strike, and the assassination of two Black Panther Party members.
Many history classes met in Haines Hall, the beautiful Italian Romanesque building that stood next to the UCLA landmark, the iconic Royce Hall.
I recall I once stayed after class to ask Dr. Kakaki a question and Kareem and a couple of his friends were close by. They were discussing something that had been the topic of the lecture that day and I soon joined in with them. Craning my neck to look up at Kareem while I was addressing him was definitely memorable. It's nice to reconnect with him again, in some small way.
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