Tom Bradley (American politician)

Bradley, whose grandfather was a slave, was born on December 29, 1917, to Lee Thomas and Crenner Bradley, poor sharecroppers who lived in a small log cabin outside Calvert, Texas. He had four siblings — Lawrence, Willa Mae, Ellis (who had cerebral palsy) and Howard. The family moved to Arizona to pick cotton and then in 1924 to the Temple-Alvarado area of Los Angeles during the Great Migration, where Lee was a Santa Fe Railroad porter and Crenner was a maid.[2][3][4]

Bradley attended Rosemont Elementary School, Lafayette Junior High School and Polytechnic High School, where he was the first black student to be elected president of the Boys League and the first to be inducted into the Ephebians national honor society. He was captain of the track team and all-city tackle for the high school football team. He went to UCLA in 1937 on an athletic scholarship and joined Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Among the jobs he had while at college was as a photographer for comedian Jimmy Durante.[2][5][6]

Bradley left his studies to join the Los Angeles Police Department in 1940. He became one of 400 black officers in a police department that had 4,000 officers. He recalled "the downtown department store that refused him credit, although he was a police officer, and the restaurants that would not serve blacks."[7] He told a Times reporter:

When I came on the department, there were literally two assignments for black officers. You either worked Newton Street Division, which has a predominantly black community, or you worked traffic downtown. You could not work with a white officer, and that continued until 1964.[7]

Bradley and Ethel Arnold met at the New Hope Baptist Church and were married May 4, 1941. They had three daughters, Lorraine, Phyllis and a baby who died on the day she was born. He and his wife "needed a white intermediary to buy their first house in Leimert Park, then a virtually all-white section of the city's Crenshaw district."[2][7]

Bradley was attending Southwestern University Law School while a police officer and began his practice as a lawyer when he retired from the police department.[2][8] Upon his leaving the office of mayor in 1993, he joined the law offices of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, specializing in international trade issues.[9]

His entry into politics came when he decided to become the president of the United Club. The club was part of the California Democratic Council, a liberal, reformist group organized in the 1950s by young Democrats energized by Adlai E. Stevenson's presidential campaigns. It was predominantly white and had many Jewish members, thus marking the beginnings of the coalition, which along with Latinos, that would carry him to electoral victory so many times.

His choice of a Democratic circle also put him at odds with another political force in the African American community, representatives of poor, all-black areas who were associated with the political organization of Jesse M. Unruh, then an up-and-coming state assemblyman. The early stage of Bradley's political career was marked by clashes with African American leaders like onetime California Lieutenant Governor and former U.S. Representative Mervyn Dymally, an Unruh ally.

In June 1961, the post for 10th District was vacated by Charles Navarro when he was elected city controller.[10] Bradley, a police lieutenant living at 3397 Welland Avenue, was one of 12 people to apply for the position. The City Council, which had the power to fill a vacancy, instead appointed Joe E. Hollingsworth.[11] When the position was up for election again, in April 1963, Bradley ran against Hollingsworth.

There were only two candidates, Hollingsworth and Bradley, and also two elections — one for the unexpired term left by Controller Navarro, ending June 30, and one for a full four-year term starting July 1. Bradley won the first, 17,760 to 10,540 votes, and the second election, 17,552 to 10,400 votes.[12] By then he had retired from the police force, and he was sworn in as a councilman at the age of 45 on April 15, 1963, the first African-American elected to City Council.[13]

One of the first votes was in opposition to a proposed study by City Attorney Roger Arnebergh and Police Chief William H. Parker of the Dictionary of American Slang,[14] ordered in an 11-4 vote by the council. Councilman Tom Shepard's motion said the book was "saturated not only with phrases of sexual filth, but wordage defamatory of minority ethnic groups and definitions insulting religions and races."[15]

When asked why he did not participate in public demonstrations, Bradley said that he saw his position on City Council as a way to bring groups together. He expressed a desire to establish a human relations commission for the city.[16]

Bradley conducting a whistle stop appearance during his 1986 campaign

Bradley ran for Governor of California twice, in 1982 and 1986, but lost both times to Republican George Deukmejian. He was the first African American to head a gubernatorial ticket in California.

In 1982, the election was extremely close. Bradley led in the polls going into election day, and in the initial hours after the polls closed, some news organizations projected him as the winner.[21] Ultimately, Bradley lost the election by about 100,000 votes, about 1.2% of the 7.5 million votes cast.[22]

These circumstances gave rise to the term the "Bradley effect", which refers to a tendency of voters to tell interviewers or pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, but then actually vote for his white opponent. In 1986, Bradley lost the rematch to Deukmejian by a margin of 61-37 percent.[23]

Bradley had a heart attack while driving his car in March 1996 and endured a triple bypass operation. Later, he suffered a stroke "that left him unable to speak clearly." He died on September 29, 1998 at age 80, and his body lay at the Los Angeles Convention Center for public viewing. He was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery.[2][24][25]

Bradley was a Prince Hall Freemason.[26][27]

In 1976, Bradley was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from Whittier College.[28] Bradley's mayoral archives are held at UCLA.[29] Also, the UCLA Film & Television Archive has created an online resource that presents free streaming access to local newsfilm segments from Los Angeles station KTLA that document Bradley's career in the 1970s.[30] The Tom and Ethel Bradley Center, a vast collection of over one million photographs celebrating the diverse nature of Southern California, is housed at California State University, Northridge.[31] The international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport is named Tom Bradley International Terminal in honor of him. In 1984, he was awarded the Olympic Order in silver.

• History of the African-Americans in Los Angeles
• Membership discrimination in California social clubs, for his signing a bill banning the practice

Bibliography

• Davis, Mike; Wiener, Jon (2020). Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. New York: Verso Books.
• Johnson, James W. (2018). The Black Bruins: The Remarkable Lives of UCLA's Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Citations

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tom Bradley (politician).

• Tribute to Bradley by Dianne Feinstein, with biographical information
• Tom Bradley at IMDb
• The Bradley Effect by Raphael Sonenshein
• Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race documentary
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Image of Tom Bradley and Marla Gibbs passing his Crenshaw campaign headquarters during a parade in Los Angeles, California, 1989. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Image of Tom Bradley, with his wife Ethel, being sworn-in as mayor by Justice Earl Warren in Los Angeles, California, 1973. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.