Conversation with Thelton Henderson

Thelton Henderson Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by S. Beth Atkin

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Background

Judge Henderson, welcome back to Berkeley.

Thank you, it's good to be back.

You said somewhere, "I've always believed that my story is the American story. If I can make it, anybody can." What did you mean by that?

Well I meant that I grew up believing that if you studied hard and applied yourself that you'd get someplace. And growing up in Watts, that really meant something. What it meant was getting up and out of Watts and on to the larger world, and it's worked for me.

Let's talk a little about your formative experiences as a young person. Tell us about your parents and how they shaped your character.

I think it would be primarily my mother. I was born in Louisiana, and we left there when I was three and went to Los Angeles where I grew up. My mother did domestic work, as we called it: she cleaned people's houses. And I think largely through her influence, she made me study. I liked athletics and my mother said, "You can play sports, but you have to study." She's the one that gave me the idea that I was destined to go to college. And indeed, I think I would have been in bad trouble with her if I hadn't. So my mother was a primary influence as I recall, although I shouldn't short-sell my father. He worked hard and paid the bills also. But my mother was the main educational influence, and I look back on her asking if my homework was done and making sure I did it. One time in high school when I was getting pretty good in sports, I wanted to take shop courses, which were easier, like the other kids on the football team. And she said, "No, you're going to keep an academic course." So she's the one that kept me on schedule, pushing me toward college.

Any mentors or teachers stand out as you think about that early period?

Yeah, there were some important people, two that come immediately to mind. A wonderful counselor at Jefferson High School named Isaac MacClellen. One day I was finishing football practice and he came out and met me and said, "Have you ever thought about applying to college?" And of course as I've said, I'd sort of thought about it, but I didn't know whether I was really going to do it, and I hadn't done anything toward going to college. He had just gotten some scores; back then they had a test called the Iowa Test that all the high school students took, and it turned out that I got a good score on it. And wonderful Mr. MacClellen took it upon himself to go find several of us who got good scores. The reason I went to UC Berkeley was that that was his alma mater. He got the applications, actually paid the filing fee for me, and headed me toward here. So he was very important in my life.

Another was a football coach, a tough ex-marine who lost his leg in World War II named Mike Mirrianthall. And he took a bunch of tough black kids there that had intimidated all the past football coaches and he molded us into a team. And that was an important part of my getting a football scholarship. He's a continuing influence -- I still see him.

And your high school had other famous graduates, you were saying earlier.

It did. Ralph Bunche was the most famous graduate of Jefferson High when I was there, and as you know he went on to great international things in this country.

What about books? Any books that you read as a kid that you recall to this day?

I wish I could say so, but no. I think I read textbooks in school and a lot of sports books, but I didn't read the books that I found that most of the kids had read when I got here to Berkeley, unfortunately.

Now, tell me who Speedball was?

Where did you get that? I was Speedball. I had the nickname of Speedball. As you can see I'm not very big but I was kind of fast. And that was the way I was able to play football. I was faster than most of the other guys, not better but faster.

And you were an all-city halfback?

I was all-city halfback, yes.

So when you came to Cal there was both this academic push by your mentors, but also you came here to play football?

I came here to play football, yeah.

And then what happened? Did you actually play for the team?

I actually played for Pappy Waldorf.

One of our great coaches. We have a new statue up.

I've seen that. And during the time, a lot of young people at Cal don't realize this, but Cal had great football teams back in the early '50s. When I came here they had just been to the Rose Bowl three years in a row and they were the number one team in the country. And that was an incentive to come.

There's a wonderful story. My grandmother, who died at 99 a few years ago, didn't really understand football but she understood her grandson played football for Cal. And whenever football would come up (I should mentioned that Cal's football fortunes plummeted in the early '50s and they've never really been back to that height), but I got hurt in my sophomore year, and whenever football would come up around the family my grandmother would look up from her sewing and say, "Cal used to have good football teams until Thelton got hurt." That was her way of relating Cal's fortune to my injury.

And I guess at one of the games, while you were still playing, you were complimented by the then-governor of the State of California?

Earl Warren, exactly. In fact, in the game I was injured in I was on a stretcher and was being taken off the field. And he was kind enough to come down and escort me off the field and shake my hand. It was a wonderful experience to meet him.

And of course he went on to the Supreme Court and was influential in putting together the coalitions that made some of the great decisions. Were any other of your mentors, in terms of heroes and so on, as you were entering college ... well, I guess Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King came later?

They came later, yes.

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