My Memories of the Raza Basketball League (part 1)

My name is Ed Robles and I’m also referred to by Eddie. I was born and raised in Oakland.  I attended St. Anthony and St. Elizabeth’s Elementary schools, Hamilton Jr. High and Oakland High Schools.  During those years my family lived on East 23rd, in the San Antonio area, on Belvedere near my Dad’s theatre, the Fairfax Theatre in the Melrose District, and then on Davis St. and Coolidge in the Fruitvale District.  I was introduced to La Raza Athletic Association in the early years of the organization, around 1973.  I was 15 years old and we referred to it as the CBL – “the Chicano basketball League” and later on others referred to it as “The Latin Leagues”.  I played on the Oakland High and Fania All Stars Basketball teams.

I have worked in the High-Tech sector for 36 years building Corporate Wide Area Networks (WAN’s). I’m currently unemployed. This has given me the opportunity to do things that I previously wasn’t able to do while working in Corporate America such as working on home projects and volunteering for worthy causes such as the LRAA Fundraiser and the Elect Ed Hernandez for City Council, in my home city of San Leandro.

During the time that I started participating in the basketball leagues, I was transitioning from Hamilton Junior High School (now Calvin Simmons Middle School) to Oakland High School at 14 years old. My birthday is in November. I was one of the younger students. At the same time, I was transitioning from living on Belvedere Street to Davis St in the Fruitvale district. There were a lot of changes taking place in my life and I was susceptible to getting into a heap of trouble.  This was during the time of the race riots between the Latino and Black students.  At Hamilton, along with my Latino classmates we experienced a lot of violence in and around the school.   

There were a lot of protests going on.  At one point, we the Latinos students protested inferior education practices by not attending school for one week.   These protests were organized by the UC Berkeley students. One memory that stands out is being one of 600-700 students marching in the morning to the Oakland Public School Administration building, next to Laney College where we assembled and protested peacefully demanding better education. After the peaceful demonstration, our large group marched south down Foothill Blvd. One of the Berkeley students asked my sister, Ana Maria if we could congregate at my Dad’s theater, The Fairfax. Ana Maria got the key and all of us, some 600-700 strong entered the theater and took seats. The Berkeley students, our Leaders, took the stage, and pointed out the inequities among schools in Oakland and the pitfalls of the education system and its lack of resources and exclusion of Latinos. Later in the afternoon, a small restaurant, a few doors down the theater fed us free arroz and frijoles. There is a small alleyway between the side of the theater and the buildings facing Foothill Blvd. At the backdoor of the restaurant in the alleyway, two older ladies had large pots of arroz and frijoles and served us all. We all ate and shortly thereafter, we all dispersed to our respective homes.  I will always remember that. 

I was on the trajectory of running the streets and getting into trouble and would have had a very different outcome had it not been for two programs, I attended the Upward Bound program at Mills College on Saturdays and I played basketball in the LRAA.