These days, Jesse Mason stays busy as the director of the Cooperative Education Internship & Placement office at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and as a commissioner on the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission.

More than 50 years ago, though, Mason dominated basketball courts for Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal (AM&N) College, the institution now known as the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

He made such a lasting impression on the basketball court that the university still considers him one of the top five players in program history.

In the future, no UAPB men’s basketball player will be issued jersey No. 42, a number Mason chose to honor his hero Jackie Robinson, a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer who was the first African American to play in the league.

On Saturday, March 5, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff will retire Mason’s jersey, along with the jersey of Harold Blevins, who starred on the team in the early 1960s. A banquet in their honor is slated for Friday, March 4.

For Mason, the jersey retirement will be the latest in a series of accolades that have included induction into the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame, the UAPB Sports Hall of Fame, and the UAPB Alumni Hall of Fame.

“My athletic and academic experience at AM&N is something I will always have fond memories of and cherish,” Mason said. “It was a special time and a special place. To this day, I am filled with the same Golden Lion pride of AM&N then and UAPB now.”

Mason, a shooting guard who played from 1956 to 1960, was a three-time All-Southwestern Athletic Conference pick. During the 1959-60 season, he won the nation’s scoring title with an average of more than 25 points a game — decades before the NCAA instituted the three-point shot.

After serving in the Air Force, Mason spent 10 years in the recording and entertainment industry as a record store owner and record producer in the San Francisco Bay area. From 1981 to 1988, he taught business management and served as the head basketball and track coach at John Burroughs High School in Burbank, California.

In 1988, Mason returned home to Arkansas, eventually serving as vice mayor of Little Rock.

He started his UALR career in 1989 and has continued working for the university for more than a quarter century.