Dirty Laundry: The racist history of the NFL

The NFL had no problems with black players at its inception. Fritz Pollard not only played in the NFL, he coached – and played quarterback. Then in a strange decision comparable with marking a giant letter R on their foreheads, the league decided to segregate itself in a rather cynical marketing move. For over a decade the league would not allow black players in a cult-like moment that should be recalled given the events of the day. Unlike Rush’s supposedly racist foibles, the source isn’t wikiquote – it’s Sports Illustrated.

Kenny Washington, Willie Strode and Jackie Robinson were All-American caliber at UCLA. Robinson went on to stardom and to become legend, while his integrating partners Washington and Strode rode into NFL obscurity. This is their story.

By rights the NFL should be able to celebrate a history of abiding enlightenment. Whereas organized baseball began excluding African-Americans in 1898 and kept them out for the next five decades, pro football’s Shelby (Ohio) Athletic Club paid a black man, Charles Follis, to play for it in 1904. In 1920 the Akron Pros’ black quarterback, Fritz Pollard, was the first great star of the league that would two years later rename itself the NFL, and he even served as his team’s player-coach. (Not just a black NFL quarterback, not just a black NFL coach, but both at the same time!) At the peak of African-American participation, in 1923, six players suited up in the NFL. But as the pro game grew in popularity, the ranks thinned to just two in 1933. The following year the league began a stretch of 12 all-white seasons that, Arthur Ashe writes in his survey of the African-American athlete, A Hard Road to Glory, has to be “one of the blackest spots on the record of American professional sports…. All NFL records should properly show asterisks beside any records made during this era.”

How did the league come to bleach itself white? No single explanation entirely satisfies. Pro football had no strong commissioner like Landis, who categorically barred blacks. But in 1933 the NFL restructured itself into two divisions of five teams each, with a season-ending title game, which led to more media attention and presumably a desire to emulate baseball and its commercially successful formula of large markets and all-white rosters.

The two finally played later in their careers. By then, Washington’s knees were shot and Strode was on his way to a respectable career in Hollywood, starring in films such as Spartacus and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. While the league eventually saw the light on matters of race, it has become worse in other matters. More evidence than ever that political correctness is the new Jim Crow.

Share on Facebook