locked&loaded;1883877 said:
anything up the african american players at that time?
Wikipedia is your friend
At its inception in
1920, the
American Professional Football Association had several
African-American players (a total of thirteen between 1920 and 1933).
Fritz Pollard and
Bobby Marshall were the first black players in what is now the NFL in 1920. Pollard became the first black coach in 1921. However, by 1932 the subsequent
National Football League had only two black players, and by 1934 there were none. This disappearance of black players from the NFL effectively coincided with the entry of one of the leading owners of the league,
George Preston Marshall. Marshall openly refused to have black athletes on his
Boston Braves/Washington Commanders team, and reportedly pressured the rest of the league to follow suit. The NFL did not have another black player until after World War II.
In the NFL, when the
Cleveland Rams wanted to move to
Los Angeles, it was stipulated in their contract with the
Los Angeles Coliseum that they had to integrate their team, so they signed two
UCLA teammates,
Woody Strode and
Kenny Washington, who were playing semi-pro ball in the area in 1946. Still, Marshall was quoted as saying
"We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites." In spite of this open bias, Marshall was elected to the NFL's
Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. As part of his "qualifications"' for enshrinement, the hall says:
"Marshall was totally involved in all aspects of his team's operation and endured his share of criticism for not integrating his team until being forced to do so in 1962." The Commanders had no black players until they succumbed to the threat of civil-rights legal action by the Kennedy administration. The Commanders eventually came through though signing
Bobby Mitchell and two other
African American players by 1962.
Even when the NFL did sign black players, poor treatment was evident. Reportedly, black players routinely received lower contracts than whites in the NFL, while in the
American Football League there was no such distinction based on race
[1]. Position segregation was also prevalent at this time. According to several books such as the autobiography of
Vince Lombardi, black players were stacked at "speed" positions such as
Defensive Back but excluded from "intelligent" positions such as
Quarterback and
Center.
^^ some good info.
