In 1944, Black activist and sportswriter Halley Harding, argued that “most persons, corporations or business almost always forget the people or incidents that made them big.” “This story,” he continued, “is about a great American sport [football] that took all the aid the colored American could give and then as soon as it became ‘big league,’ promptly put a bar up against the very backbone of its existence.” What was true about the National Football League (NFL) in 1944 is also true today.
The NFL does not embrace its Black past. The league celebrates the Black pioneers of the game, such as Fritz Pollard, Paul Robeson, Bobby Marshall and Duke Slater–athletes who played in the league in the early 1920s. This is the easy part. Invoking Black pioneers allows the league to tap into America’s collective conscious that celebrates football as a sport that embraces democratic ideals of merit and equality without having to acknowledge the struggle Black folks fought to make the league live up to those very principles. It is akin to reducing Martin Luther King Jr. to one speech at the March on Washington. We cannot sanitize King and we cannot sanitize the Black protest tradition that made the NFL. For far too long, Americans have used football to sell the ideas of democracy and fair play, but for Black America, this is an illusion. Ask Colin Kaepernick.
The modern NFL was forged in the Black freedom struggle. The NFL relied on Black athletes to push the league to financial stability in its early years. Following the 1933 season, however, under the leadership of George Marshall– the racist owner of the Washington football team–teams refused to sign Black players. Star Joe Lillard was the last Black man to play professional ball for thirteen years. For Black football fans, living in a nation that promoted democracy yet denied Black men and opportunity to play professional ball reeked of hypocrisy. In 1941, as America became the arsenal of democracy, Cleveland Call writer Al Sweeney complained that football’s racism, “leaves us in a quandary… with the radios blaring out each day about a united American people, America, the land of opportunity, God’s chosen country, the last outposts of Democracy…” In his last-ditch hope to get the league to break the walls of segregation, Sweeney suggested Black folks follow A. Philip Randolph’s lead by starting a ‘March on Washington’ and having the president issue a proclamation on the situation." There was, however, no such protest. While America battled in a war to make the world safe for democracy, football’s racist “gentlemen’s agreement” stood strong.