This is not the first time professional football players have gotten together to make a bold statement about racial inequality. One prominent example took place in 1965, when 21 African-American players refused to play in the American Football League’s all-star game if it was held in New Orleans — a city then angling for its own football franchise — because of the discrimination they faced there in the week leading up to the big game. The protest, which white players supported, forced officials to move the game to Houston.
More than 50 years later, Clem Daniels, former Oakland Raiders running back and one of the leaders of the boycott, spoke to TIME about the lessons he learned from that decision, and what current NFL players could learn from it.
TIME: How were you were treated in New Orleans when you got there?
DANIELS: First, when we got to New Orleans a week before the all-star game, I was with my teammate Art Powell and Earl Faison [of the San Diego Chargers]; there were about 15 cabs right in front of the airport, and when we whistled and beckoned them to come down, they just sat there until Earl Faison walked up to one and said we had to get a cab to the Roosevelt Hotel. The driver told us, “You’ll have to catch a colored cab in the back.”
At the hotel, the elevator operator said, “You’ll be the first black people to stay in this hotel.” We went downstairs to the café to get something to eat. We were seated two seats down from a white lady, and when Ernie Warlick [of the Buffalo Bills] hung his raincoat next to hers, she went up and grabbed her raincoat because she didn’t want her raincoat hanging next to his raincoat.
We decided we’d go to Bourbon Street. When we got there, [the doorman at the bar] opened up the peep hole and said you guys can’t come in here. Ernie Ladd said, “You open this door in the next 15 seconds or I will put it in your lap.” Someone behind the door told the doorman to let us in. There must have been about 200 people in the place, two large bands, and everybody stopped talking, the band stopped playing. There were no black patrons. We walked up to the bar, and I asked for five shots of tequila. We drank our shots, and we walked out.