Outside the Lines

African Americans and the Integration of the National Football League

Charles K. Ross

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780814776834
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios afroamericanos

Outside the Lines traces how sports laid a foundation for social change long before the judicial system formally recognized the inequalities of racial separation. Integrating sports teams to include white and black athletes alike, the National Football League served as a microcosmic fishbowl of the highs and lows, the trials and triumphs, of racial integration.

Watching a football game on a Sunday evening, most sports fans do not realize the profound impact the National Football League had on the civil rights movement. Similarly, in a sport where seven out of ten players are black, few are fully aware of the history and contributions of their athletic forebears. Among the touchdowns and tackles lies a rich history of African American life and the struggle to achieve equal rights.

Although the Supreme Court did not reverse their 1896 decision of "separate but equal" in the Plessy v Ferguson case until more than fifty years later, sports laid a foundation for social change long before our judicial system formally recognized the inequalities of racial separation. Integrating sports teams to include white and black athletes alike, the National Football League served as a microcosmic fishbowl of the highs and lows, the trials and triumphs, of racial integration.

In this chronicle of black NFL athletes, Charles K. Ross has given us the story of the Jackie Robinsons of American football.

1. Kickoff

The First Black Pro

Late-nineteenth-century America witnessed many societal changes, one of which was the widespread obsession with sport. The growth of the American sporting scene began at midcentury and then accelerated after the Civil War, primarily as a result of urbanization and industrialization. However, not all Americans were able to participate in this newly growing sporting experience. As America embraced formal legal segregation by the end of the century, the eviction of African Americans from many professional sports was already under way. The color barrier became the universal rule adopted for African Americans, despite their clearly outstanding and in many cases superior skills in various sports.¹

African Americans were involved in all the major late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century popular sports, ranging from horse racing, baseball, bicycling, to boxing and football. Black jockeys dominated their profession from roughly 1800 until the eve of World War I. In 1875, the first year of the Kentucky Derby, thirteen of the fourteen jockeys were black. African American jockeys won eleven of the first twenty Kentucky Derbys. Isaac Murphy, the most famous black jockey in 1893, earned around $250,000 in winnings over the course of the year and was paid roughly $10,000. Murphy’s winning record of 44 percent is a feat yet to be equaled. But in 1894 the Jockey Club was formed to license riders; it immediately began to systematically deny the enlistment of blacks. Subsequently, by the first decade of the twentieth century the black jockey was virtually extinct.

In baseball, J. W. “Bud” Fowler, the first known full-time black professional, began playing in 1872 with Evansville. He played through 1879 with several teams. Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy Walker both played major league baseball for one year in 1884 with Toledo of the American Association. But the widening patterns of racial segregation in America facilitated the end of black participation in major and minor league baseball by 1889. Cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor has the distinction of being the first African American to win a national title in any sport. During the 1890s Taylor earned as much as $20,000 a year. In 1898 the American Racing Cyclists’ Union was formed and barred all blacks from membership. Taylor was forced to finish his career in Europe and Australia, where he went on to set world records in the quarter-mile sprint in 1908.²

Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson has traditionally been considered the first major black sports figure in American life. His social lifestyle outside the ring, specifically his open fraternization with white women, and his athletic exploits inside the ring, knocking out white opponents relatively easily, played on white America’s greatest fears. Clearly Johnson represented dangerous possibilities to white America regarding black athletes in general. In Jim Crow America, Johnson set the tone for the controversial role African Americans could and might play in the sporting world if full racial integration were allowed. So by 1915 the black athlete had been effectively banned from all the major professional sports. During the first three decades of the twentieth century professional football was not a widely supported sport and labored in local obscurity. However, arguably it was this obscurity that allowed limited black participation. Only seventeen blacks played professional football from 1904 until 1933.

Unlike baseball, the football season was too short and the gate receipts too meager to make pro football anything like a career occupation. Many players held full-time jobs in industry and played on Sundays for the joy of it and to supplement their incomes. The blue-collar orientation of the game seems significant in explaining the long-standing hostility or apathy toward the game by leading newspapers, university officials, and a large segment of the public. It was against this backdrop that a few black players were given the opportunity to play professionally. With a small fan base, the game and players were largely unknown to many Americans. This relative obscurity created playing opportunities for a few select black players. However, once professional football began to gain popularity and established itself firmly as a major American sport, black players were soon ousted from the game.

Professional football evolved from local athletic clubs which traced their beginnings to college football, a very popular student activity. In 1869 Princeton and Rutgers played the first intercollegiate football game in the United States. Harvard and Yale played their inaugural game in 1875; and the next year four Ivy League institutions formed the Intercollegiate Football Association to standardize rules. Harvard’s rugby school style of play won out over Yale’s soccer style, and before long new rules added such familiar features as blocking, alternating ball possessions, fixed numbers of downs, and other hallmarks of the American game. By the 1880s and 1890s, football was a central feature of college social life. While there were other college sports, football came to stand for them all. But the game itself, the way it was played, especially the style and specific rules, can be credited to one man—Walter Camp.³

Walter Camp, “the father of American football,” was an outstanding player at Yale and a genius at developing plans for attack. His football career began at Yale in 1876. After graduating in 1880, he stayed on for two years as a medical student and continued to play football. It was in 1880 that he devised one of the most far-reaching rule changes in the history of the sport. The new rule, establishing the line of scrimmage, began to transform English rugby into American football. Two years later, again under Camp’s leadership, came the series of downs to gain a set number of yards (initially five), new styles of blocking (or interference, as it was known at the time), and tackles below the waist.⁴

In 1889 Camp was the first to name an All-America team, commonly called the Walter Camp All-America. Over the years he selected a number of black players. One of the men Camp selected for the 1892 and 1893 teams was center William Henry Lewis, who was the first black college player and first black All-American.⁵

The son of free mulatto blacks before the Civil War, Lewis was born in Berkeley, Virginia, on November 28, 1868. After graduating from Virginia Normal and Industrial, Lewis enrolled at Amherst College in 1888 at the suggestion of Virginia Normal’s president, John Langston. Lewis felt strongly that he must prove that blacks were “fit,” and that he had the equipment to prove it. Not only was he an outstanding scholar, selected as orator for the class of 1892, but he was also a superb athlete. He played football for four years at Amherst and was captain of the Amherst team during the 1891 season. Lewis became the first “roving lineman” in the game. A good-sized man for the times—five feet eleven inches, 177 pounds—he played in an era when helmets were not used, and he opposed the idea of free substitutions, allowing only unconsciousness or delirium as a reason for replacement.⁶

After graduating from Amherst, Lewis enrolled in law school at Harvard, where he continued to play football. In his first game for Harvard in 1892, he helped defeat Dartmouth 48–0. But against archrival Yale before twenty thousand fans—then the largest crowd ever to watch a black athlete in a team sport—Harvard lost to Yale 6–0. However, Walter Camp was in attendance and named Lewis to his All-America team at center-rush for 1892, making Lewis the first black player to be so honored. Lewis’s outstanding play continued the following season and Camp made him a repeat selection in 1893.⁷

However, as Lewis and other black players integrated white institutions, African Americans were losing their legal rights as citizens. In 1878, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Louisiana statute banning discrimination in transportation. In 1882, the Court voided the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, deciding that the civil rights protections of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to states rather than to individuals. In 1883, the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which assured blacks equal rights in public places, were declared unconstitutional. By the 1890s, state and local laws had legalized informal segregation in public facilities. The Supreme Court upheld these laws in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that “separate but equal” facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Against this backdrop several black players participated on white college teams.

William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson was the second African American to play college football. A teammate of Lewis at Amherst in 1890, Jackson was a solid halfback. The third and fourth black players to enter the college game also made their debuts in 1890. George Jeweth was a punter, field-goal kicker, and halfback at the University of Michigan. William Arthur Johnson played halfback at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the University of Nebraska, George A. Flippin starred at halfback from 1892 to 1894. William Lee Washington lettered at Oberlin as a halfback from 1895 to 1897. More than fifty black players played on white college teams from 1889 through 1920. However, seldom were there more than two blacks on one team. And most white schools had no black players at all.⁸

During the age of legal segregation African Americans had few opportunities to enroll at white universities, let alone participate on their football teams. Nevertheless, blacks saw education as a key factor that could help them elevate themselves, and this responsibility fell upon historically black colleges and universities. Like their white counterparts, historically black colleges and universities founded their own teams. Pennsylvania’s Cheyney State, founded in 1837, was the oldest and one of only three black colleges in existence prior to the Civil War. Lincoln (Pennsylvania) and Wilberforce (Ohio) universities were the other two, founded in 1854 and 1856 respectively.⁹

Black colleges did not share in the football craze because of poor facilities and lack of money. School administrators were not willing to spend any of their already meager funds on games. However, as the schools began to grow, many presidents began to see the need for physical education programs, and from many of those programs intramural football teams were formed with students as coaches. The lack of enthusiasm for football at black colleges reversed itself on December 27, 1892, in a Salisbury, North Carolina, cow pasture. There, in a snowstorm, Biddle College (now Johnson C. Smith) took on and defeated home team Livingstone College, 4-0, marking the first intercollegiate football game between historically black schools. A friendly rivalry, as well as an athletic history for an entire race, had begun.¹⁰

Traditional football rivalries between black colleges continued through the twentieth century and became stronger as football became more popular. Both Howard and Lincoln universities, the Tuskegee Institute, and Atlanta University first played in 1894; and Howard University and Morgan College played in 1899 on the Howard campus. These rivalries fostered community pride and still endure today.

Commercialism in football became inevitable as the interest of students, social climbing alumni, and college authorities grew. This growing popularity was not confined to colleges. During the last third of the nineteenth century, new industrial elites became fascinated with sports, and they joined together in a variety of exclusive athletic organizations. The founding of the New York Athletic Club in 1866 marked the single most important step in this movement. Similar metropolitan clubs quickly proliferated. There were one hundred and fifty by 1883, and many promoted elaborate annual athletic meets. These athletic clubs made it possible to enjoy recreational pursuits within congested cities. As college players entered the business world in the various towns and cities of the East and Midwest, they introduced football into athletic clubs. In the state of Pennsylvania, professional football spread from such clubs in and around Pittsburgh to the surrounding mining and mill towns. These clubs began to play each other, and local loyalty to the teams developed.¹¹

When exactly football became truly professional is difficult to determine. The practice of players receiving trophies that could be readily exchanged for cash was quite common. For example, in the early 1890s, one New York City athletic club gave its players a gold watch as a “trophy” after each game. Players then took the watch to a designated shop and pawned it for roughly $20. This was done so the player and club could avoid the wrath of the Amateur Athletic Union which could punish violators of the amateur code by banning them from competition with “honest” AAU members.

It was within this environment of “amateurism” that the first player was paid cash for his play. The city of Pittsburgh was the site of an intense rivalry between two athletic clubs, the Pittsburgh Athletic Club (PAC) and the Allegheny Athletic Association (AAA). On November 12, 1892, Pudge Heffelfinger, a three-time All-America guard from Yale, became the first known professional football player. Heffelfinger was secretly handed $500 to play for the AAA against archrival PAC. A week after the “Heffelfinger game,” the AAA paid former Princeton end Sport Donnelly, one of Heffelfinger’s friends, $250 to play against Washington and Jefferson. Despite the presence of the second known pro, the AAA lost. In 1893, the AAA paid Pete Wright, James Van Cleve, and Ollie Rafferty $50 each per game.¹² As payments to individual players became prevalent, compensation for an entire team followed naturally. In Latrobe, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a local YMCA sponsored a team that on August 31, 1895, defeated another team from nearby Jeannette by a score of 12-0. The Latrobe team stayed together and for the next ten years played wherever they could find an opponent for whatever money they could get. And thus professional football began to take hold.

Although pro football was born in Pennsylvania, it was in Ohio that the game matured. In 1901 the number of Ohio amateur athletic clubs playing football increased dramatically. Akron developed several intracity rivalries, as the South End Athletic Club and the Planet Athletic Club joined the North End Athletic Club in fielding teams. Other cities and towns, including Lorain, Steubenville, Newark, Barberton, and Zanesville also played organized football. And in 1902 the Shelby (Ohio) Athletic Club was recognized by local newspapers as a professional team. By now the formation of another professional team was not necessarily news, but Shelby AC’s inclusion of a black player on its roster was.¹³

Charles W. Follis became football’s first black professional when he signed to play for the Shelby Athletic Club on September 15, 1904. (Although Follis had played the two previous years, 1904 was the first year in which he received documented compensation.) Follis, one of seven children, was born in Cloverdale near Roanoke, Virginia, on February 3, 1879. The family migrated to Wooster, Ohio, when Follis was quite young. His football career began in 1899, when he helped Wooster High School officials organize a varsity program. He was the team’s first captain—and right halfback. Wooster scored 122 points that season, its opponents zero.¹⁴

Follis entered the College of Wooster in the spring of 1901. That fall he did not play football for the college, but for the Wooster Athletic Association, a local amateur team. So great were his efforts with the Wooster AA that he became known as the “Black Cyclone from Wooster.” The team wasn’t much. It lost to Shelby 5-0 in one game and was then beaten again 28-5 by the same team. But after seeing Follis play, manager Frank Schiffer persuaded him to join his Shelby team in 1902. Schiffer secured a job for Follis at Howard Seltzer and Sons Hardware Store, where his working hours were arranged so that he could practice and play football. His presence caused a few waves in the rural white community. In fact, he was something of a curiosity as a store clerk. People dropped by Seltzer’s as much to see and talk with Follis as to shop.¹⁵

Although Follis had exceptional football skills, his baseball abilities were perhaps even stronger. He became the talk of the Ohio college baseball circuit largely because of his tremendous power hitting. While catching for Wooster Follis first met Branch Rickey, then playing for Ohio Wesleyan University. Follis was a man of great pride. Although he was the frequent target of verbal and physical abuse from white fans and opponents, even on the most trying occasions he never resorted to belligerent behavior or open hostility. Follis’s attitude appears to have left a lasting impression on Rickey. He later required Jackie Robinson to adopt a similar strategy of tolerating racial abuse while breaking the color barrier in major league baseball.¹⁶

Charles Follis was a 1902 and 1903 teammate of Branch Rickey on the Shelby Athletic Club team. In 1903, Follis had one of his best amateur days against an all-Cleveland team. Shelby won 16-0, with Follis running 70 yards for a touchdown. Because he was a star and because he was black, Follis became a target for the opposition, which was not accustomed to playing against an integrated opponent. In 1903, for instance, the Marion team went after Follis in the hope of putting him out of the game. As the Shelby Globe reported, “Marion’s quarterback started dirty work on Follis and …Dave Bushey, his teammate, interceded and acted as policeman.” Marion’s efforts were for naught: Shelby won 40-0. In the next game Follis ran 20, 25, 35, and 70 yards against Rickey’s Ohio Wesleyan team—without incident. But in a 22-5 victory over the Columbus Panhandles, Follis was roughed up, suffering torn shoulder ligaments.¹⁷

Follis turned professional ...