Long before the current controversy over the team’s nickname, the Washington Redskins had a reputation as foot-draggers in integrating the team’s roster. Even as the 1960s began, the franchise was the only one among the major professional leagues for football, basketball, and baseball not to have a single black player. This was a pivotal period in the NFL’s growth, however, so “Fight for Old DC” examines how the league’s commissioner and Congress applied pressure on Redskins owner George Preston Marshall to finally relent and make Bobby Mitchell the team’s first black player in 1962.
Here’s an excerpt from Fight for Old DC:
“‘I have no racial policy,’ George Preston Marshall claimed with great authority. ‘I hire Negroes in many capacities.’
“On the surface Marshall’s claims seemed ridiculous. His entire professional football team, the Washington Redskins, was notoriously ‘lily-white.’ And never before had Marshall’s hiring practices been under more scrutiny. A month earlier Marshall had been issued a very public warning from the secretary of the interior to either desegregate his football team or not be allowed the use of the brand-new, government-owned DC Stadium. Upon receiving Stewart L. Udall’s letter of March 24, Marshall’s immediate instinct was to cede the chore of responding to his lawyers. However, before twenty-four hours had passed, Marshall had begun a campaign to state his case. A phone call with Wendell Smith was only the latest attempt by Marshall.
“Smith was a veteran reporter with the Pittsburgh Courier and one of the foremost black sportswriters in the country.”
