1/7/2004
Contact: K.E. Schwab -- 724-738-2199;
e-mail: karl.schwab@sru.edu
SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR DETAILS
PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL INTEGRATION:
‘Tackling Jim Crow: Racial Segregation
in Professional Football’
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. --
While most sports fans know the story of Jackie Robinson and the
integration of Major League Baseball, few know the sequence of
events leading to the integration of professional football.
Slippery Rock University history professor Dr. Alan Levy is helping
to change that with his latest book "Tackling Jim Crow: Racial
Segregation in Professional Football."
The 172-page work, published by McFarland
and Co., Inc., is available at bookstores and on line. The book
offers an in-depth and well-researched study of the segregation and
integration of football and of the surrounding culture and
politics.
"Sports and social history are areas
of research in which I have always been interested," Levy explains.
"My first sports book "Rube Waddell: The Zany, Brilliant Life of a
Strikeout Artist," published in 2000, detailed the life and times
of pitching legend Rube Waddell. My new book on football takes on
the controversial topic of racism in America and its many
manifestations in the history of the sport of
football."
Levy, a member of the SRU faculty since
1985, conducted most of his research at the Library of Congress.
His book includes photographs of some of the early African-American
pro-football players, obtained through the NFL Hall of Fame in
Canton, Ohio.
"Baseball and football were integrated at
much the same time. The social impact of baseball's integration was
much more profound than football's," Levy explains. "In the 1940s,
football did not have nearly the fan interest it has today." The
more established sport during the segregation era, baseball had a
fully formed set of African-American leagues. Levy's book details
how some people tried to develop such organizations in football but
were unsuccessful. Still, football had the college level of play
which had no counterpart in baseball, and here African-Americans
were not always excluded. "This was part of the tragedy," Levy
emphasizes, "for many African Americans achieved notoriety in
college ball, but they were never given a chance to play in the
NFL."
"In the 1940s, the racial barriers began to
crumble." Levy details how "World War II presented the obvious
point that the nation was fighting to end the evils of racism as
carried out by Hitler, and, for at least some Americans, the
maintaining of racial segregation at home was too obvious and
embarrassing a contradiction. Still, paradoxically, baseball and
football maintained segregated teams during the war despite
incredible manpower shortages."
Levy shows how the Cleveland Browns of the
old All-America Football Conference and the Los Angeles Rams of the
NFL initially broke the racial barriers in 1946. Kenny Washington
and Woody Strode signed with LA; Marion Motley and Bill Willis were
signed by Cleveland. Both Willis and Motley are in the Hall of
Fame. Other teams then began to integrate gradually. The Washington
Redskins, Levy notes, were the last to integrate in 1962, and then
only because of political pressure. The 1969 Kansas City Chiefs
were the first to have a 50-50 racial mix. Washington was the worst
team in the league while it resisted integration; the '69 Chiefs
won the Super Bowl.
Levy's analysis includes a review of the
schemes NFL owners used to ban African Americans from the league in
the '30s and '40s, and how integration was "slower" at certain
positions such as free safety, middle linebacker, center and
quarterback. "There has been," he adds, "a glass ceiling for
minority coaches, and even more so for minorities in the front
offices."
Levy has also written books on American
music, including a biography of the composer Edward MacDowell. He
is currently finishing a biography of the baseball manager Joe
McCarthy.
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