As the NFL celebrates its 100th anniversary season, one significant part of its history will largely go ignored.
The league will not point out that its first century includes the fact that it banned black players from 1934 to 1945, even though it never announced a ban and it got virtually no notice because the NFL wasn’t a big deal at the time.
According to Pro Football Chronicle, the league had 13 black players from 1920 to 1933 before it stopped hiring them.
Of course, baseball had been segregated from its early days, but it is curious that the NFL had black players, including some great ones like Fritz Pollard, before they banned them.
No reason was given for the change, but the fingerprints of Washington owner George Preston Marshall are all over the decision. He marketed his team to a southern audience and didn’t integrate until 1962, when the federal government insisted on it when the new stadium was built on federal land.
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