Even before Brian Flores' lawsuit, NFL had a long road to integrating its football teams
Earlier this month, in a blockbuster lawsuit filed in New York federal court, Brian Flores, the recently fired Black head coach of the Miami Dolphins, alleged racial discrimination in the National Football League in hiring and retaining coaches and general managers.
The numbers don’t leave room for parsing. While Black players make up 70% of NFL rosters, there are only two Black head coaches and just a handful of minority head coaches in the entire league.
Flores’ complaint discusses the NFL’s history of discrimination and absence of Black players on the field in the league’s early years. In 1946, the suit notes, the Los Angeles Rams ultimately signed “two Black players.”
They were Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. Yet, in a lawsuit designed to bring attention to the NFL’s decadeslong racial failings, the Black pioneers of modern professional football go unnamed.
This is hardly a surprise to Keyshawn Johnson, the first overall pick of the 1996 NFL draft who went on to an 11-year career as a wide receiver.
Late last year, Johnson, 49, along with Bob Glauber, 66, the NFL columnist for New York’s Newsday, published "The Forgotten First." The book tells the story of the breaking of the NFL color barrier through the accounts of Washington and Strode, along with two other trailblazers, the Cleveland Browns’ Marion Motley and Bill Willis.
The idea for the project was hatched by Glauber a few years back, following an odd realization: An NFL locker room is one of the most diverse workplaces you’ll find, but the longtime football journalist had no idea who the first Black player was. He needed Google to find out.
'You can't tell the story of the NFL'
Of course, one reason for these players' virtual anonymity is that, at the time of their signings, the NFL did not yet "own a day of the week," to paraphrase a line from the movie "Concussion." Baseball had a tight grip on the nation’s attention.
But that’s just a part of it, Johnson tells me in a phone interview last week.
“You can’t tell the story of the NFL without telling this story,” the three-time Pro Bowler says. “But the NFL owners, back then, wanted to tell the story about the NFL without telling this story because, quite frankly, they (were) embarrassed and the league has been embarrassed about this.”
As Johnson sees it, the league’s approach was “if you don’t know about it ... then what's the problem? This is why you have not seen significant interest or press ... about these four men.”
The literary pair do not set out to provide pointed solutions to the NFL’s race shortcomings. Rather, their approach is broader – tell the story of the league’s past, as a means to affect its future.
Despite how far the NFL and society have come, Johnson tells me, “We’re still seeing the same things repeating (themselves) over and over and over again. Until you know the history of it, how are you going to know what the future could potentially hold?”
NFL's journey to integration
The tale that Johnson and Glauber tell is an ugly one. While the league had a few Black players before 1934, there were none for the next 12 seasons. It is widely acknowledged that this was the result of an unspoken ban by team owners.
Even the Rams’ signing of Robinson was not worthy of applause. The team had just moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland, where it was no longer financially viable. To secure a lease to play its games in the publicly funded L.A. Coliseum, the organization was pressured to do so.
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Just to avoid any misinterpretation, the team’s press release, announcing Washington’s signing, contained a disclaimer: “no precedent is being set.”
The color barrier was broken, but widespread integration came slowly. Only 17 Black players were in the league at the end of the 1951 season. The groundbreakers were subjected to discrimination in accommodation, as well as racial taunts, cheap shots on the field that went unpenalized and even credible death threats. The last team to sign a Black player was the Washington Redskins in 1962.
The co-authors' game plan, for affecting race in the NFL, echoes Winston Churchill’s famed warning that “those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
It sounds pie in the sky. But not after Johnson describes the relationship between the league and its teams. The NFL – what he calls “the shield,” a reference to the league’s logo – “is independent of (the) 32 owners. (They) don’t all think the same.”
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So while the league, Johnson says, “is trying to do things from a diversity standpoint ... you don’t necessarily see certain teams doing the same thing.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Johnson says, “can’t tell (the teams) who to hire.”
As Johnson explains the NFL’s operation, there is no single fix for the league’s lack of diversity in coaches and front-office personnel. It requires 32 solutions. As with the integration of Black players, progress can be expected to be incremental.
There will be teams that are better than others. Thanks to Johnson and Glauber’s efforts, some will surely make advancements using history as a guide.
Randy Maniloff is an attorney at White and Williams, LLP in Philadelphia and an adjunct professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law.