| Thu Nov. 7, 2013 3:00 AM PST
"Keep
Redskins White!" Members of the American Nazi Party demonstrate against
desegregating the Washington, DC, football team, October 1961. The struggle to integrate Washington's football team is recounted in Thomas G. Smith's 2012 book, Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins. As Smith tells it, the showdown began in 1961, when John F. Kennedy's interior secretary, Stewart Udall, who'd committed to ending segregation anywhere in his sphere of influence, declared his intent to break pro football's last color bar. Udall later recalled, "I considered it outrageous that the Redskins were the last team in the NFL to have a lily-white policy."
The call for integration was met with opposition, most notably from the team's owner, George Preston Marshall, a laundromat magnate turned NFL bigwig who had held firm for years. As legendary Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich wrote:
For the 24 years when he was identified as the leading racist in the NFL, he simply stared down the criticism of his refusal to sign a black player. It was the only subject on which the voluble Marshall never expressed a public opinion, never resorted to a quip. But he bristled when this columnist reminded him in print that "the Redskins colors are burgundy, gold and Caucasian."Marshall appeared as outraged by federal interference as he was by the prospect of diversity. "Why Negroes particularly?" he asked. "Why not make us hire a player from another race? In fact, why not a woman? Of course, we have had players who played like girls, but never an actual girl player." The controversy drew out assorted bigots, including neo-Nazis (above), who protested on Marshall's behalf to "Keep [the] Redskins White."
Udall had one advantage over Marshall: The team's new home field, DC Stadium (later renamed RFK Memorial), was federal property. With Kennedy's approval, Udall gave Marshall a choice: He could let black players on his team, or take his all-white squad to someone else's gridiron.
"You can't tell what will happen under the guise of liberalism," Marshall griped shortly before acquiring a handful of black players for the 1962 season. He would comply with Udall's demands even if it meant hiring "Eskimos or Chinese or Mongolians." The newly integrated team went on to have its best season in five years.
Timeline: A Century of Racist Sports Team Names
Before the Washington [Redacted], there were the Duluth Eskimos and the Zulu Cannibal Giants.
| Fri Nov. 1, 2013 12:50 AM PDT
But with everyone from President Obama to Bob Costas weighing in on the [Redacted], it's worth remembering that this issue didn't start when, earlier this year, owner Dan Snyder said that'd he'd "never" change the name—and that it's not limited to one team. Here are some key moments in the history of racially insensitive sports mascots:
|
1890
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The word "redskin" first appears
in a Merriam-Webster dictionary. Eight years later, Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary notes that the term is "often contemptuous."
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1915
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The first incarnation of baseball's Cleveland
Indians forms. "There will be no real Indians on the roster, but the
name will recall fine traditions," the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote at the time.
|
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1922
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Oorang Dog Kennels owner Walter Lingo founds the Oorang Indians, an NFL team made up entirely of Native Americans
and coached by Jim Thorpe. The team's popular halftime shows feature
tomahawk-throwing demonstrations and performances from Lingo's prized
Airedale terriers.
|
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1926
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The Duluth Kelleys pro football team changes its name to the Duluth Eskimos.
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1933
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The Boston Braves changes its name to the Boston [Redacted]. According to the Boston Herald,
"the change was made to avoid confusion with the Braves baseball team
and the team that is to be coached by an Indian." (The coach, Lone Star
Dietz, might not have been Native American.)
|
|
1934
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The Zulu Cannibal Giants, an all-black baseball team that played in war paint and grass skirts, barnstorms around the country. Six years later, the Ethiopian Clowns continue the tradition of mixing baseball with comedy to appeal to white audiences.
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1951
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Sportswriters dub the Cleveland Indians' new red-skinned Native American logo "Chief Wahoo." The caricature is inexplicably still in use today.
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1961
|
Stewart Udall, John F. Kennedy's interior
secretary, threatens to take away the Washington football team's
federally owned home stadium due to owner George Preston Marshall's
refusal to sign a black player. Despite support from members of the American Nazi Party,
Marshall begrudgingly signs a handful of black players for the 1962
season, making Washington the last team in the NFL to integrate.
|
|
1962
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The Philadelphia Warriors basketball team moves to San Francisco, changing
its Native American caricature logo to a plain headdress. In 1969, the
imagery is dropped altogether in favor of a Golden Gate Bridge logo.
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1967
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The Washington [Redacted] registers its name and logo for trademarks.
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1972
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The Kansas City Chiefs drop their Indian caricature logo, replacing it with the arrowhead still in use today.
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1975
|
St. Bonaventure University drops the name Brown Squaws for its women's teams when, as one former player put it,
"a Seneca chief and clan mothers came over from the reservation and
asked us to stop using the name, because it meant vagina." Seventeen
years later, men's and women's team names are officially changed from
the Brown Indians to the Bonnies.
|
|
1978
|
Washington [Redacted] fan Zema Williams,
who is African American, begins appearing at home games in a replica
headdress. "Chief Zee" becomes an unofficial mascot. "The older people
been watching me so long, they don't even say 'Indian,'" Williams told
the Washington Post. "They say, 'Injun. There's my Injun.'" He still goes to games in his regalia.
|
|
1978
|
Syracuse University drops its Saltine Warrior
mascot—a costumed undergrad—and iconography after Native American
students call the character racist and degrading.
|
|
1986
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The Atlanta Braves retire "Chief Noc-A-Homa," a
man in Native American dress who would emerge from a tepee in the left
field bleachers to dance after a home run. Levi Walker, a member of the
Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and the last man to play Noc-A-Homa,
said the Braves were "overly sensitive about being politically correct."
|
|
1992
|
Washington Post columnist Tony
Kornheiser writes that "it's only a matter of time until 'Redskins' is
gone." He suggests the team change its name to the Pigskins. (In 2012, a Washington City Paper poll asks readers to vote for a new team name; "Pigskins" wins with 50 percent of the vote.)
|
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1994
|
Marquette University and St. John's University both change their Native American mascots. Marquette's Warriors become the Golden Eagles; St. John's Redmen become the Red Storm.
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1997
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The Miami (Ohio) University Redskins become the RedHawks.
|
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2001
|
The National Congress of American Indians
commissions a poster featuring a Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo baseball
cap alongside those from the (imaginary) New York Jews and San Francisco Chinamen. The ad goes viral in 2013 when the [Redacted] controversy heats up again.
|
|
2003
|
The University of Northern Colorado's
satirically named Fighting Whites intramural basketball team uses
$100,000 from merchandise sales to create a scholarship fund for minority students.
|
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2005
|
The NCAA grants Florida State University a waiver
to continue using its Seminoles nickname and iconography largely due to
support from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which maintains a friendly
relationship with the university.
|
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2012
|
A leaked Atlanta Braves batting-practice cap features the decades-old "Screaming Savage" logo. After a public outcry, it never makes it to stores.
|
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May 2013
|
[Redacted] owner Dan Snyder tells USA Today
that he'll never change his team's name: "NEVER—you can use caps." Ten
members of Congress, including Native American Tom Cole (R-Okla.), sign a letter
urging Snyder to drop the R-word: "Native Americans throughout the
country consider the term 'redskin' a racial, derogatory slur akin to
the 'N-word.'" NFL commissioner Roger Goodell responds that the team's name is "a unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect."
|
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July 2013
|
A resolution by the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes
states that "the use of the term 'Redskins' as the name of a franchise
is derogatory and racist" and that "the term perpetuates harmful
stereotypes, even if it is not intentional, and continues the damaging
practice of relegating Native people to the past and as a caricature."
|
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August 2013
|
Slate, The New Republic, and Mother Jones decide to stop publishing the team's name. In the following month, MMQB.com's Peter King, ESPN's Bill Simmons, and USA Today's Christine Brennan follow suit.
|
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September 2013
|
Appearing on a DC sports radio program, Goodell says of the [Redacted] name, "If one person is offended, we have to listen."
|
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October 2013
|
Obama tells the Associated Press,
"If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my
team—even if it had a storied history—that was offending a sizable
group of people, I'd think about changing it." In a letter to season
ticket holders, Snyder insists
that the name "was never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge
of honor." And, at the end of the month, the Oneida ask to meet with all
32 NFL owners during Super Bowl week:
Published on Oct 30, 2013
Representatives of the Oneida Indian
Nation have requested a meeting with all 32 NFL owners during Super
Bowl week, hoping to persuade them to get the Washington franchise to
drop the Redskins name. (Oct. 30)
|
Oorang cartoon: Baltimore News/Wikimedia Commons; Eskimos logo: Duluth Eskimos/Wikimedia Commons; Cleveland Indians logo: Cleveland Indians/Wikimedia Commons; Philadelphia Warriors logo: Golden State Warriors/Wikimedia Commons; Kansas City Chiefs logo: SportsLogos.net; Chief Zee: Katidid213/Wikimedia Commons; Syracuse Saltine Warrior logo: SportsLogos.net; Pigskins logo: Washington City Paper; Miami logo: Miami University/Wikimedia Commons; Fighting Whites button: Fighting Whites online store; Chief Osceola: cholder68/Wikimedia Commons
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