The Ringer NFL Show - 2. Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion | Blackballed

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

In 1946, four men reintegrated pro football. In this episode, we look at how each of them ended up at the precipice of history, as they prepared to cross the sport’s color barrier.  Host: Chelsea Stark-Jones Co-reporter: Lex Pryor   Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Mike Wargon, Justin Sayles, and Vikram Patel  Sound Design and Original Theme Song: Devon Renaldo  Mixing and Mastering: Scott Somerville Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Blackball listeners. If you're enjoying our show, you might also like some of the other narrative podcasts here at The Ringer. Like Icons Club. That's a history of the NBA told through the voices of legendary players. Michael Jordan's in that one. Or maybe you'd like The Cam Chronicles about the rise and fall of former NFL MVP Cam Newton. Or check out one of our culture pods like this blew up, an investigative story about the social media collab houses. Or you could try just like us, a deep dive, into the show. the tabloid magazine era. Thanks for listening. August 29th, 1940.

It's football's Midwestern Curtain Razor, the Chicago Tribune Charity Clash, co-starring the Green Bay Packers and the College All-Stars. It's an annual tradition. Recent college standouts play a pre-season game against the defending NFL champions. And one of the young stars is Kenny Washington from UCLA. He's just finished his college career with an outstanding season.

He led the NCAA and told him. yards and won the Douglas Fairbanks Trophy, basically the college MVP award. Back then, even more prestigious than the Heisman. And Kenny has a big fan on the opposing sideline. Green Bay Packers coach Curley Lambeau. He's the guy they named the Packers Stadium after. He admires Kenny. Says Kenny is, quote, the epitome of football perfection. He was the toast of the Pacific Coast, where great football players abound, end quote. In this game, Kenny plays alongside many players who are about to kick off their NFL careers. But there is one thing that sets him apart.

He's black, the only black player on either roster. And Kenny's one of the best players on the field that day. A lot of the other players, white players, had been drafted by NFL teams. But on draft day, Kenny's name stayed on the board. No team had selected him. And not for a lack of talent. Kenny plays well. He rushes for a touchdown and returns a kickoff for 48 yards,

just short of the All-Star game record. This is the first time he's ever played against NFL players, and it would be the last for six more years. While Kenny's the only black player in that All-Star game, he's not the only deserving black player who had gone undrafted during this era. During the 13 years of the alleged path between NFL owners to ban black players, countless black college football stars would be ignored by the lead. In this episode, we're going to get to know the first who weren't.

In 1946, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode became L.A. Rams, and Bill Willis and Marion Motley joined the Cleveland Browns. Together, they integrated pro football and changed sports forever. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Blackballed. I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. The story of the color barrier in pro football is complicated, a little fuzzy, and now it's a story that's pretty old. But it's one not many people know, and one that still matters today.

And I think the best way to understand it is through the eyes of the four men at the center of the integration of pro football. To see how their stories were different, but brought them all to the same place. A color line. a barrier that hadn't been broken in 13 years. The first black player to sign a pro football contract in 1946 was also probably the most talented of the four, and probably the one who lost the most waiting for his shot.

Kenneth Stanley Washington was born in Los Angeles on August 31st, 1918. From all accounts, his parents weren't ready to build a family. His dad was gone a lot, playing baseball. baseball in the Negro leagues, and playing small roles in Hollywood movies, including the original King Kong. His mom was a teenager, who eventually left the family due to Kenny's father's infidelity. So from the age of four, Kenny lived with his extended family, his uncle Rocky, Aunt Hazel, and Grandma Susie. They lived in Lincoln Heights, a predominantly Italian-American neighborhood, one of the oldest in L.A., and at the time, one of the most desirable.

When you look at the history of Lincoln High, it's really been kind of like an Ellis Island of waves of immigrants. That's Stephen Serangana Lampson, an alum of Kenny's alma mater, Abraham Lincoln High School, and a bit of a Kenny stand. He's also the president of the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation. They're trying to build a new football stadium at Lincoln High. I talked to Stephen during a football game this past fall against local rival John Marshall High. It was an evening dedicated to Kenny. There were a lot of fans there, sporting number 13 jerseys in his honor. The game itself was a blowout.

Lincoln won 54 to zero. But the evening, it was a scene. Think Friday night lights, with smaller crowds, but better tacos. That's right. It's the first football game I've ever been to was street tacos, which was a great bonus for a Friday night field reporting trip. Stephen says the community, now predominantly Latino, has long been an evolving melting pot.

It's almost like the spirit of place has been informed by all these different cultures. A century ago, the Washington's were one of the few black families in Lincoln Heights. Kenny actually spoke a little bit of Italian because most of his friends were Italian-Americans, and it was kind of known that at a certain point you didn't mess with Kenny

because he had friends that would mess with you. So Kenny didn't have to worry about himself. These became lifelong friendships. The amazing thing to me is recently I had a, somebody sent me a copy of his funeral booklet. There were three names on there of guys, Italian-American guys he played football with here at Lincoln. Those are the blood brothers he maintained, and those are the ones that carried his coffin when he died. It was amazing story. All those memories were good, everything that everyone says.

I don't hear any negative stories about the family in Lincoln Heights. Apparently they were all loved. That's Karen Washington-Kohen, Kenny's daughter. She's in her late 60s now, living in California City, a desert town, about 100 miles from where Kenny grew up. I visited her at her house. Karen was wearing a T-shirt with her dad's number on it. We sat on the couch in her living room and talked for a while. At first, Karen was a little uncomfortable talking into a mic.

Is it okay there? Or do I need to hold it up? But I have to say, once we got going, she was a natural. Talking to it like this? Yes. We talked about how Kenny was a multi-sport star at Lincoln High. And though, this podcast is mostly about football. He always said that his first love was baseball.

And Karen says it wasn't a secret. He said that on the Groucho Marx show. Were you active in other sports besides football when you were in college? Yes, Grancho. I played baseball. In fact, I believe that truly wasn't my first love. So I suspect that if he could have gotten a baseball deal like the football deal, he probably would have done that because he really preferred baseball. With Kenny as their best player, Lincoln High won city championships in baseball and football. He had become a high school legend in L.A.

Kenny was heading to UCLA for college, where he would meet someone who would become a team a friend, a lifelong brother, and the second man to integrate pro football. Woody Strode was born in Los Angeles on July 25, 1914. In the very first paragraph of his autobiography, Gold Dust, Woody tells the story of his full name. Here's my producer, Isaiah Blakely, reading from it.

They named me Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode. My daddy admired the president, Ann Woolwine, who was a district attorney in Los Angeles. I had to get rid of that title. And now, ladies and gentlemen, Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode. It was like a goddamn announcement. So I cut it down to Woody Strode. I wasn't able to interview any of Woody's descendants like I was with Kenneys.

But luckily, Woody's book is full of delightful nuggets like this. I recommend it. Woody grew up in a black neighborhood in L.A. Back then, it was called the East Side. You might know it as South Central L.A., But these days, it's just called South L.A. Woody's father was a brick mason, but he wanted Woody to get an education. He wouldn't teach me to lay brick. He was against me learning a trade.

When I was a child, he would say to me, Daddy don't want you to do this. He wants you to go to school. In high school, Woody got big. As a freshman, he sprouted to 6 foot 1, but weighed only 130 pounds. Kids at school called him bean pole, which he hated. But he eventually filled out, a 6-4-210-pound Adonis. A star at football and track and field, Woody went to UCLA in 1936, the same year as Kenny Washington. And the two became fast friends.

Here's Karen again. And they were best friends always, and they always said they were brothers. And whenever anyone would ask my father about siblings, he said, oh yeah, I have one brother. Uncle Woody was his brother. It was always a big deal when he came. Woody recalls visiting Kenny's Italian-American neighborhood, Lincoln Heights, during college, and meeting Kenny's childhood friends and eating and drinking all night. Here's Isaiah again, reading from Woody's book.

So we went to four or five houses, and at every house, they said, Here, Woody, try some of our homemade wine. Well, my body was pure. I had never drank alcohol. By the time we cleared out that fifth house, I was in the fourth dimension. The only problem, they still had to go to football practice. It was scheduled for the nighttime to beat the heat. Kenny carried me to the field.

I had such a buzz, I could barely stand up. As Karen Washington tells it, Kenny and Woody didn't experience much racism during college, at least when they were in town. So it appears that everything was cool as long as they were. were home. I see, UCLA loved them and took care of them. They were both from L.A. You know, this was home. On the road, though, it was a different story. They heard threats and other verbal abuse. Kenny and Woody were sometimes left home during trips. They didn't like that dad and Uncle Woody, neither one of them liked being left behind. But the school determined that the threat was too great.

But overall, Kenny and Woody's college experience, football and otherwise, was a lot of defined by success and friendship. They were already best friends. So college life did that to their. You know, Jackie Robinson was there, but he wasn't a best friend. Yes, that Jackie Robinson. The same guy who had break the color barrier in Major League Baseball was on their football team. He started at UCLA in 1939, three years after Kenny and Woody did.

But Jackie didn't become friends with them. But see, Jackie Robinson. had suffered more racism than my father had. Jack is from Pasadena. You know, life was different in Pasadena than it was in Lincoln Heights, even though they're not far away. Pasadena was, and still is, an affluent community in Los Angeles. Back then, it was considered sort of a resort town for wealthy white people from the East Coast,

a place to build a second home. Think Cape Cod under the palm trees. It's also just a few miles from where Kinney grew up. but a world apart when it came to being accepted by your white neighbors. Dad was surrounded by everybody who loved him. Not everybody loved the Robinsons in Pasadena, because, you know, not everybody loved the black family there. He always had a chip on his shoulder.

A chip that kept Jackie from becoming a part of his black teammates bond. But I know they knew each other and they knew the families, but I have never ever heard of them hanging out, which is odd because how many black guys were on the team. They might not have become buddies, but they were standouts on the field, especially Kenny and Jackie. The 1939 UCLA football team finished with six wins, no losses, and four low-scoring ties. Hey, it was a different era. The team ended up ranked seventh in the AP poll, one of the best teams in the country,

and the Bruins were led by their black players, Kenny, Woody, and Jackie. Of note, there was a fourth black person. player on the team, Ray Bartlett, who was a multi-sport athlete and a close friend to Jackie Robinson. Kenny Washington ended his college career with a then-school record, 1,915 rushing yards, plus 1,300 passing yards. He also played defense. During his senior season, he played both ways, 580 of UCLA's 600 minutes of game time. That sounds exhausting. That year, he led the nation in total offense and was the first consensus All-American in UCLA history. His number 13 would eventually be retired, also a first for UCLA. He and Woody were seniors and had played their final collegiate

game, a tie against USC, an all-white team. On the same day as the UCLA USC game, the NFL held its annual draft. Back then, the league had 10 teams, and the draft had 22 rounds. There were 200 total picks. None of them were used on Woody or Kenny. Today, a player with Kenny's resume would get picked very close to the top of the draft. But by 1940, it had been over six years since a black player had played in the NFL. Kenny, of course, would still play in the 1840 Collegiate All-Star game, eight months later, against the Green Bay Packers. With a record-shattering throng of more than 84,500 spectators taking in the wildest scoring spree that the eight-year-old fixture has ever seen. Kenny still held out hopes of playing in the NFL that season.

In fact, Chicago Bears coach George Hallis was reportedly impressed by Kenny during the game. Some, including Kenny, suggested that Papa Bear Hallis expressed interest in signing him. Now this is where things get a little fuzzy. It's unclear how hard Hallis tried to sign Kenny. Keep in mind, Coach Hallis was reportedly part of the gentleman's agreement, part of the plan to secretly ban black players from the league.

Still, he wanted Kenny on his team and presented the idea to the other owners. And Hallis almost got his way. But there was one holdout, George Preston Marshall, who owned the team we now call the Washington commanders. Kenny had stuck around in Chicago after the All-Star game to see if he had a roster spot with the Bears. But when he found out he didn't, he packed his bags and went back to the Washington. West Coast. So much for a shot at the NFL. Despite not having access to the NFL, Kenny and Woody didn't stop playing football. In fact, they played in a semi-pro league called the Pacific Coast Professional Football League. It was basically a minor league and it was local, mostly based in California.

The players got paid, but most semi-pro players didn't make nearly enough money to survive without other income. And that meant that the best players weren't in those leagues. The semi-pro team, it was the Pacific Coast League, and they were called the Hollywood Stars, and then they switched to the Hollywood Bears. And Kenny was the main attraction. And then they became Kenny Washington and the Hollywood Bears. Karen doesn't know for sure, but she thinks that for Kenny and Woody, the Hollywood Bears may have paid enough to be their only gig.

I know that at some point they were getting a percentage of the gate, so he may not have needed a side job. Kenny played for the Hollywood Bears from 1940 through 1945. He became the league's highest paid player and earned all league honors every year. He probably would have kept playing for the Bears. But something happened that would open the door for Kenny and then Woody to play at the highest level against teams across the country. A chance to play in the NFL. In late 1945, the Cleveland Rams won the NFL championship.

Keep in mind, this is still decades before the first official Super Bowl. But the team was losing money, and another pro football team was moving to Cleveland. We'll get back to them later. So less than a month after winning the championship, Ram's owner Dan Reeves made a big decision. He was moving the team to Los Angeles. At the time, the NFL did not extend further west than Chicago in Green Bay. A move to L.A. was the first of its kind. But the Rams still didn't have anywhere to play.

In early 1946, just a few days after getting approved, to move. Reeves tried to secure the LA Memorial Coliseum as the Rams home stadium. But a group of Black LA sports writers, led by Hallie Harding, saw this as an opportunity to change the racial landscape of pro football. A moment of intense leverage. At the time, the L.A. Coliseum was publicly owned, funded by taxpayer money. And many of those taxpayers were black. Because it was publicly owned, decisions about the stadium were made by a group of called the LA Coliseum Commission, which meant in public. At the next commission meeting,

Haley Harding spoke during the public comment session to argue against letting the Rams play at the Coliseum. He said basically that allowing a team without any black players to play there violated the rights of black taxpayers. He talked about the success of black players in prior eras, like Fritz Pollard and Paul Robeson. He called out the gentleman's agreement,

said explicitly that the NFL barred black players since 1933. He pointed out the injustice of sending black men to war, but not letting them play football. And he talked about Woody and Jackie, and especially Kenny, a star black football player who never got a shot in the NFL. He closed by recommending the commission refused to host any pro football team at the Coliseum until they gave black players a chance.

Harding's speech was more than well-rescent. received. The crowd burst into applause, and the commission appeared to agree as well. There were a few hurdles. The Rams tried to avoid giving Kenny a tryout, citing his contract with the Hollywood Bears, but Harding was a step ahead of them. He secured Kenny's release, secured his chance to finally play in the NFL at the highest level of pro football. One of the sources we relied on when researching this story is a book called Lost Champions, about the men who broke the the color barrier in pro football. The author of that book, Gretchen Atwood, says that the media tipped the skills for the Rams. The thing that was different in reality is that there was enough

pressure on them from the black press in Los Angeles that given what they had both said publicly, it probably became less difficult for them and less annoying for them and they to deal with less backlash if they actually signed Ken even if they didn't. Black journalists in L.A. at the time had a large collective voice. Here's Karen Washington again. So there was more than one outlet for, you know, black folks back, excuse me, we were Negroes back then in L.A. And they had a little bit of power in L.A. And so, you know, they all got together and said, hey, you know, our tax dollars pay for this. And we don't want our tax dollars paying for

a segregated team. It's a good thing because dad was getting old. A few months later, on March 21st, 1946, it became official. At the age of 27, Kenny Washington was a Los Angeles ram, an NFL football player, the first black pro football player in 13 years.

Woody would also join the Rams soon after, though the story around his signing was different than Kenny's. The Rams wanted to, another black player on the team. Someone to room with Kenny on the road. I asked Karen what she remembered hearing about it. And shortly after he was signed, Uncle Woody was signed. Yeah, pressured by dad.

I was going to say, did your dad have any input in that decision? Yes, because they wanted someone else. All they really wanted was a roommate. And they wanted someone else, and dad put his foot down. I said, no, got to be Woody. In his book, Woody recalls that the Rams tried not to sign him because his wife was Hawaiian. and back then, interracial marriage was still decades away from becoming legal.

And the Rams tried to use that to keep him off the team. But Kenny wouldn't have it. Here's what Woody wrote about it. Again, voiced by my producer, Isaiah. But Kenny had the power at that point. He said, I want my buddy. That's how I came to play for Los Angeles Rams. And so, a few weeks later, the Rams signed Woody too.

The first two black players were set to play in the NFL in 13 years. But another team, from an upstart rival league, was also considering signing black players for the upcoming season. But they were going about it in a very different way. In 1946, the NFL was under siege. During World War II, business wasn't going great for the league. Some teams were merging with one another, and one team even just skipped a season.

and various groups had attempted to start rival leagues, and that pissed off the NFL. Famously, then NFL Commissioner, Elmer Layden, looked down his nose at the readiness of the All-American Football Conference, saying that they should, quote, first, get a ball. As World War II came to a close, the AAFC decided to play its inaugural season in 1946. They had eight teams across the country, including two in New York, and one team each and L.A.F. Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Buffalo. And most important to our story, a team in Cleveland, Ohio. This team, the Cleveland Browns, was named after head coach Paul Brown, who, to his credit, objected. And it's in Ohio that the next part of our story takes place.

My co-reporter Lex Pryor took a trip there to help us learn more about the other two black men who integrated pro football, this time in the AAFC. You're up, Lex. On August 5th, 1946, the Cleveland Browns opened their first ever training camp. Practice is almost over when a new guy shows up, out of the blue. He's tall, 6'2, sturdy but quick, a Colgate smile. And he's black, which shouldn't really matter, but no one else on the team is even light brown, so it does. The head coach walks over and greets him like it's nothing, like he wants him there, and after a little while, training resumes.

The new guy, his name is Bill, by the way, Bill Willis. He lines up on defense. He plays a position called middle guard. It's basically what we call nose tackle today. And each time the ball is high, he moves like the wrath of God is behind him. A snap hits the QB's hands, and in a flash he's on the grass staring up at Bill. The center barely flexes his fingers, and Bill is just chilling in the backfield. He's not talking shit.

That's not how Bill rolls. But that doesn't really matter. Because, you know, he looks how he does and he's dominating on top of that. After the third play, the center turns to the coaching staff and starts whining about Bill jumping off sides. As a compromise, the head coach agrees to run three more plays, but with an assistant at the line of scrimmage to ensure nobody's moving early. But even with the extra attention, Bill keeps wrecking everything. One play, then another, then another. Until eventually, mercifully for everyone else, the coach ends practice early.

but not before he walks over to Bill and says, come by my office later tonight. That evening, the coach offers Bill a $4,000 contract on the spot. Bill signs it and the coach says, don't tell anybody about the deal. He's now officially a Cleveland Brown, officially a player in the AAFC, which means that Bill hasn't just made the team.

He's just integrated the other half of professional football. Bill Willis became the first black player in the AAFC. in the league vying to unseat the NFL. But like Kenny and Woody in the NFL, Bill Willis was a lot more than just a first, a lot more than an instrument of integration. So much more. To see the whole picture,

you've got to go to the source, to the start of his journey. This is the street, yep. This is a little street called Talmage. And this is where his formative years were spent. That's Will Jr., Bill Willis' son. We're double parked in front of an empty gravel lot in Columbus, Ohio's King Lincoln District. From the car, I can see a thin metal fence, some dirty puddles, not much else.

So when we used to come down from Cleveland's boys and girls, I think it was right on this lot here. The house that Bill grew up in was torn down years ago, but there are hints of what it looked like scattered throughout the neighborhood. Maroon brick homes with big bay windows, thick chimneys, and bite-sized front lawns. Bill's family had moved north from Jacksonville to Columbus a few years before he was born in 1921. So there were five children, right? Three girls, two boys. My father's brother was, what, eight years old, a club? And when we asked him, because he outlived her dad, I said, well, where'd you all up?

He said, well, on the one mule farm in Florida. I said, oh, really? What was the mule's name? He said, we didn't have a mule. They just called it the one mule farm. Yeah, like a one-car garage don't mean you got a car. They found themselves in the situation having to move constantly. They didn't have money to pay rent.

And this is Will Jr.'s brother Clem. He's sitting in the backseat of Will's black Mercedes crossover. So my uncle, who lived to be 100, 101 actually, said that, you know, and I don't know whether it's jokingly the truth, but he said they wouldn't live a place until rent was due, and then they just go find another place. By word of mouth, the Willis has heard that there were jobs up north. Bill's father, who died a few years after Bill was born,

found work refurbishing railroad cars in Columbus. It's what most everyone did in the neighborhood for a living. The community was like a little oasis filled with marketplaces, hair salons, jazz clubs, and theaters. Today you'd be forgiven for mistaking this empty lot for a busted-up driveway. Cars are parked off to the right, and it kind of looks like time just rolled on over it. Bill started playing football as a kid on these exact streets and learned the game the way most people did back then. Playing football was just something that the kids did.

There was no organized youth leagues like there are today. And the thing is, he wasn't even the best athlete in his family. That was his brother Claude, who eventually got recruited by an HBCU in South Carolina. By the time my father got into high school, you know, there's a lot of pressure on. Hey, you're going to play football like your brother, oh man, your brother. you know, but as well said, the pressure was so great that my father decided, well, he didn't want to play offense and compete with his brother's reputation, so he'll just play defense, and the rest is history.

Bill dominated his high school opponents. He teleported across the line. Folks hadn't really seen anything like that before. They still keep photos of the dude in the lobby of the school. See that sandstone there? That's the original school. And then this is one edition. And this is the latest edition.

Will and Clem brought me to East High School to show me the shrine to their father. It's small, just a few pictures. In one of the photos attached to the main wall, Bill is decked out in full uniform. He's crouched, digits knuckle deep in the grass, his eyes pierced right through you. While Bill may not have been pulling national recruiting attention,

he was turning heads in his own city. That's how he drew the eye of Paul Brown. He's the coach I mentioned earlier. the one who stopped practice. Before Brown led his namesake team, he had a legendary career at Ohio State, which is based in Columbus. By 1941, Bill had already committed to run track for Ohio State. But Brown convinced him to play football. Within a year, they would win the school's first national championship together. Now, it's worth mentioning here how difficult this all was, how tight the pathway had become. College football at this point is trying to mimic the NFL by segregating,

and while it's not 100% successful, it's brutally effective. Not everybody Bill is playing against is okay with lining up on a field with a black man. Shoot, some of his teammates probably aren't okay with it either. But Bill has a few things going for him, his even-keeled temperament and his undeniable talent. So he gets by, plays three seasons, received All-America honors twice, great career. But once college ends, he knows there's not a future for him in the NFL. It's 1944, and it's been over a day. decades since a black man played pro football, so he tries to make his own way.

For a year, he works at Kentucky State as the athletic director and head coach of the football team. Eventually, Bill hears about Paul Brown and his new AAFC team, so he drives to Cleveland and asks his old college coach if there's any way he could join him in the pros. Brown told him he'd be in touch, and a few months later, he was. Bill gets in his car again and heads down to the Brown's training camp in Bowling Green. He puts a whooping on their offensive line and signs with the team. which made Bill Willis the third man of the forgotten four. That only leaves one more player to talk about, Marion Motley.

Lex, was Marion's story similar to Bill's? No, his path was a little more complicated. In a way, he's the least likely of the four men to have made it to the pros. And that's true from the very beginning. Marion Motley was born in Lee County, Georgia, in 1920, and that's not a minor detail to his story. Out of the four men who reintegrate pro football in 1946, Marion is the only one who spends his early childhood in the South. And back then, Lee County was no joke.

A few years before emancipation, in the early 1860s, the entire county had a population of a little less than 7,200 people. Almost two-thirds of the martinslaved. Even by 1920, when Marion was born, Cotton was still king. Lynchings occurred regularly, so Marion's family eventually left. Like Bill Willis's parents, the Motley's headed north for safety and the promise of a better life. Marion's dad found work at a foundry in Canton, Ohio. And Canton at this time is basically the cradle of football. It's where the NFL gets its start, where Jim Thorpe first makes headlines.

What I'm saying is that in Canton, the civic culture is the game. Marion hits his growth spurt pretty early. He's over six feet by the time he's a teen in the 1930s. His legs are basically tree trunks, and his chest might as well have an engine inside. As his body is changing, he starts to get really into football. There's the story about him trying out for his junior high team. At first, the school didn't give him a football uniform, so he tried out for the team in his uncle's clothes,

just a pair of khaki pants and boots. And he went out and hit those white boys so hard, a few days later, they were begging for him to wear pads. He goes to McKinley High School and plays multiple positions. They lose only three games over his entire playing career. Each loss is against a rival high school with a coach whose name you can probably guess, Paul Brown. This is Brown talking about how Marion was as talented a high school player as he'd ever seen.

From the PBS documentary, Lines Broken, the story of Marion Motley. Their offense was built about him, and we spent a lot of time trying to just play one man. He was extremely big as a high school boy with a tremendous speed then. If we did gang on Marion a bit, we had to if we were going to get out alive. And yet, despite all this success, despite his obvious strength, Marion didn't get recruited by any major white football schools, except Clemson, which did reach out to him, but then lost interest when they found out he was black.

For a little bit, he played at South Carolina State. He didn't stay there for long, and by the end of the year, he was back in Canton, working at a steel mill. By early 1940, he's in Reno, starting spring practice for the University of Nevada football team. Sometimes he visits California in his spare time, And during one of those visits, Marion gets into a car crash that kills a man, 60-year-old Tom K. Nabori.

Marion is charged with negligent homicide and gets out temporarily on bail. Over the next few months, Marion plays football for the university. Sports writers describe him as a ballet dancer and slippery-hipped, the kind of runner capable of going, quote, through or over opponents. In October, Marion gets convicted. The authorities give him the option of paying a $1,000 fine, but he doesn't have the money, so it looks like he's going to prison. That's when something even stranger happens.

Students at his school raised the funds to get him out, and on the day that his sentence is supposed to be decided, they arrange for six character witnesses, including the Reno chief of police to vouch for him. This shit is not normal. Nevada isn't exactly a den of racial harmony at the time. Reno is notorious for its rampant housing segregation. But because of what Marion means to the university, because of what he can do with a football in his hands, his peers rally around him.

He gets to keep playing football. After two years at Nevada, Marion enlists in the Navy. He's sent to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station where Paul Brown, the same Paul Brown, who appears repeatedly in this part of our story, happens to be coaching. Here's Marion describing it in that PBS document. I found out that Paul Brown was there, so I made a phone call.

He said, yes, I remember you, Marion. For the next two years, he plays fullback for Brown. Once the war effort ends, Marion heads back home and works at a steel mill again. He hears about Brown's new gig. A couple months later, Marion gets a call inviting him to try out for the team. He arrives at training camp a few days after Bill Willis and puts on a similar show. As Marion remembered years later, that first day we ran wind sprints, I was out in front of everybody.

They hadn't said anything, but I could feel the tenseness around me. I had the best times in the sprints. I ran the ball as well as any of the others. And after they saw that I had the ability, their attitude towards me changed. They signed Marion soon after. He thought he'd found another home. But he was only halfway right.

Mary and Motley completed the group that would one day be known as the Forgotten Four. He and Bill Willis had joined Coach Paul Brown because Brown thought they were some of the best men for the job, and because the Browns weren't part of the NFL and weren't beholden to the inertia of a racist secret agreement. In a word, they were wanted. Getting in was almost easy.

Kenny Washington and Woody Strode had a different story. Past their athletic primes, they joined the NFL, not only to play football, but also as something of a compromise between the media and L.A. and the Rams ownership. Unlike their Cleveland counterparts, Kenny and Woody waited six years and then Hallie Harding had to kick

the door down for them. But getting signed by a pro football team is one thing. Actually playing in a mostly white league is when it gets real. In the next episode, we'll look at the personal cost of integration. They broke the color barrier, and it almost broke them.

Stepping on his hands with cleats, rubbing his face into the chalk, extra blows when you're on the bottom of the pile and they can't see you. And that's just the physical stuff. You know, my father really never talked much about his childhood or the past. And I remember once somebody mentioned something about the good old days. And you can tell him an expression on his face when he said,

the good old days weren't always all that good. This is Blackballed, the story of the Forgotten Fort. I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. I wrote and reported the series with Lex Pryor. The executive producers of Blackbald are Juliet Lippman and Sean Finnessy. Story editing by Justin Sales. Produced by Isaiah Blakely, Mike Wargon, and Vikram Patel. Fact-checking by Juliana Russ.

Copy editing by Amar Burden and Jack McCluskey. The theme song and sound design are by Devin Rinaldo. The other music in this series is from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. Art direction and illustration by David Shoemaker. Special thanks to Connor Nevins and Lindsay Jones. Thanks for listening.