The Ringer NFL Show - 3. Integration | Blackballed

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

By reintegrating pro football, Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion achieved what once seemed unthinkable. But the harder part was actually playing in a mostly white league. In this episode, we’ll look at the personal costs of integration for Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion.  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, Blackballed listeners. If you're enjoying our show, you might also like some of our other narrative podcasts here at The Ringer, like 22 goals, a history of the Men's World Cup, told through the lens of 22 of the most iconic goals ever scored in the tournament. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll rage against colonialism. Or maybe you'd like, What If, the Limbias story, a series about the death of a young basketball star and how his legacy reached far beyond the court. You might also like one of our culture podcasts, like Gene and Roger. a deep dive into the careers and legacies of legendary movie critics, Siskel and Ebert. Thanks for listening. It's time.

Let's talk about Jackie Robinson. Now, if you're a casual baseball fan like I am, you might think of Jackie Robinson as an electric hitter and baserner, who broke the color barrier in baseball. A man celebrated by a sport and by a nation as a symbol of integration, a symbol of progress. but what I didn't know for a long time is how much it hardened him, not only the road he took to integrating the major leagues,

but also the way he was treated when he finally played at the highest level. Quick recap from the last episode. Jackie grew up in Pasadena, a wealthy white suburb of L.A. His experience was different than Kenny Washington's. Kenny was accepted by his Italian-American neighbors in Lincoln Heights. It was also different than Woody Stroads, Woody grew up in a black neighborhood, what's now known as South L.A. But Jackie grew up feeling like an outsider.

While he was enrolled at Pasadena Junior College, a white man said the inward to Jackie and some friends. They took issue with him. A crowd gathered and a motorcycle policeman arrived and shoved a gun into Jackie's stomach, arrested him. Jackie pushed back against the discrimination that he faced on a regular basis. He developed a chip on his shoulder. the same chip that kept him from becoming close with Kenny and Woody. They overlapped for a year at UCLA, but despite Jackie's strained relationship with his co-stars,

the on-field results were undeniable. Jackie starred in four sports, football, baseball, basketball, and track and field. Many think he could have been a star at the highest level in any of them. In the year that Jackie, Kenny, and Woody overlapped at UCLA, the team became one of the best in the nation. But off the field, Jackie wasn't embraced the way Kenny and Woody were. Perhaps because of the incident with the motorcycle cop, he told his biographer that his reputation was, quote, hard to shake off.

Jackie spent another year at UCLA, this time without Kenny and Woody. After college, he was drafted into the Army to serve during World War II. Then he joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. He plays here in Kansas City in 1945, which is a surprise is a lot of people because I think people think that he just walked out of nowhere and started playing by the Brooklyn Dodgers. But his real rookie season was 1945 here in Kansas City. That's Bob. I'm Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro League's Baseball Museum, historic 18th and Vine, Kansas City, Missouri. Bob's been working at the Negro League Museum for 30 years.

He's kind of an expert on the National League. the man who wore number 42. I tell people, before he was number 42, he was number five for the Kansas City Monarchs. And he spent all the five months here with the monarchs before Branch Rickey plucks him away to become the barrier breaker that we now know him and hell him to be. Branch Rickey was a general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. And in August 1945, he signed Jackie to a contract and sent him to the Dodgers Farm Club. the Montreal Royals.

While Jackie was winning the minor league batting title in his only season with the Royals, 1946, Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Bill Willis, and Marion Motley were integrating pro football. And then, on April 15th,

1947, Jackie Robinson famously started his major league baseball career. And what a career it was. He won rookie of the year in 1947, finishing fifth in the envisaged. Two seasons later, Jackie played in the first all-star game to feature black players. He would win the MVP award that season, leading the National League in batting average

and the majors and steals. He would add a World Series ring in 1955, towards the end of his career. Jackie Robinson made the Hall of Fame in 1962 on the first ballot. But breaking the color barrier in the majors would define his legacy. He's been celebrated across Major League Baseball. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his first game, Jackie's number 42 was retired across the league. In 2004, the majors honored him by declaring April 15th Jackie Robinson Day. Even Babe Ruth doesn't get that kind of treatment.

Major League Baseball really leans into the Jackie Robinson story, as it should. Stopping baseball segregation is, of course, a good thing. And let's be real, the story is also good for. for the league's image, even if it implicitly acknowledges a dark chapter at the beginning of that story. But what we don't hear much about in the celebration around Jackie is how hard being the face of integration was on him. We don't hear about how being the first black baseball player was a sacrifice, about the people cheering against him. You had a cross-section of white America that was hoping he would fail because it would prove

their narrative that we weren't good enough to play in their race. Bob Kendrick again. And somehow he willed himself to play this game at a tremendous level and then demonstrate such grace, class, and dignity in the face of tremendous social adversity. I would say even beyond social adversity, this was outright hatred that was being spewed at him. Outright hatred. The criticism, often abuse, came from everywhere. death threats from fans, opposing teams taunting him or saying they didn't want to play on the same field as a black man.

Even some of his own teammates took exception to the color of his skin. But Jackie, from all accounts, mostly just played through it. There was too much on the line. But you also have to understand here that first guy can't fail. If the first guy fails, there is no second guy. And so you had to have the right guy. And that guy was Jackie. After his playing career, Jackie became a civil rights activist, leveraging his fame to further opportunity for people of color.

He died young in 1972 at the age of 53. Here he is on the Dick Cavett Show, a few months before he passed, talking about how he's starting to see so many more black players in the major leagues. Well, you can't even count them a day. It's amazing to me. I keep reading about certain ballplayers, and one day I look on television and he's black. There's no longer a mention of Joe Blow, Negro ballplayer, this kind of thing, which is as it should be.

I think they should be judged solely on their abilities out there, and the race shouldn't have anything to do with it. As Bob Kendrick said, Jackie Robinson could not fail. If he had failed, there never would have been a second guy. But the Forgotten Four were Jackie Robinson's first guys. They proved that a pro-sports league could successfully include black players. Of note, they proved it to the man

who would give Jackie Robinson the platform to become an icon. According to Sports Illustrated, Branch Ricky believes that, quote, if blacks and whites could play a game of violent collisions in close quarters without major incident,

the Dodgers could surely call up Jackie Robinson to the majors, end quote. Without Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion, would there have been a Jackie Robinson? Without the sacrifices they may, made. Would Jackie Robinson have had a chance to make his? From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, this is Blackballed. I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. When most people today make their NFL

debuts, they're in their early 20s, and the primes of their lives. That's not how it was for Kenny Washington or Woody Strode. In 1946, when they played in their first NFL games and brought an end to the gentleman's agreement, Kenny was already 28, and Woody was four years older, 32. Though he was the younger of the two, Kenny's body was more banged up. His availability was shaky because of his knees, both of which had been operated on earlier that spring. Those were Kenny's fourth and fifth knee surgeries to date. Washington and Strode were older players at the time, and they were not, you know, they were just not the same. That's Bob Globber, a football writer for Newsday. He co-wrote The Forgotten First, a book about the Forgotten Four with

Kishon Johnson. He says age and health weren't the only things keeping Kenny and Woody from making a bigger impact on the field. There is also a sense that they were only on the team for, if you can believe it, PR reasons to pacify journalists who thought the Rams should have some black players. Journalists, like Hallie Harding, who you might remember made an impassioned speech to the LA Coliseum Commission that opened the door for Kenny and Woody. I think it was more of a pragmatic need for for them to make an accommodation so that they could play. And again, you know, Kenny Washington and Woody Stewart didn't play that much. Look, in a more triumphant version of this story, I'd be telling you that Kenny and Woody

won the day for the Rams during their first game. That September 29, 1946, was the beginning of huge careers for the both of them. But what happened to Jackie Robinson, winning rookie of the year, eventually becoming league MVP, didn't happen for Kenny or Woody. I mean, during their first year, they didn't even play that much. Washington more, but not to the degree where he probably could have based on his talent. And certainly Woody Strode was not included hardly at all that first year. Woody eventually offered to play defense just to get on the field.

But being older and not getting to play much, that was just part of what made that year hard for Woody and Kenny. Back in their UCLA days, Kenny and Woody were legends. beloved, the best players on one of the best teams in the country, at least during their final season. And what that meant for them, as black men in the very white world of college football, was acceptance, and protection. UCLA went out of its way to make sure that Kenny and Woody were not treated differently. But six years later, when they became L.A. Rams, professional football players, it didn't take long for Kenny and Woody to realize that things would be different this time around. Sometime in August

1946, Kenny and Woody traveled to Chicago, their first trip as NFL players, for a preseason game. It was the annual college All-Star game. The same one, you might remember from the last episode, that Kenny starred in six years earlier. Now, this is almost 80 years ago.

They took a train from L.A. to Chicago. That takes a few days. After arriving, they headed straight to practice, and then to the hotel. Or I should say, the hotel. After practice, the Rams coach pulled Kenny aside to tell him that he and Woody couldn't stay with the rest of the team at the Stevens Hotel, a hotel that forbade black guests. Woody was surprised. He had stayed at the Stevens Hotel back in college for a track meet in Chicago.

He realized then that UCLA had pulled some strings for him back in the day, strings that the Rams weren't pulling. And so began a season that didn't just include the specter of racism against Kenny and Wood. Woody, but was defined by it. Let's go down the list. Limited playing time? Check. Different hotels? Check. Oh, and repeated and targeted on-filled violence? Here's Kenny's daughter, Karen Washington. 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. There was a lot of verbal abuse too. And I don't even know what other people said. I mean, like, opposing team. I hear there was some pretty nasty things that they would say, but nobody put that

in print. Karen says Kenny kind of just took it. My dad was really good at not being a troublemaker. He was really good at that. He could close his mouth and take it and keep going. Bob Globber says it also took a toll on Woody. Now he had a good, tremendous long life with so many interesting experiences and, you know, some disappointments, some shortcomings. But, man, a track star as a kid, football star, playing at UCLA, playing professionally a little bit, becoming an actor, a wrestler. What an amazing Renaissance man, he was. But when he looked back, that was a really difficult time for him. Woody was cut before what would have been his second season. The team said it was because of his age. Meanwhile, Kenny had he had to be a very difficult time.

had been picked up for another season. Woody asked Kenny why he'd been released. According to Woody's autobiography, Gold Dust, Kenny said the real reason was the Rams' owners' distaste towards Woody's interracial marriage. Quote, It's not your ability, it's your lifestyle. Dan Rees does not approve of your marriage to Luana

and your Hawaiian lifestyle. Decades later, Woody got a call from a Sports Illustrated reporter, asking about his year playing for the Rams. This is what Woody told him. Integrating the NFL was the low point of my life. There was nothing nice about it. History doesn't know who we are.

Kenny was one of the greatest backs in the history of the game, and kids today have no idea who he is. And then he said something that really put into perspective how much that year was a sacrifice for Woody. He told the reporter, if I had to integrate heaven, I don't want to go. Kenny kept playing for the Rams

and got a lot more playing time the following year. In fact, he had something of a breakout season, finishing the year with the highest yards per carry in the entire NFL. In a mid-season game against the Chicago Cardinals, Kenny took a handoff near his own end zone and took off, scoring a 92-yard touchdown. It was the longest run from scrimmage in team history,

a record that still stands today. Kenny played one more year. During his final game in 1948 at the LA Coliseum, the crowd of 80,000 people gave him at standing ovation. Today, he may be a footnote in the story of pro sports integration, but back then, Kenny Washington was larger than life, especially in his hometown. Still, what he and Woody went through as the first two black NFL players

was unimaginably hard and isolating. a sacrifice. Across the country, a head coach in Cleveland cared more about winning than race, and two more black players were breaking barriers. Bill Willis and Marion Motley. Here's my co-reporter, Lex Pryor, with Bill and Marion's stories from Ohio. I had a suspicion before I went to Columbus. When I hear a story about a trailblazer showing up, conquering, and riding off into the distance, well, I just don't buy it. People who battle and justice don't come out unscathed. They carry the fight with them. That's what I brought with me to Columbus, and what I found didn't convince me otherwise. Like Kenny Washington and Woody Strode,

Bill Willis and Marion Motley weren't exactly greeted with applause when they entered the fold in 1946. But once they were officially signed, Paul Brown made it clear to the rest of the Brown's roster that they were going to need to accept their new teammates, or face his wrath. And he's stuck by that. No cheap shots in practice, no fight, business as usual. Not everyone loved Bill and Marion, but eventually both players grew close to some of their teammates. That didn't stop their opponents from taking shots at them,

but it at least helped them feel like they weren't completely alone. Here's what Bill's son Clem told me while we cruised around Columbus. He had allies on this team, you know, as far as physical confrontations, because they would tell them, look, you don't have to worry about it. You just tell us who's doing something dirty to you, and we won't take care of them. And Bill and Marion knew that they always had each other, even if that just meant someone to lean on and listen to each other's thoughts. Bill's other son, Will Jr., remembers his dad talking about Marion.

Dad did say that Mary Martin had to talk him down a couple of times. You know, dad was going to get up, isn't it, and mix it up. Now, it's tempting to see this as an example of progress, or at least incremental change, and I get it. It's got big second half of Remember the Titans vibes once some Southern boys realize they ain't that different after all. But life isn't Hollywood. It might be heartwarming to think of a teammate having the new guys back in a fight,

but what I keep coming back to is the fact that the new guy has to fight at all, that he's still a target. Will and Clem don't have any firsthand memories of their father's rookie year, but they do remember some of the impacts that period left on him, literally. You can see it on his legs. He had all kind of spike marks and things like that. And you see them sometimes kind of hobbling around and that kind of thing. Yeah, back then they had metal cleats that the play wasn't over until the next play started.

Which meant that you could get blasted, walking, you know, after the been tackle, walking back to the huddle. Somebody could knock your head up. And again, just like with Kenny and Woody, the threat of violence didn't just disappear when Bill and Marion were off the clock. The most glaring example of this happens in December of 19. The Browns are at this point 10 and 2. They're at the cusp of the post season and headed to play a game in Miami. But Bill and Marion don't make the trip because the team doesn't want to stir up any trouble with its southern hosts. For his part, Paul Brown agrees to pay both Bill and Marion their full salary for the week, even though they weren't going to suit up.

Here's what Brown told the Akron Beacon Journal at the time. When I signed the boys last summer, I made an agreement with the league that I wouldn't use them in Florida. I wouldn't do anything that might embarrass the boys. What Brown didn't add, at least publicly, was that the organization had received death threats against both players. So the two black players stayed in Ohio while the rest of the Browns traveled south.

Neither Will nor Clem ever heard about any of this until they were adults. When was the first time you ever found out that your dad had received death threats? Oh, that was grown. Oh yeah, yeah. That was never discussed. Oh, no.

Oh, no, no. My mother wouldn't, you know, she would never say that. No, no, not that, you know. But any reference to those kind of things was certainly watered down. Truth be told, Bill's time on the gridiron didn't have much gravity at home, and that wasn't accidental. Here's Clem again. When we would be in situations where either friends, relatives, strangers,

they would talk more about his character. and him as a man, than they would about his prowess on the football field, because that spoke for itself. My father really never talked much about his childhood or the past, and I remember when somebody mentioned something about the good old days, and you could tell on the expression on his face when he said, the good old days weren't always all that good. When Clem told me this, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

There it was again, that suspicion I mentioned earlier. The truth of Bill Willis's story, if you look close enough, is that he dug a path for himself only to arrive at his dreams and realize they required him to keep digging. So that's what he did. He played eight years, made All-Pro each time, and won four AAFC championships and one NFL title. But he couldn't celebrate all that success at the same bars as his white teammates.

It's true. He did get help along the way. But it wasn't out of a sense of social justice. Bill had backup because he was a badass football player. Even his coach Paul Brown agreed. Years after signing Bill and Marion, Brown said, quote, this was no social idea. I was looking for guys who could play football.

Men among men. Later that day, back in Ohio, I asked Will how his father made it, what he had that other folks just didn't. It's often not the best that breakthrough, right? It's the ones that can break through for a bunch of reasons related to their personality, the perseverance and all that. You know, they're not necessarily the most wildly talented or the strongest facets. But I think he and others like him were trying to make way for other blacks to break into that sport.

There's no blueprint, no one way to make it work. Trailblazing can take many forms, but the thing is, none of them sound like getting out unscathed. And there's no shame in that. Willis was a star on the field, as was his teammate for the better part of a decade. Marion Motley, he was the biggest, the strongest, the fastest. You saw the field differently. But that didn't mean integration was a cakewalk for him either, did it? No, not at all.

The catch for Marion was that white folks cared, but only so much. Again and again, Marion had to force people's hands to get a full shot. Now, once they saw him play, I mean, really saw him. They were almost always enamored. But sometimes he had to hold their eyes open to get that first glance. And whatever peace had earned him was always at risk, always tied to his ability to keep producing. You can see this in a couple of ways during his first year with the Browns.

In his debut with the team, Marion received only five carries and struggled to find a groove. The rumor going around Cleveland was that he'd been signed only to give Bill Willis a roommate, kind of like Woody Strode with the Rams. Today we know it wasn't true for Marion, but imagine living with that. Imagine the kind of emotional state he might have been in as the Brown suited up for their second game of the season in September. If he wanted a shot, he was going to have to take it again. And that's what he did.

Marion shredded the defense. He scored the first touchdown of the game on a 20-yard run and finished with 12 carries for 12 yards. He ended the season with a little over 600 yards and five touchdowns in the game. 13 games. The thing that set Marion apart and what really ended up being a staple of his career was his efficiency. He finished the year averaging 8 yards of carry. And we've got to stop for a second and consider the distractions he's being forced to deal with. Because unlike Bill Willis, Marion is carrying the ball and that leaves him more vulnerable to his opponents. Every handoff exposes him to a stray elbow or a shot at the ribs and teams take advantage of that.

years later, Bill described the beatings Marion took after the play ended, and it's pretty gruesome. Here's what he said. Quote, they would hold him up, keep him on his feet so they could take shots at him. They would keep coming, taking wax at him. The first time we played the Dodgers, just about the whole lot of them piled on Marion. Team won the AAFC championship that year, largely thanks to Bill and Marion, who both made the all-pro team. Over the next few seasons, Marion's legend spread. he was widely considered one of the best players in the league.

But he also started to deal with injuries. At one point his knee had swollen to the size of a balloon. And Marion blamed a lot of that on his coach. Years later, he said, quote, the way Paul handled this situation, he really shortened my career. The trainer told Paul to give me a couple of days off, but Paul said, no, no, he can come out and run a little bit. If he can't run, he can hop around.

Eventually, Marion had to see an outside surgeon who drained it, his knee of excess fluid before training camp in 1949, which sounds super, super pleasant. The surgeon sent him back to camp but told him to take the next few days off. Here's how Marion remembered it. Quote, after I'd stayed off the field for one day, Paul Brown told me, you get your suit on and be out here. The knee problems followed him for the rest of the season, even in the college All-Star game. The pain was so bad after that outing that Marion said he couldn't even walk out of the stadium. He had to prop himself up against a wall as he left while someone brought him to his car.

Marion remained productive into the early 1950s, routinely leading the league in rushing efficiency. But his knee problems took their toll. Paul Brown publicly criticized Marion's fitness multiple times over the same period, and the quotes are glaring in hindsight. At one point, he told the press that Marion, quote, seems to have slowed both in physical speed and in his desire to excel. At another point, he said that Marion, quote, cannot lead his own team now. By 1954 with his athleticism sap, Marion officially retired.

This is how he explained the decision. Quote, the old knees just won't take the gaffe anymore. The rest of me is young enough, but the knees feel like 100. The next year, he attempted a comeback with the Browns, dropping 10 pounds, and expressing a willingness to line up on both sides of the ball. Paul Brown said he looked better than the fullback the team at a Broner. brought in to replace him. But a few weeks later, Brown traded Marion to the Steelers for another new fullback.

The coach saw an upgrade and he took it. Marion retired from football for good later that fall. Integrating a pro sports league isn't a thing you just do. For Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion, it was about much more than playing football. It was about the extra hits, the hits that came from a place of hate. It was about the threats, the racial slurs, and deciding each of the time. time how to respond or how not to. It was about the isolation.

The feeling of looking around the locker room and seeing just one black face and a bunch of white ones and wondering if you belonged. Not because you're not talented enough, but because you can't help wonder if you're there just to check a box or be a sidekick. The Forgotten Four didn't ask to break the color barrier in pro football, but someone had to be first.

After their football careers ended, the Forgotten Four lived pretty different lives. Let's start with a man who started the rest of his life first. Woody Strode's first season in the NFL was also his last. After the Rams let him go in 1947, Woody, as he writes in his autobiography, was, quote, completely shut down. He and his wife had recently had their first child, and Woody was suddenly out of a job, out of a way to support. his family. But after licking his wounds, Woody signed with the Calgary Stampedeters, a football team in Canada.

Here's my producer Isaiah Blakely, reading from Woody's book. When I stepped off the plane in Calgary, it was like stepping into the Old West. It was cowboy country. They were into cattle, oil, and grain. Their land was wide open. The Stampeders were coached by Woody's old Rams teammate, Les Lear, and Woody was one of the best players on the team. Another reason they were good, thanks to Coach Lear, they were using the Rams' playbook. In those years, the Rams had the most innovative offense. The hardest thing about playing for the Rams was learning their system. I had never seen so many plays and had so many patterns to memorize.

But it worked. The team were undefeated, and Woody made a crucial play in the championship game against Ottawa, scooping up a late-game fumble that led to a touchdown. I was the hero. I left the field on my teammates' shoulders, a bottle of rye whiskey in my hand, No black athlete in the world had ever done that. The Stampeders won the Grey Cup and completed what remains to this day

the only undefeated season in CFL history. Woody retired the following year and then turned to what would become his second career. Acting. Woody actually had a few acting credits before his time with the Rams and the Stampeders, but starting in 1951, Woody's I&B page is something else.

Over 80 acting credits in 43 years. Here he is in Spartacus, explaining to Spartacus himself why they can't be friends. What's your name? You don't want to know my name. I don't want to know your name. Just a friendly question. That is, don't make friends. If we're a mess in the arena together, I'll have to kill you.

Woody didn't become wildly famous. His acting career was much like his football career. He was capable, but perhaps underutilized. Still, from Hollywood movies to TV shows to spaghetti western shot in Italy, Woody works steadily as an actor for the rest of his life. From my millennial point of view, the coolest Hollywood detail about Woody is that he's the inspiration for another famous Woody, the one from Toy Story. Woody Penned his autobiography in his 70s, publishing it in 1990.

At the very end, he tells a story about going fishing at at the beach. During the trip, a group of kids recognizes him from an old Tarzan movie, and Woody loves being admired, especially for his fitness. This is from the last paragraph of Woody's book. I'm an old man, but life will never make an old man out of me. As long as you look like you can run on San Anita's racetrack, even if you take last, you've still made the field. People see that horse. They wonder, what's it doing out there? They don't know it's 100 years old. Well, This is how nature has left me, so it's good. Woody died a few years later at the age of 80.

Bill Willis devoted himself to his community after his playing career ended. He and his wife Odessa were both members of the NAACP and Urban League. For years, Bill led the Ohio Youth Commission, which meant he oversaw the state's network of juvenile corrective institutions. He saw salvation in those kids and fought with the state to allow them to take classes while incarcerated. Eventually, he moved back to Columbus full-time. Do you think that your father thought of himself as an activist? I think he did.

That's Will, one of Bill's sons. I'm sure if you ask three people, you get five different definitions of what's an activist. And for him, being an activist, was about not making noise, but making change, okay? And he did that through all the people that he hired. I mean, we can't tell you the number of people who say, hey, your dad, my first job. And now they can support their family with them. Helping kids get into college.

Helping kids get their degree. He thought of himself is making change in individuals, families, and communities what they didn't have opportunity to get what they really need to have to succeed in this world. He still kept himself involved in football. Occasionally he did some recruiting work for Ohio State. Will and his brother Clem say their dad was actually. actually responsible for delivering Buckeye legend Archie Griffin in 1972. He helped form a youth football league and brought some of his old teammates in to talk to the kids.

Both Will and Clems say their father never forced the game on them or any of their other siblings. You know, he didn't want to push us, but he was very supportive in whatever we did. I would try to get involved with everything. I was in music, I was in the martial arts, I was in the theater, you name it. And football. And football. I have sports. You know what I'm saying.

And Bill played a little bit of football. He wrestled. But, you know, that wasn't his passion. But he supported this. Bill wasn't hiding from football. He still loved it. In 1977, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame with Paul Brown as his presenter. Bill died in 2007 at the age of 86.

Even into his later years, he kept up ties to both the Browns and Ohio State. But when I asked Will and Clem, how they think, think Bill thought of himself and his purpose? They said that football was secondary to, well, life. I think he saw his mission and purpose of life more to help others than to help himself by playing football. I don't know that he wanted to be that close to football after playing. I mean, he wanted to be a part of it,

but be able to walk away from it. In one of the main hallways that splits Ohio State's locker room, there's a wall covered with mementos to previous title teams. Each year has its own little glass plaque mounted on tiny silver knobs. There's a sign, a sign with big, bold white lettering that says national championships. The lights behind it give it a sort of aura. It just looks professional. The first plaque is of the 1942 team, the one Bill led,

and a photo of Bill and a four-point stance is the only image. on it. He's got a leather helmet on, no face mask, just glaring straightforward. Maybe for dramatic effect, maybe not. When I looked at it, I couldn't help but think of the other pictures I'd seen of them, the other memorials I'd visited throughout the day. They're not as well lit. They do not have shiny silver knobs. They weren't funded by big money boosters. They're in barbershops and along freeway overpasses and next to churches. They don't always just depict bill. They place him as part of a wider community. Like, he's just one of theirs. I think Bill Willis would be proud of the Buckeyes locker room. He cherished his time there. When he went to games after he retired, he

insisted on pang. But I also think he'd have more pride over how he's remembered in his neighborhood, in Columbus. I don't know how Bill survived football, and to be honest, I'm still not sure he made out any cleaner than the next guy. But if he did, I think this might be why. Because no matter, matter what he did on the field, no matter where it took him, he didn't need football to be his home. He already had that. Unlike Bill's life, after his playing days, Marion Motley's story is a little more scattered, a little less settled. In the years after his playing career ended, Marion Motley was a semi-pro wrestler, a clerk

at a post office, a manager at a construction company, and a man without a purpose. He had been looking for full-time employment from the Browns since he retired, but was rebuffed each time. They let him scout a few HBCUs, but that was it. There's the story he told to a newspaper in Akron where he approached Paul Brown to ask for a job on his staff. He was just looking for a place to land. Marion remembered Brown responding, have you tried the steel mill? Needless to say, Brown had a different relationship with Marion than he did Bill, or at least it appears that way 70 years later, to fully unpack Brown's legacy regarding race would require a show of its own, but it's not as simple as it seems on the surface. In 1964, after Brown had left the Browns, Marion again formally

approached the team about any potential jobs. The team was in a moment of transition, and there appeared to be a number of open positions. Marion said later he was told there were no vacancies, but over the next year, the Browns hired a few white candidates. A year later, he released a three-page statement accusing the Browns and owner-art model of discriminating against him. He wrote, quote, the city is afraid to take one step forward by elevating a negro from the status of player to executive. He added, quote, I believe that Modell has doubts as to whether I have the knowledge and qualifications of knowing a football player. He described a feeling he couldn't shake, one we've heard again and again in this series, one that exists in every era of black involvement

in the game. He lamented this in his statement. All the organization wanted was my brawn, not my brain. The Browns responded by defending their track record of signing black players. A spokesperson for the team said, quote, we fill our positions on the basis of our needs and the qualifications of the applicants, not on any color formula. It's a quote that sounds like it could have come out last week or at any point in these past 80 years. Art Moldell responded simply by stating, my position on Negroes needs no defense. Marion Motley never was hired by an NFL team. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1968 and had Bill Willis as his presenter. He passed away in June of 1999.

Unless you're a diehard Browns fan, you've probably never heard of him. I don't know how he felt about football deep down. I know he thought he'd found his home in it, but that it never really could be. And that's a shame. But it's not Marion's shame to carry. There's a quote from the end of his life that I keep coming back to. I still wear my Cleveland Browns jacket. A lot of times somebody will mention it or make some kind of playful remark about it.

Well, my answer is, I earned it. I earned the right to wear this jacket. Kenny Washington retired from the NFL in 1948, after three seasons with the Rams, largely due to injury. Here's his daughter, Karen. He was beat up. He was beat up when he started. So he pushed it three more years, but yeah, he had to stop.

Kenny then gave baseball a shot in 1950. But after a few short spells with the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Angels, he hung up his cleats. It's worth noting that Kenny was a really good baseball player in college. Here's Bob Kendrick again. At UCLA, Kenny Washington was a better baseball player than Jackie Robinson was. But by this point, he was too far past his prime to make it in the majors. Kenny did work as a scout for the Dodgers for a while, and he had a few other jobs too.

Like Woody, Kenny did some acting, including, ironically, a role of the job. in the 1950 production of the Jackie Robinson story. He played Jackie's Negro Leagues manager. Can he also worked for the LA Police Department for a while, and he got involved in politics, though Karen says he preferred to keep a lower profile. When you get into politics, it's controversial. You know, and activism and all that, it's controversial.

It's not what everybody wants to hear. And I never, ever heard him do that. He just kind of kept his mouth shut. Now, that's not to say, that he may not have funneled some money to people. It's more than likely that his support was financial, but he was never up on a stage with a microphone or in front of a crowd. He never did any of that.

After football, Kenny kind of dabbled. He didn't find a new identity as an actor like Woody did, or find meaning and community work like Bill. The story of Kenny's life ended up being, in a lot of ways, about what could have been, potential, bad timing. A legacy that got cheated. I asked Karen about this, about what Kenny's life would have been like

if not for the gentleman's agreement. It would have been crazy because he'd have gone pro right out of college. Everything would have been different, I think. But that would have required a world that did not exist in that year. But if it had been like now, yeah, he'd have gone straight into the NFL somewhere.

Instead, Kenny started six years late. He didn't have. enough time in the NFL. Ultimately, time was never really on his side. Kenny died in 1971, at the young age of 52. And as the decades passed, people forgot about Kenny, while learning more about Jackie Robinson, while celebrating Jackie Robinson and enshrining Jackie Robinson. In the final episode of Blackbald, we will look at the NFL's complicated relationship with race since the Forgotten Four, how ending the gentleman's agreement didn't end unequal treatment

for players of color in the league. Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion became the Forgotten Four instead of becoming the faces of pro sports integration. You don't have that singular figure. You don't have that figure who becomes a sort

of national hero. We'll look at how not celebrating their stories until recently is an integral part of the story of the modern NFL. And we'll consider what it will take to turn that story around. Progress is seeing people who look like me at the highest levels of the NFL in decision-making positions. This is BlackBald, the story of The Forgotten Four.

I'm Chelsea Sirk Jones. I wrote and reported the series with Lux Pride. The executive producers of Blackbald are Juliet Litman and Sean Finnessy. Story editing by Justin Sales. Produced by Isaiah Blakely, Mike Wargon, and Furgram Patel. Fact-checking by Julianna Ress. Copy editing by Amar Burden and Jack McCluskey. The theme song and sound design are by Devin Ronaldo.

The other music in the 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.