The Ringer NFL Show - 4. A Seat at the Table | Blackballed

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Reintegrating the NFL was only the first step. In this episode, we look at the long arc of the league’s complicated relationship with race, including positional discrepancies, coach hiring, front office representation, and the stark absence of Black owners. And we consider what it will take to effect real change.  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 tabloid magazine era. Thanks for listening. I'm no stranger to Friday night football games. My little brother, Camden, is a tight end on his high school team, and I do my best to never miss a game. I was a teenager when he was born. He's part sibling, part kid to me. When I worked at the NFL, I used to bring him into the office and show him around the studio. He got to see some live tapings and meet some football players and TV hosts. He told me once that those memories are a big reason he plays football. I did not think I was going to cry on Mike during this podcast. Now, Cam's a teenager. And he's six foot six and weighs almost 240 pounds. But I still call him

little man. And for now, he still lets me. And that's why it's a big deal when I spend a fall Friday night anywhere besides when a Camden's games. But last fall, in early October, I skipped one to attend a different high school football game. I mentioned this game a few episodes ago. It was at Lincoln High, where Kenny Washington went. In fact, it was at the Kenny Washington Stadium on Kenny Washington Memorial Night. Can you tell he's a big deal at his alma mater?

Well, we knew about Kenny Washington, but we just didn't know who he was because of his trophy. Oh, I forgot to mention. the Lincoln High football team's MVP trophy is also named after Kenny. This is Ronald Chico. He's been part of the Lincoln High family for a long time. He played football at Lincoln in the 1980s.

His trophy has been a perpetual trophy at the time was when I graduated had been a little over 40 years. The Kenny Washington trophy has been given out since in 1949, shortly after Kenny retired from the Rams. And then when I came back to coach, which was in the early 2000,

We would give out the trophy annually at the banquet to our best player. After coaching football at Lincoln for 11 years, Ronald now sits on the board of the Stadium Foundation, trying to build a better stadium and give future Lincoln players and fans the kind of experience he had. And all of it, really, in Kenny's name. Ronald says that as an adult, the more he learned about Kenny... I realized that this man was a really good man. I'm saying, wait a minute, this guy should be in the Hall of Fame. And why don't we know more about them?

Great question, Ronald. I came to the Kenny Washington Memorial game last October to find the answer. To why we don't know more about Kenny and Woody Strode, Bill Willis and Marion Motley. Why the world doesn't see them the way they see Jackie Robinson as a trailblazer. What's weird is that, in this universe, there's no lack of love for Kenny. and I came here as a complete outsider to see it. And I was blown away by how many people were wearing Kenny's number 13, by all the letterman patches with his name on them,

by the roar of the crowd in response to his name, and by the halftime speeches, including this one by the president of the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation, Stephen Sariana Lampson. In the last 10 years, we had a mission to revive the legacy of Kenny Washington, and I can tell you that 12 years ago when we did a Google search on Kenny Washington, there wasn't a whole lot there. And now 12 years later, we like to believe that we were at Ground Zero

for his proper recognition as a social icon, as a sports icon, in the civil rights movement, as someone that crossed the color barrier in the NFL, and someone that made a difference from Lincoln High School. It was surreal. To be in a place that celebrated Kenny Washington, the way he and the rest of the forgotten four, should have been honored around the football world. What if the NFL had celebrated the reintegration of pro football

the way baseball enshrined Jackie Robinson? And what if it had acknowledged the gentleman's agreement sooner? Maybe we would have more blackhead coaches. And maybe it wouldn't have taken 57 Super Bowls before two black quarterbacks faced each other in the big game. In the final episode of Blackballed, we're going to look at the NFL's complicated relationship with race, since The Forgotten Four.

And consider what real change looks like, if it's even possible, and if change is even what the NFL wants. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, this is Blackballed. I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. After the Forgotten Four broke the color barrier in pro football, racism and sports ended inequality was achieved. Just kidding. If that were the case, this episode would be especially short.

Instead, what happened was a very slow and very incomplete move away from the all-white gentleman's agreement league. Even after the end of segregation in the 40s, the game wasn't exactly open to black players. If you look through rosters over the next few decades from integration through the announcement of the NFL-AFL merger in 1966, there were some black players, but you'll notice that they were mostly grouped together, mostly playing the same few positions, running back, wide receiver, cornerback. So the idea was to keep the black players away from the spots that required decision-making.

That's Lux Pryor, my co-reporter for this project. Lex, you said the NFL kept black players away from certain positions. But there were still black stars, like Jim Brown in the 50s and 60s. Oh, for sure. Black people got playing time, carried the ball, became famous even. But while the Cleveland Browns trusted Jim Brown to carry the ball with a lot, dropping it and to run for a lot of yards. They would never be willing to let someone like him read coverage or call out blocking assignments. They saved that for the white players.

Across the league, the decision-making positions were reserved for white players. That means obviously quarterbacks, but it also applies to positions like linebackers, guards, sinners, and even the kickers and punters. This positional racism was born out of deeply held racist beliefs. At that point, football existed in the wake of 200 plus years of pseudoscience about black mental inferiority. In the mid-19th century, the father of American anthropology, Samuel G. Morton made a name for himself by arguing that black folks were incapable of actual intelligence and instead had, quote,

strong powers of imitation. And he's not the first person to stoke this kind of stuff. Thomas Jefferson often theorized that black people were inferior to whites in the endowments of both body and mind. And practically speaking, how did that play out on the football field? It's pretty much segregation by another name. You mentioned the positions that went to white players, quarterback, center, linebacker. These weren't just the positions that had more control over the game.

Playing them meant better pay and longer careers. After integration, after the Forgotten Four, what did positional racism look like in terms of the numbers? In 1960, Black Players made up only 5.5% of linebackers and guards in the league, and there were Zero who played regularly at center, kicker, punter, or quarterback. It wasn't until 1972, a full 26 years from the start of integration, that Black players had lined up at every position on a full-time basis. That's some very slow-moving progress. Yeah, and in a lot of ways, it sure didn't seem like progress.

Just because a Black player had played full-time at each position, didn't mean the floodgates opened. The most obvious example is at quarterback. Marlon Briscoe was the first black starting QB in 1968. A year later, Shaq Harris became the first black signal caller to start a season. Almost a decade later, in 1978, Doug Williams became the first black QB drafted in the first round. Ten years after that, Doug added a few more first, the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl, to win a Super Bowl, and to win Super Bowl. MVP. And it wasn't until this happened in 2001. With the first selection in the 2001 NFL

draft, the Atlanta Falcons select Michael Vick, quarterback Virginia Tech. That a black quarterback was drafted number one overall. In 2006, the first black QB was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Warren Moon. These milestones happen so slowly. It's almost painful to recite the dates and think about the time that passed between them. It means a lot of talented black players were getting passed over, kind of like Kenny Washington in 1940. So how did teams justify passing over black players at these decision-making positions? They turn to myths, the ones about intelligence and effort.

And there's another one that crops up, that black people are more naturally athletic than white people. An extra tendon on our calves, a longer heel bone, that old bullshit. I'm familiar. It wasn't even all that long ago that it was a mainstream topic among sports analysts. On After 8 this morning, the black athlete. His dominance of American sport will be the focus of an NBC News special tonight. It's called Black Athletes Fact and Fiction.

This is from an NBC News special broadcast in 1989. Tom Brokow, good morning. Your critics are going to say that merely asking this question implies a certain amount of racism. How do you plead? They're already saying that, I think. Well, how we plead is that knowledge is better than ignorance. and there is a growing body of information both culturally and biologically that shows that there are some distinct differences that do exist.

No, Tom, there aren't, at least biologically. Race is a social construct. It exists only in our minds. But when minds get to doing things like, say, arguing on primetime news that black people are biologically distinct, well, it tends to reinforce that feeling that Marian Motley mentioned earlier. that in America, a black athlete is only seen for their brawn, not their brain. Today, things might look like they're trending in a different direction.

At the start of last season, 11 NFL teams started a black quarterback. That's the highest week one number ever. And like I mentioned before, two black quarterbacks faced each other in the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hertz. But it took almost six decades to get there. But if you look at the men who are leading the teams, especially the head coaches, the numbers are arguably even more damning. Jim Trotter, a reporter who has worked for the NFL media group for the past five years, lays it out. You know, the stat that blows my mind when you put it in a broader context is this.

The first black head coach in the NFL was Fritz Pollard in 1921, right? So here we are 102 years later. and the NFL has only three head coaches who identify as black. Think about that over 100 plus years. We've increased the number of head coaches, black head coaches, by two, from one to three. The first coach Jim mentioned Fritz Pollard was the head coach of the Akron pros a dozen years before the gentleman's agreement. Today, his name graces the Fritz-Pollard Alliance. The group most identified was supporting minority hiring in the NFL's coaching ranks.

The three black identifying head coaches Jim mentioned are Mike Tomlin, D'emico Ryan's, and Todd Bulls, three at a 32. If that's not damning, I don't know what is. We're talking about a century here where we really have made no progress. Jim and I worked together at the NFL. He's long been one of the most outspoken critics of the NFL's record on race. At a news conference just before the Super Bowl in 2022, Jim laid out some numbers for Commissioner Roger Goodell.

He listed 13 teams that had never, at that point, had a black head coach. He stated that there's never been a black majority owner. And at the time, there was only one black team president. There were seven black GMs, but five had just been hired in the previous year. Jim's list kept going. He talked about head coaches, executives at the NFL, and especially the last. of representation and the NFL media's newsroom leadership. And then he made a crucial comparison.

The league's player population is 70% black. Jim then asked Adele this question. So as a member of the media group and as a black man, I ask, why does the NFL and its owners have such a difficult time at the highest levels hiring black people into decision-making positions? Jim brought it up again before this year's Super Bowl, noting, I asked you about these things last year,

and what you told me is that the league had fallen short and you were going to review all of your policies and practices to try and improve this. And yet a year later, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. Jim went on to ask specifically when the NFL media newsroom would have a black person in senior management.

And when there would be a full-time black employee on the news desk. Here's how Goodell responded. As you point out, it's the same question you asked last year. And we did go back, and we have reviewed everything we've been doing across the league. And we are looking at everything from vendors that we're working with to partners that we're working with, to ownership where we've seen significant changes in diversity just this year. And I'm not specific, do not know specifically about the media business.

We'll check in again with our people. But I am comfortable that we made significantly progress across the league. Goodell went on to question some of Jim's data points and said that the, league wants to make progress across the board. This is the same thing I've heard over the last several years, whenever the topic of employment of black people comes up. But what Jim wants to see, what I want to see, are actions, real change. Like Jim said, only three black identifying head coaches in the NFL, it's far from enough. And it's not like there aren't enough candidates. Black assistant coaches have been struggling to get hired for head coaching jobs for a long

long time. We still see it all the time today. As black coaching candidates like Eric Bannamy and Steve Wilkes are passed over time and time again. Even for one of the longest tenured black head coaches ever, getting the job seemed like an impossibility. I interviewed for six or seven teams before I became the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. That's Marvin Lewis. When he was hired by the Bengals in 2003, he became only the seventh black coach to lead an end. NFL franchise. He would remain the team's head coach for 15 seasons, presiding over the most prolonged period of sustained success in the franchise's 55-year history. But Lewis had to run a particular kind of gauntlet before he was able to convince a team to give him a shot.

I had one before the Rooney Rule was put in place. A report came out that a certain coach would be hired by the end of the week. The next day when I go into work, I'm asked, hey, so-and-so reached out. They put in papers to interview you for the job. And I said, well, I just heard last night on TV. So-and-so is going to be named the head coach. But I went. They called him back and said, hey, told them what my express my concern. No, no, that's not true. On that day, on certain coach was hired. Coach Lewis referenced the Bruni rule. The NFL's policy intended to address racial disparities in coaching. Lex, can you tell us more about it? Yeah, it was put into place in 2003 and basically required NFL teams to interview candidates of color for all open head coaching positions.

Since then, the rule has been expanded to include other coaching positions as well. It doesn't require hiring or even seriously considering the black candidates. Just an interview? Just an interview? Sounds like lip service. Meanwhile, it didn't make much difference if the candidate had played in the league. Former black players found it incredibly difficult. to cross over after their careers ended.

Even when they did, the same patterns that restricted them on the field, box them in on the sideline. A lot of them coach running back because that was the thing, the mindset that they can't coach any other positions or secondary coaches. Well, that's not true. We're still breaking barriers with that today. The barriers for coaches, like those for players, go way back. Fritz Pollard was the first black head coach in the NFL.

He retired in 1925. NFL teams wouldn't hire another black head coach until 1989 when Raiders owner Al Davis promoted Art Shell from offensive line coach. That's 64 years. Black coaches were seen not only as inferior leaders and strategists to their white counterparts, but also less naturally able to rein in their increasingly black player base. So somehow, the fact that the sport is getting blacker is used against black coaches. But there's also evidence that some white people didn't

want football to be handed over to black people. Probably the highest profile example of this sentiment comes from CBS commentator Jimmy the Greek Snyder. Jimmy was basically the first mainstream gambling prognosticator in football media. He had a weekly prediction segment with Brent Musburger on CBS's The NFL Today. In 1988, he was talking to the local NBC station in Washington, D.C. when he dropped this nugget. If they take over coaching like everybody wants them to, there's not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean, all the players are black.

I mean, the only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs. Now, I'm not being derogatory about it, but that's all that's left for them. Settled, Jimmy. Mm-hmm. But the part I find most interesting actually comes earlier in that interview. The only recording available of it is fuzzy, but it's worth talking about. The slave owner would read his big black to his big woman so that he could have big black kids. The black is a better athlete to begin with

because he's been bred to be that way. See, there it is again. The plantation myths. Bread to be. The casual callback to slavery. It's horrifying. A lot of people agreed. These comments caused a pretty big stir.

Jimmy the Greek was fired the next day after the league and its broadcast partners, CBS, disavowed him. But the thing is, the system he was actually describing doesn't really change. After Art Shell in 1989, only five black head coaches are hired in the next 14 years. By 2003, the glass ceiling between black assistant coaches and available head coaching jobs have become so obvious that famed civil rights lawyer Johnny Cochran was preparing to file a lawsuit against the NFL. Which is how the Rooney Rule got created in 2003.

How ironic, naming a rule about equal opportunity hiring after a white NFL owner. Over the past two decades, the effect of the role has been mixed at best. Since 2003, NFL teams have hired over 130 head coaches. Fifteen of them were black. It's technically an improvement over the old system, but the Rooney Rule created a new kind of problem for black coaching candidates, interviewing for jobs that had already been promised to white coaches. Being fake interviewed so that an NFL team can check off its diversity box,

that kind of treatment stays with you. Here's Marvin Lewis again. You've got to pour your heart and soul in the preparation to go into these interviews. So there's got to be the disappointment when it doesn't happen. And people around you feel that disappointment for you. Just last year, that disappointment pushed Brian Flores to sue the league for systemic discrimination. Flores was the head coach of the Dolphins for three years starting in 2019. And while they weren't great, he was clearly building something in Miami.

But after a winning season in 2021, Flores was the head coach. was unexpectedly fired. He floundered in the open market, and then this happened. Brian Flores, the former Miami Dolphins head coach and his attorneys filed a lawsuit today in a court in Manhattan that alleges racism in hiring from the New York Giants, the Miami Dolphins, the Denver Broncos, and the national football league. Flores accused the Dolphins of purposely tanking during his tenure. He also claimed that the Broncos conducted a sham interview with him in 2019.

The most glaring part of the lawsuit involved allegations against the Giants. Flores said he had hard evidence that they only interviewed him to comply with the Rooney Rule. You've probably seen the picture of those texts from Bill Belichick, where he mixes up his Bryans, sending Brian Flores a congratulatory note about getting the Giants' job that he intended for Brian Dable. Oops, sorry, wrong thread. Flores' complaints are enough to get you to want to sue a professional job. Sports League. It was a big risk. Suing the league kind of puts a target on your back, no matter what

the league and the team say about not retaliating against Flores. In an interview with MSNBC in 2022, Flores says his motivation to take the league to court and make his displeasure public was about something bigger than his career. And at the end of the day, this isn't about me. This is about black and minority coaches, black and minority leaders who don't get an opportunity to showcase their skills, their leadership, their acumen, their intelligence, their abilities, and whatever field it is. Quick status update, Flores' case against the league and most of the teams won't be going to arbitration. So now he can take those claims to a jury. The NFL has since created a diversity advisory committee and implemented new requirements for every team to hire a minority

assistant coach on offense. The league also updated the Rooney Rule, extending the interview requirement to include open quarterback coach positions. They have also instituted a formal networking program for coaches and executives of color, and also for women, to attend owners meetings, basically to create more opportunities for FaceTime. These are small steps, and they may be steps in the right direction, but they don't address systemic issues that have kept coaching ranks predominantly white, issues like nepotism and cronyism. Look around the league, and you'll see coaching staffs made up of sons and relatives of NFL lifers. Kyle Shanahan's dad won a few Super Bowls.

Bill Belichick's kids work for him. Look, I'm not saying these people don't deserve their jobs, but it can't hurt to have family connections. And because qualified black coaching candidates were kept out of leadership positions until recently, it perpetuates the lack of diversity on NFL sidelines. Similar issues plague front office hiring too. and have for pretty much the entire history of the league.

In the post-integration period, the ceiling for black upward mobility in front offices was best case becoming a scout. And job security was dismal. The first black GM, Ozzie Newsom, wasn't hired until 2002. And even today, there's still 14 teams that have never hired a GM of color. I think you have your share of the owners

who believe 100% black coaches can be great leaders. Marvin Lewis again. And then I'm sure you have some people that they're not there yet, or they haven't never been there. They haven't experienced that. These are very, very proud men and don't like to be told how to do things. Coach Lewis preaches patience and persistence. But you've got to continue to have them adjust how they do it and see it in a different light. And that's what you're trying to do.

Because you're not going to go in and, you know, you're just not going to jam it down the throat. It ain't going to happen. We know that. They can't get to where they've got to in their lives and professional lives that way. But we've got to figure out a compromise. He might be right. The only thing that stayed relatively similar over the past 75 years is the kind of people who own teams. A whole lot of old rich white guys.

And the fact that they've never really held themselves accountable. The team owners are the most obvious link between the modern-day struggles of people like Colin Kaepernick and Brian Flores. And all the players who didn't get to play in the NFL in the 1930s and 40s because of the gentleman's agreement. All the stories about the league's race problem seem to come back to the owners. Most of them are white, none of them are black, and in the end, owners are the people who pay quarterbacks and hire coaches and front office personnel. I think we have to take a look at the owners and why they feel so comfortable being uncomfortable with us and not hire. us into these positions that we clearly have earned the right to have an opportunity at those jobs. Jim Trotter asks a great question. Why are team owners so comfortable ignoring black people?

He told me a story about asking a similar question to a team executive who was involved in the league's diversity efforts. And I ask her, why aren't we seeing more black coaches hired? And she went on to give me her you know, her answer, which sort of echoed the league statement at that time about, you know, getting more blacks in the pipeline and yada, yada, yada. So Jim offered to share a different point of view, what he was hearing from black coaches. And I said, what I am hearing from them is that it is a comfort level issue, that white owners are not comfortable at the end of the day with these black coaches because they do not share the same life experiences, come from the same.

socioeconomic backgrounds, or grown up in the same communities, and those sorts of things. And she said, I'll never forget that she said to me, oh, no, that's not an issue. And in my mind, I said, therein lies the crux of the problem. Jim was telling her what black people thought, and she was dismissing it out of hand. So if we can't get to a point where you're willing to consider what these men are saying as being credible, then how do we correct the problem? Because again, in their minds, they're not being heard. And so I don't have the answer for how you get past that,

but I say we do need more diverse ownership. We need more diverse ownership, more black owners. In March 2022, the team owners issued a statement pledging to increase diversity in the ownership ranks. The pledge? That the owners will treat diversity among a prospective ownership group as, quote, a positive and meaningful factor.

It's a lot of words, but I'm not sure what they mean. There isn't much data to parse here. Teams don't get sold all that often. But one team has been sold in the last year, the Denver Broncos, who are now owned by Rob Walton and his family, you know, the people who own Walmart. Their ownership group includes three black people, all with minority stakes. Condoleezza Rice, Melody Hobson, and Lewis Hamilton.

Minority ownership doesn't guarantee any decision-making power, though Rice was included in the team's coaching interview process earlier this year. Much like the NFL's recent changes to coach hiring policy, these are steps in the right direction, but they sure feel small. Having a black majority owner of an NFL team, let alone several, seems very far away. The rules around a team don't make it any easier. I think the guidelines are too restrictive. Number one, to purchase an NFL franchise, you literally have to write a check for 30% of the value of that franchise upon purchasing it.

So what does that mean? It means that, for instance, let's take the Washington commanders right now, who may be up for sale. The word on the street is that franchise could go for as high as $7 billion. If you're counting at home, 30% of $7 billion is $2.1 billion. First of all, how many black folk do you know who can write a check for $2 billion? I don't know of a lot of us. Number two, I don't know of a lot of us who have interest in purchasing an NFL franchise and having to give out that much money.

And Jim says, even if a black person had that kind of money in the bank and that level of interest, they still might not help address the main issue. you. I have always said, I don't want a black owner simply to have a black face. I want someone who represents the culture and understands what black folks are doing and is representing our point of view in those meetings. If you are simply going to have a black person in there who echoes all of the sentiments of these other white billionaires, that does no good for black people, in my opinion. There's a saying, as you know, all skin folk ain't kinfolk. And so if we are going to have a black owner, I want one who will represent what our culture is and express some of the concerns that we have and bring those to the table. Because we don't have a seat

at the table is very difficult. Kishon Johnson. As a community, a black community, we don't have the financial wherethal by large to participate in this arena at the level. At the level, the same level that they do, and they know that. We don't have the power, and the team owners know that, just like they did in the 1930s, when the league quietly banned black players. History gets forgotten, and then happens again. Rents and repeat.

Of note, I did reach out to the league office to ask if they would like to comment on the NFL's historical and often complicated relationship with race. Someone did respond to my email, but in the end, the league didn't provide a comment, in time for us to include it here. The long history of the NFL's relationship with race is frustrating, to say the least. The league has been built on the talents of black people, and those contributions have been overlooked, time and time again.

Lex is going to take you to a place that's dedicated to remembering. In early November, I went to one of my favorite places on Earth. It's in Washington, D.C. It sits on the National Mall, but it's not really a monument. It's actually a museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And it's gorgeous. Looks like Honeycomb meets the mothership meets a Black Air Force One. What draws me back again and again, though, is what's inside. The clarity the place pulls out of me.

Spend a day in there and you can spot the throughlines of black culture in America. How something as far back as the Middle Passage connects to Motown and Okra Gumbo and So I thought that if there was any space that might help me make sense of the legacy of integration in football, it had to be here. In most sports, the exclusion of African Americans isn't codified. It's not written in law written within the rules. That's Damien Thomas, who we heard from briefly back in episode one. Damien is the curator of the sports exhibit in the museum. We met up at the top floor, where his offices, and we ended up talking a lot about the difference between the response. to integration in football versus the response to integration in baseball.

You don't have that singular figure. You don't have that figure who becomes a sort of national hero. What he's saying basically is that because baseball has won first, Jackie Robinson, who rose to unquestionable stardom, it made it easy for the country to build a mythology around them. While in football, there were four guys in two cities with their own distinct stories. That's not as easy to wrap your arms around. But that's not all of it.

The other thing is that baseball was really intentional. Branch Ricky and some of the African-American press who traveled with Jackie Robinson that entire year were intentional about ensuring that this was seen as a big major moment. We didn't have that with the NFL. And again, he's not wrong. The press coverage around the Rams and the Browns in 19th. 46 focused far more on team performance than the significance of their newly signed black players. But what that doesn't explain is why there's been so little push to truly recognize the forgotten poor by the NFL since then, or why their story still doesn't have the cultural

cachet that Jackie's does. And to answer that, we had to head into the museum itself. The first exhibit in this section is called Game Changers, and it's the big draw. You've got Joe Lewis's boxing gloves, Jim Brown's 32 jersey, two silver statues of Venus and Serena, but it's packed, old heads, aunties, field trippers, and undergrads, all of them buzzing around in every direction. But pretty quickly, I noticed folks hovering around one display in particular. And it was, you guessed it, Jackie Robinson's. I had to nudge my way in front to get a good look. On the left, there are pictures of Jackie leaping over oncoming base runners, arguing with

an umpire, sitting in the locker room testifying to Congress, and even one of him protesting at the March on Washington. His Dodgers jersey, fresh cream, dark blue insignia, and a bright red 42, is framed on the right-hand side. Above a little photo of him signing his first contract with the White Dodgers executive Branch Ricky. Jackie's bat is directly in front of his jersey, a big old hunk of golden wood, still stained with Pintar. This is what I wrote down when I saw it. You can feel his presence. No lie, I thought Chadwick Boseman was going to hop out in full uniform straight off the set of 42. What I'm trying to say is that, without a word, it talked to me.

And I understood. I looked at that display case and I immediately knew its significance, the cultural baggage that everything in it carries. This is important. This is why people come. Around the corner from Jackie's collection, there was another exhibit, one that Damien wanted to show me.

It's titled Playmakers, and it's all about football. You can walk around the whole thing. thing in like 15 steps, but it's packed with remnants from every era of black involvement in the game. In the football room, one of the questions that we asked is the question of how long? Why hasn't taken so long to get a critical mass of African American coaches, a critical mass of African American quarterbacks, a critical mass of African American leaders? They've got an issue of Ebony Magazine with Kenny Washington on the cover, sitting by behind a big sheet of glass.

All it says is, Negroes come back to pro football, and then in the bottom left corner, 25 cents. Damien and I stood there, looking out at the magazine, and the room felt like an emptied-out church. A video about race and football echoed in the background, and a few voices from outside carried in, but that was kind of it. I think I saw four people come inside in the span of 15 minutes. There was no crowd like at Jackie's exhibit. I wasn't worried about someone stepping on my jays. The difference was hard to miss, so I asked Damien about it.

Why, even in a place devoted to uplifting this history, were people drawn towards one story and not the other. Part of it is that you have to understand these moments in their historical context. The integration of the NFL in 1946 is not as big of a social moment as the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947. Certainly because football has become America's sport, it's sort of in some ways caused us to go back and to look at that moment. But in some ways, that's a bit a historical. Damien wasn't excusing anything.

He was trying to understand it, to explain it. The NFL wasn't always the NFL. Folks cared more about baseball at the time. It was easier to mythologize one guy over four. It also probably doesn't hurt that Jackie's story, at least the one that most of us hear about, involves a white dude helping him reach his dreams. When we say these things, what we're really saying, what we really mean is that while Jackie's story has been a bit distorted in the mainstream, it's also been tended to, uplifted by those

very same forces, that the pedestal might be flawed, but at least it's still a pedestal. But in football, that story through some combination of indifference and ineptitude has been buried. They're not called the Forgotten Four for nothing. I still watch football on Sundays, and Mondays and Thursdays. And I still feel a little gross that I cheer for a league that contradicts a lot of what I stand for. I used to work at the NFL. I saw it from the inside. Now I'm strictly a spectator.

From either perch, my optimism for seeing actual change within the league keeps dwindling. But sometimes, the NFL does take steps in the right direction, but not usually in a proactive way. If you are a student of history, there is only two ways that there has ever been substantive change in the NFL. Jim Trotter again. One is through litigation or the threat of litigation, and that goes back to the early 2000s, when the late Johnny Cochran and Cyrus Mary threatened to sue the NFL over a less discriminatory hiring practices as it relates to blackhead coaches.

Go remember. That's how we got the Rooney Rule. And we saw the number of blackhead coaches climb over the next decade plus to a high of seven. If one way to get the league's attention is through the specter of a lawsuit, then the other way is a different kind of threat. Money. So what did we see with the Washington Commission?

commanders. At the time that it was going through all of its difficulties, we saw sponsors threatening to pull out. That checks out for me. When I worked at the NFL, many of my coworkers and I felt powerless to affect critical change from the inside. In my last few years there, I remember instances where we would demand answers, data about hiring practices, more transparency from the NFL. And what we got back were hollow gestures, empty promises. all I want is for the company that I work for to be its best self. And that is not happening. And for you to use performative gestures such as in racism in the end zone or Black Lives Matter on the back of a helmet or to sing the black national anthem, to me, that's not progress. Progress is seeing people who look like me at the highest levels of the NFL in decision-making positions so that,

when subjects are being discussed about a league whose player population, according the league data, is 60 to 70% black, that there is representation at that table. And right now, there is not. But Jim says that something significant has changed since Colin Kaepernick took a knee. What I do know, that if it is something that affects black people across the spectrum, that I do know that players now feel more comfortable saying, we're not going to stand for it. Jim remembers something that Minnesota Vikings running back,

Alexander Madison said in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder. And I'll never forget Alexander Madison said, we are never going to be silent again. And if action is taken against us by our teams or our leagues, he said, there is strength in numbers. and basically if you go after one of us, you go after all of us. It's another way to think about progress. Imagine NFL team owners listening to the players who make them all that money.

I should note here, just days before this episode went live, Jim Trotter announced on Twitter that his time at the NFL media group was up. He was informed just last weekend that his contract was not being renewed. In his tweet, he thanked the NFL news, network and the website for, quote, the lessons learned and affirmed over the last five years, end quote. NFL media did not respond to a request for comment in time to include it here. I reached out to Jim to ask him if he wanted to say anything else in light of his news. Here's what he wrote back. As a journalist, it is critically important to make sure that the

actions of those in power reflect their words. So I've spent this whole podcast telling you you about how the NFL doesn't remember Kenny, Woody, Bill, and Marion the way Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson. It's weird, frankly, to compare the two approaches. But very recently, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which operates independently from the NFL itself, made some amends on this front. In August 2022, the Hall of Fame awarded the Ralph Hay Pioneer Award to the Forgotten Four. And a press release in announcing the award, Hall of Fame president Jim Porter said the following. They made one of the most profound cultural shifts in pro football history

when they broke pro football's color barrier, thus ending years of racial segregation. Their pioneering role not only opened the door to opportunity for generations of NFL players to come, but it also changed the game forever. What the hall doesn't talk about is why the league needed to be integrated at all. The press release, at least, doesn't mention the Johnman's agreement. It's important to remember that Bill and Marion have both been enshrined in the Hall of Fame due to their prolific and long careers. But Kenny and Woody never made it.

It's something that Kenny's daughter, Karen Washington, still thinks about. I asked her if the Pioneer Award was adequate recognition for what her father did for so many other athletes. I don't think so, but I might be a little biased. I think he should be in the Hall of Fame. Willis and Motley are. Of course, they played longer. They were younger guys. But that's about their playing careers. What these four men did was much bigger than titles and touchdowns.

Karen especially wants to see Kenny properly enshrined in Canton as a full Hall of Famer. I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Clearly there are people who don't or there are reasons why not. Since so many people, this is not a small thing. people are pushing all over the place for this. People are pushing, including the community at Kenny's alma mater, Lincoln High School. At the Kenny Washington Memorial game, the topic of Kenny making the Hall of Fame came up a few times. Here's Ronald Chico again.

It was a rougher game, not like, I'm not going to take anything away from Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson exploits were phenomenal as well, but he was playing a physical contact sport where people were doing stuff to him. And I was reading all these things. I'm going to say, wait a minute, this guy should be in the Hall of Fame. And why don't we know more about him? Stephen Siriana Lampton echoed this feeling, too. I think what's important is that Kenny, first of all, gets into the Hall of Fame and enshrined, not just given a plaque.

He needs to be enshrined as being one of the pioneers of the NFL. He needs to be given the status and the due that I think he's accorded, given who he was in the history of the NFL. And, again, he was the first. He signed a contract in the National Football League. At halftime, Karen's daughter, Kenny's granddaughter, Melanie, gave a short speech. She talked about how it feels to come to Lincoln High and celebrate Kenny. And then she made sure to mention the Forgotten Four.

And the Kenny Washington's Dating Foundation for continuing the recognition of not only my grandfather's legacy, but the legacies of those who are deservingly celebrated alongside him. Thank you all so much. I hope Melanie gets to say that again someday in Canton when Kenny gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. And I also hope when that happens, the NFL acknowledges the whole story, not just the men who integrated pro football,

but the reason they had to in the first place. This is Blackballed, the story of the Forgotten Four. I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. I wrote and recorded 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 Frickram Patel. Fact-checking by Juliana Russ.

Copy editing by Amar Burden and Jack McCluskey. The theme song and sound design are by Devin Ronaldo. 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 Dave. David Shoemaker. Special thanks to Connor Nevins and Lindsay Jones. Thanks for listening.