The Ringer NFL Show - Introducing ‘Blackballed’

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Bill Willis, and Marion Motley reintegrated professional football in 1946. They are known as the Forgotten Four. The burying of their story, and the secret ban on Black players that came before, is a critical piece of the history of the NFL’s complicated relationship with race. 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

Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Bill Willis, and Marion Motley. Ever heard of them? Most people haven't, or at least don't know their stories. They are the Jackie Robinson's of professional football, the men who broke the color barrier. A year before, Jackie played his first major league baseball game. So why have they been forgotten? In the 1930s, NFL owners stopped signing black players.

Rumors, common knowledge really, are that they made a secret pact to see. segregate the NFL to keep black players out. It's a dark history, one that has been kept under wraps for the past century, and one that helps explain the modern NFL's complicated relationship with race today. Colin Kaepernick took a knee and never played in the NFL again. Countless black head coaching candidates sit through interviews for jobs that are earmarked for other people. The whole point of learning history is to try to avoid making the same mistakes time and time again. But what happens when that history has been buried? From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Chelsea Sirk Jones. I am hosting a new miniseries podcast called BlackBall. In this podcast,

my co-reporter, Lex Pryor and I will tell you the story of how Penny, Woody, Bill, and Marion, the Forgotten Four, Integrated Pro Football, and what their story tells us about the NFL today. Episodes of Blackball will drop right here on the Ringer NFL feed over the next to the next. next two weeks.