How a Sportswriter Integrated the Redskins and NFL

[spain]

Morris "Mo" Siegel spent a good part of Jan. 15, 1952, hectoring Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall to let him make a pick during that day's NFL draft. As the 30th round neared, Marshall leaned over to the Washington Post beat writer and told him to get ready.

He was going to make the franchise's last pick.

 

"Marshall's theory was that writers didn't know as much football as they should," Siegel wrote in the Pro Football Chronicles anthology, shortly before his death in 1996. "I told him, 'Give me a pick in a late round, and we'll see what I can do.' "

 

Weaving through the smoke-filled Manhattan hallway, Siegel found a Chicago scout who thought Tennessee Tech's Flavious "Nig" Smith was a steal.

A 6-foot-2, 200-pound tight end, Smith was the first athlete to make both the Ohio Valley's all-conference football and basketball teams. He held the conference receiving yards record with 1,195. Jet fast, book smart and with mitts like a velvet mousetrap, "Nig" was poised to become the first Golden Eagle to enter the NFL.

 

The only problem, the scout said, was that Smith was black, and a lot of team owners would pass on him, especially Marshall, widely regard as the most racist baron in professional football. Siegel, was a southerner like Marshall, but no racist.

 

He picked Smith.

 

"Congratulations. You have just become the first sportswriter ever to draft a player," Siegel recalled Marshall saying.

 

"And congratulations to you, George. You have just integrated the Washington Redskins!"

 

A livid Marshall turned almost as pale as his team. What neither of them could have known, however, was that the reporter's surprise pick set into motion a chain of events that gave Steelers owners Art Rooney a promising prospect in a deal hidden from the rest of the league, and effectively ruined the pro career of a man none of them had ever met, because George Preston Marshall didn't want to mix black in with his burgundy and gold.

 

A special case

 

A league founder, Marshall had turned his Boston Braves into the Washington Redskins. Along the way, the dry cleaning tycoon also invented the halftime show and the Pro Bowl, put goal posts behind the end zone to spur field goals and re-shaped the football to improve passing, innovations that helped enshrine him in Canton.

 

But he also was the primary architect of the NFL's color barrier. Between 1934 -- when the Pittsburgh Pirates' Ray Kemp retired -- until the close of World War II, a "gentlemen's agreement" enforced by Marshall barred blacks from NFL rosters.

 

That began to crumble in 1946, when the Cleveland Browns of the rival All-America Football Conference signed two black stars, Marion Motley and Bill Willis. The NFL's Los Angeles Rams, Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers began to follow suit. While the rest of the franchises began mining black talent, Marshall didn't relent until 1962, when the Kennedy administration forced him to finally draft non-white players.

 

"George Preston Marshall was a special case," said Nichols College historian Thomas G. Smith, one of the nation's premier experts on civil rights and the NFL. "Washington, D.C., was primarily a southern city. Most of the people who lived there were white. He didn't want to offend a clientele for his laundry business that was mostly white. He believed in showmanship and grandeur, and he didn't want integration to ruin what he had created."

 

The Redskins in the early 1950s were one of the worst receiving teams in the NFL, going 4-8 in 1952. To buttress their passing attack, they drafted five ends before Siegel picked Smith, but Marshall refused to improve his team by letting a black man try out.

 

"You know, I've thought about that a hundred times since then. They didn't have great receivers. I would've probably have gotten a pretty good chance to prove myself. All I ever wanted was a chance," Smith said during a telephone interview Wednesday.

 

According to Siegel, Marshall tried to trade Smith to Green Bay. When that fizzled, he cut a deal with Rooney. Smith's rights went to Pittsburgh, and the commissioner's office erased all details of the original selection. It was a no-lose deal for Rooney. He astutely garnered a surprise 31st pick.

 

Unfortunately for Smith, however, coach Joe Bach wasn't looking for a rookie tight end. Instead, the Golden Eagle standout became part of a three-team deal that brought Stanford All-American quarterback Gary Kerkorian briefly to the Iron City and sent Smith to Los Angeles.

 

The Rams boasted one of the greatest receiving corps in the NFL, led by future Hall of Famer Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and standouts Bob Boyd, Tom Fears, Tank Younger and Skeets Quinlan. Smith couldn't crack that team's roster, so he was shipped back to the Steelers for the 1953 camp.

 

"Joe (Bach) came to me and said, 'We've got too many people. We can't carry more than 30-some people, and we have too many tight ends as it is, so we've got to let you go," recalled Smith.

 

Before Smith could try another team, a different draft caught up with him.

 

"I had joined the National Guard," said Smith. "But I had missed a lot of drill days by playing football in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. So, I was called up."

 

Smith became an army officer, played football for the Ft. Knox team, then was posted to the 3rd Armored Division in Frankfurt, Germany, where he helped develop a physical fitness program for U.S. tank forces in Europe.

 

The GI Bill paid for graduate school after his discharge, and in 1962, he polished off a doctorate at Georgia Peabody College. He returned to Tennessee Tech, his football days long behind him.

 

A scholarly life

 

Smith retired in 1996 after 34 years of teaching, widely acclaimed as one of the nation's premier Health and Physical Fitness professors. A prestigious academic award at Tennessee Tech is named after him. Instead of catching the draft on TV, he'll be in Cookeville today to hand out this year's plaque.

 

He raised three children. A son, Flavious, Jr., starred on the Vanderbilt football team and was drafted by a fully-integrated NFL, but he left to go to law school. One of his eight grandchildren played for SMU this year.

 

The tall professor, still regarded as a gifted athlete, he now enjoys a quiet, happy retirement in the Nashville suburbs. And no matter where he goes in the New South, no one really notices that he's black.

 

But no one ever did, except a Chicago scout, a Washington Post reporter, Art Rooney and George Preston Marshall.

 

You see, Flavious Smith is, was, and always had been, white.

 

"Mr. Siegel called me some years ago when he was researching his book," Smith said. "He wanted to tell me about how he had tried to integrate the Washington Redskins. But I said, 'Mr. Siegel, you know I'm white, right?' He said, 'Oh no! I thought I had integrated the Redskins!'

 

"You know, life's kind of funny. I grew up on a farm. In the summer, I'd take off my shirt when I was working in the fields. I'd get these dark sun tans. I went back to high school one summer, and a friend on the team started calling me 'Nig.' He didn't really mean anything racist about it, and I didn't really want the name, but I got stuck with it. They used to put it on all the rosters, so that's probably why they thought I was black."

 

While Marshall fought to enforce the Redskins' color barrier, the professor worked even harder to integrate Tennessee Tech. In 1965, the Golden Eagles began recruiting some of Dixie's best black athletes. Sometimes, it takes 53 years to judge an NFL draft. In this case, despite all that happened, Smith and his country seemed to get the better of Siegel's 1952 snafu.

 

"In the end, despite everything that happened, it all worked out for the best," Smith said. "The best thing we did was integrate the school, and sports helped us do that. That's one of the great lessons about sports. On the field, everyone should be equal. The color of your skin doesn't matter. It's your talent that counts. I think that's the lesson athletes brought to the rest of the people."

 

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-re...s/s_327215.html

[Los Gigantes]

great find.

[skins]

Excellent story. Had heard it in a different version. Marshall was a racist scumbag and held out on integrating longer than anyone else in the league. He also did an amazing amount to create modern football.

[spain]

Excellent story. Had heard it in a different version. Marshall was a racist scumbag and held out on integrating longer than anyone else in the league. He also did an amazing amount to create modern football.

 

803597[/snapback]

 

 

 

With the most racist name of any sports mascot, Redskins, what else would you expect out of a very racist organzation?

[Chargerz]

I enjoyed reading this. Thanks!

[Yukon Cornelius]

[Dr. Love]

Excellent story. Had heard it in a different version. Marshall was a racist scumbag and held out on integrating longer than anyone else in the league. He also did an amazing amount to create modern football.

803597[/snapback]

I heard an abbreviated version of this, too. I can't remember where, though.

Edited May 6, 2005 by Dr. Love