It has long been the desire of many that the Washington Redskins change their socially, culturally, and racially insensitive team nickname to something else. However, team owner Daniel Snyder has said that this will never happen.
“I’ve listened carefully to the commentary and perspectives on all sides, and I respect the feelings of those who are offended by the team name,” Snyder wrote in a letter to the team’s fans in 2013. “But I hope such individuals also try to respect what the name means, not only for all of us in the extended Washington Redskins family, but among Native Americans too.”
“Mr. Snyder can personally explain why he believes they deserve to be called ‘redskins,’” Ray Halbritter, representative of the Oneida Indian Nation, said in a statement response. “He can then hear directly from them why that term is so painful.”
Recently, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said that if the team ever wants to have a stadium in the nation’s capital — as opposed to FedEx Field (formerly Jack Kent Cooke Stadium), which is located in Landover, Maryland, and has been the team’s home stadium since 1997 — it would be wise to consider a name change sooner than later.
“I think it’s past time for the team to deal with what offends so many people,” Bowser said in a Friday interview with radio station The Team 980. “And this is a great franchise with a great history that’s beloved in Washington. And it deserves a name that reflects the affection that we’ve built for the team.”
Washington D.C. NFL franchise played in the nation’s capital in Griffith Stadium from 1937 through 1960, and at R.F.K. Stadium (first District of Columbia Stadium) from 1961 through 1996.
“It’s an obstacle for us locally but it’s also an obstacle for the federal government who leases the land to us,” Bowser concluded.
In the America of 2020, when racial invective has increased for multiple reasons, and the obvious desire for change is coming from all quarters — including the player population of the NFL — there is no good explanation for the franchise to keep the name. The attendant ties to tradition are empty in this case. Not only because the name hurts certain groups of people while it serves nobody in a positive sense, but also because the man who originally brought the team from Boston for the 1937 season was the most toxic racist in the NFL’s history.
So, ideally, the Redskins would move to a different name, and take down the monument to former owner George Preston Marshall along the way. The monument stands outside RFK stadium, and stands in stark contrast to everything the league says it’s trying to do for race relations and civil rights.
TEAR THIS DOWN NEXT (still in front of RFK Stadium) pic.twitter.com/k46U5dPRC3
— David Steele (@David_C_Steele) June 10, 2020
Marshall founded the team as the Boston Braves in 1932, changed the name to “Redskins” in 1933, and kept the name when he moved the team to Washington, D.C. before the 1937 season. By then, Marshall had done all he possibly could to make the NFL a league for white players and nobody else.
To date, there is no actual evidence of an official policy, written or otherwise, that kept black players out of the NFL from 1934 through 1946. The most you’re able to see historically are a bunch of categorical non-denials and murky excuses from coaches and executives who were asked about the ban in later years.
But if there was an epicenter of time when the ban became real, it was likely the league’s owner’s meetings at the Commodore Hotel in New York City on June 30 and July 1, 1934. It was during these meetings that Boston Redskins owner George Preston Marshall proposed that the championship games between the Eastern and Western conferences be played at alternating locations each year. Also, electric clocks were added to the scoreboards for each stadium, game officials were given armbands designating their specific roles, and a championship trophy named after Ed Thorp would be awarded every season. Thorp was a college football official who had a sporting goods store in New York City, and he was friends with many of the NFL’s pace-setters.
There was also an agreement to create a rule book for the league, to be distributed “on or before” August 1, 1934.
On July 7, less than one week after the meetings adjourned, Commissioner Joe Carr sent out an NFL Bulletin detailing, among other things, player movement. One of the names was Joe Lillard’s, as he had been cut by the Chicago Cardinals.
Lillard thus became the last black player to suit up for an NFL team until 1946.
Another resolution of the league meetings was the purchase of 100 copies of Dr. Harry March’s book, Pro Football—It’s (sic) Ups and Downs: A Light-Hearted History of the Post-Graduate League. Loosely researched and more of a PR package than anything else, March’s book found its way into the ticket offices of the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, and Carr distributed the 100 league-purchased copies as he saw fit.
In that book, Marsh wrote two pagers on black players and the specter of their future in the league, claiming that “there is no rule against it… there is no agreement in the football League… such a rule would likely lead to litigation, the colored man claiming that his constitutional rights of equality were being violated.”
Marshall wasn’t just the man behind the black player ban — he was also the last team owner to integrate once the walls had come down, and it took the threat of the loss of stadium rights, and the intervention of Stewart L. Udall, John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior, to change that.
On March 24, 1961, Marshall received a hand-delivered letter from Udall, bearing the insignia of the Department of the Interior, that raised the stakes considerably and made it clear that the Federal Government was not about to endorse his segregationist policies.
Dear Mr. Marshall:
To harmonize our contract policies with the general antidiscrimination policy enunciated by the President a few days ago, we have recently promulgated an amendment to the regulations with govern the use of areas under the jurisdiction of National Capital Parks. This amended regulation prohibits discrimination in employment practices with respect to any activity provided for by a contract, lease or permit with an operator or sub-lessee of any public facility in a park area. I am enclosing a copy of the new regulation for your information.
Your company, Pro Football, Inc., through a lease executed on December 24, 1959, has contracted with the District of Columbia Armory Board to use the new District of Columbia Stadium in Anacostia Park for a series of games. Under its terms, the new regulation above is incorporated into this lease.
I am cognizant of the fact that there have been persistent allegations that your company practices discrimination in the hiring of its players. We are not, at this time, passing judgment on this issue—indeed we assume that your company will fully adhere to its contractual obligations. However, candor compels me to advise you of he implications of this new regulation—and out view of its import.
Signed
Stewart L. Udall
Secretary of the Interior
“I think the matter is thoroughly covered in our lease and it was discussed at length,” Marshall responded via letter.
All attractions at the new stadium will be those presented by the National Football League. The National Football League has no restrictions I know of, neither do the Redskins.
Naturally, I have turned your letter over to our lawyers, King & Nordlinger.
As to our position at the present moment, we violate no laws of the United States and this lease was made on that basis.
Would be glad to discuss this matter with you at any time.
Marshall then set up a press conference at his offices on Ninth Street. Befitting his sense of theater, he began the presser by directing a call to Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of JFK, because “I want to tell my old pal what a creep I think his son is.”
“I obey all laws,” Marshall pled to the media. “If they change them, I’ll abide by them. I didn’t know the government had a right to tell the showman how to cast the play… No, we don’t have any Negroes on the team, but we have had a Samoan, Hawaiian, [an] Indian, and a Cuban in the past.”
Marshall then argued that, since other teams had signed black players, “Does it matter which team has the Negroes?”
Marshall said that his team had been drafting the majority of its players from the South, and that Southern colleges didn’t have Negro players, which of course was relatively true at the time if you ignored the growth of talent at black Southern colleges, which of course, Marshall did—and directed his executives and coaches to do the same.
He said that the Redskins had made an effort to appeal to Southern businesses, which in 1961 was about as blatant an admission of racist hiring policies as one could make without coming right out and saying, “We refuse to hire black people to play for our team.”
To New York Times reporter David Halberstam, Marshall made it a more global issue—in a very glib fashion.
“Are they going to demand that the National Symphony Orchestra have Negroes? The Army and Navy teams don’t have colored players; will they be barred from playing at the stadium?”
Eventually, like all bullies, Marshall realized that his enemy would not relent — if he wanted to play in a city-owned stadium, he would have to integrate his team. Even then, things got weird. Washington selected Syracuse running back Ernie Davis as the first pick in 1962 draft and traded his rights to the Browns for Cleveland first-round pick Leroy Jackson and running back/receiver Bobby Mitchell.
Mitchell thrived in his new environment. After catching 142 passes for 1,462 yards and 16 touchdowns through his four years in Cleveland, he amassed 72 catches for 1,384 yards, both league highs, in 1962 alone. He followed that up with 1,436 receiving yards in 1963, another league high, and he led the NFL with 10 touchdown receptions in 1964. His yards per touch averages in 1963 and 1964—20.4 and 21.3, respectively—are excellent indications of the threat he presented as a receiver, rusher and returner.
“The happiest day of my pro career came when [Redskins head coach Bill] McPeak told me I was going to play flanker back,” Mitchell said at an October 1962 meeting of the Pro Quarterback’s Club in New York City. “I was getting tired of fellows like Sam Huff hitting me in the mouth. I wanted to get outside where I could scare someone.”
Despite (or perhaps due to) the integration of his team, Marshall wasn’t above making a noxious point at the worst possible time. At one team meeting during the Redskins’ annual preseason jaunt through the South, the song “Dixie” began to play in the room. The entire team stood for the de facto anthem of the Confederacy, and Marshall tapped Mitchell on the shoulder.
“Bobby Mitchell, sing!”
Mitchell wasn’t just expected to stand and sing there and then—he was expected to do so as the song was played before the exhibition games by Marshall’s own band. He mouthed the words, seething inside.
There is no reason to honor a man who did everything he could to keep black players out of professional football for over a decade, and did everything he could to keep black players off his own team for even longer. If the NFL is going to be serious about its avowed commitments to social justice, any positive reference to George Preston Marshall must be removed — and the team’s name must be changed.
Anything else, at this point, is a hypocrisy.