Sports
American Sports During The Pre-Civil Rights Era
Martin Luther King Jr. had a huge impact on the sports world
Remembering Dr. King Beyond the Playing Field
On January 15, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have celebrated his 97th birthday. King never worked directly in sports, but the world of athletics during his lifetime reflected the same racial injustice he fought every day. In the 1950s and 1960s, segregation shaped professional and college sports in ways that now seem unthinkable. When King emerged as a national civil rights leader in 1955, American sports still operated under informal and formal systems of exclusion.
Major League Baseball had not fully integrated. Several teams still employed no Black players. The National Football League enforced an unofficial quota system. Teams typically limited themselves to four Black players. Coaches and executives barred Black athletes from positions like quarterback, center, and middle linebacker. They claimed those roles required intelligence and leadership, qualities they falsely denied to Black players. Washington owner George Preston Marshall refused to sign Black players until 1962, long after other teams integrated.
College Sports and Open Resistance
College football mirrored those injustices. Many Southern universities refused to admit Black players at all. That reality existed when King helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. Even when Northern schools traveled south, discrimination followed. In 1947, the Cotton Bowl invited Penn State to play SMU in Dallas. Organizers wanted Penn State to bench Wally Triplett, a Black player. Penn State’s response became legendary. The players stood together and said, “We are Penn State.” Triplett played.
That moment mattered. It showed that athletes could force change by standing united. Similar pressure helped end the NFL’s informal color barrier in 1946. Los Angeles Coliseum officials told Rams owner Dan Reeves he could not lease the stadium unless he signed Black players. The Rams complied, and professional football began to change.
Pro Sports and Daily Humiliation
Progress did not mean equality. The Harlem Globetrotters dominated basketball in the 1950s and drew bigger crowds than the young NBA. Still, while they entertained fans across the South, players often could not stay in hotels or eat in restaurants where they performed. Talent did not protect them from Jim Crow.
The American Football League faced that reality in 1965. Players boycotted the league’s planned All-Star Game in New Orleans after encountering segregation throughout the city. The protest forced the league to move the game to Houston. That action sent a clear message. Players would no longer accept discrimination as part of the job.
King, Robinson, and Lasting Impact
Dr. King did maintain a close relationship with Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Robinson understood the connection between sports and social change. King understood it too. He once said, “Jackie Robinson made my success possible. Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.” Robinson showed America that barriers could fall. King pushed the nation to tear the rest of them down.
King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. His legacy lives far beyond politics or protest. It lives in locker rooms, on fields, and on courts where opportunity no longer depends on race. Sports did not lead the civil rights movement, but they reflected it. They changed because men like Dr. King forced America to confront itself.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
MLK would have been 97 years old
It was retrieved the next day.
There have been 59 Vince Lombardi trophies handed out, although it was not until 1970 that the “World Championship Game Trophy” was renamed the Lombardi Trophy following the death of the Green Bay Packers and Washington coach Vince Lombardi. The Lombardi Trophy will never be confused with hockey’s Stanley Cup when it comes to tall tales and legendary stories. But there is one tale that rivals that of some of the Stanley Cup stories.
The “World Championship Game Trophy” that was given to the New York Jets following the team’s Super Bowl III victory against the Baltimore Colts on January 12th, 1969 comes straight out of the Stanley Cup strange-but-true stories.
The Jets organization got the trophy in a postgame ceremony, but in all the excitement of winning, someone forgot to take the trophy back to New York. It sat in one of the locker rooms in the bowels of the Orange Bowl in Miami.
It was a story that could have been the equal of some of Stanley’s best tales, but the NFL doesn’t push the past history of the trophy.
“I am sure it was John Free’s (responsibility),” laughed one-time Jets trainer Jeff Snedeker years later in discussing who was supposed to be in charge of making sure the trophy accompanied the team on the trip back to New York. Free’s main job was making sure Jets quarterback Joe Namath got out of stadiums safely. No one was told to take the trophy and everyone seemed to follow orders. “He never did anything right.”
Neither Snedeker nor Free even knew the trophy was gone, but someone discovered the trophy was missing when the team got home.
“I remember the guy that either went to get it or brought it with him, his name was Tiger Ferraro,” said Snedeker. “I remember it was Tiger that brought it. I don’t remember if they sent him back or he was still there or they went back to the Orange Bowl.
“They did forget the trophy.”
Ferraro was sent back to Miami and retrieved the trophy, which was sitting all alone in the Orange Bowl. No one even bothered to move it after cleaning the locker room. Not even Stanley was left behind by a team in a dressing room and stayed overnight in a cold, damp locker room.
“Nobody expected us to win, so I guess they were not prepared to get the trophy,” said Snedeker, who as trainer might have been responsible for making sure everything was taken out of the room in Miami. “In the euphoria that followed the trophy, it was probably the least of anybody’s concern. Just that we got it, we didn’t have it physically was probably immaterial.”
The trophy eventually caught up with the Jets and was present during a New York City Hall celebration on January 11th, 1969.
An excerpt from the ebook: America’s Passion: How a Coal Miner’s Game Became the NFL in the 20th Century
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
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