Black folks they didn’t teach us about in school, day 18
One of my most vivid memories of middle school was tackling Bette Bao Lord’s wonderful In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson with my 5th grade class. We capped off the book with a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, and it was one of the best experiences of my young life.
15 years later, I’m in the midst of teaching that same book to my students, who aren’t 5th-graders: they range from 27 to 58 years old, and come from all over the world. Everyone in America knows about Jackie Robinson, and rightly so: his talent and courage are nigh-unparalleled in sports history. But teaching this unit got me thinking: who are our other Jackie Robinsons, the ones we didn’t learn about in school?
It’s perhaps fitting that hockey’s version of Jackie Robinson is Canadian, rather than American. Willie O’Ree, born in New Brunswick in 1935, broke the NHL’s color barrier in 1958. Despite being mostly blind in his right eye – a fact he successfully covered up in order to continue playing – O’Ree was called up to the pros to replace an injured player. O’Ree played for the Bruins, based in Boston, a city famed for its racial tolerahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence.
O’Ree’s NHL career was relatively short-lived, but he was a stalwart of the minor leagues for over a decade. Disappointingly, it was 13 years after O’Ree’s final NHL goal that the next black player cracked the league, but there was no doubt that he had paved the way. Many hockey experts think that without his vision problem, O’Ree might have been one of the most talented hockey players of his day.
In American professional basketball, the line gets a little murkier, as 4 African-American players entered the league at the same time. Earl Lloyd, thanks to his team’s schedule, was the first to actually take the court.
Lloyd, a standout at West Virginia State College (now University), entered the NBA in 1950 alongside Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton, and Hank DeZonie. In his 11-year career, he suited up for three teams (including my hometown Syracuse Nationals, now the league laughingstock Philadelphia 76ers), and won a national championship with the Nationals in 1955. As though that weren’t impressive enough, he also fought in the Korean War in the middle of his career.
Lloyd died in February of 2015 with an impressive legacy intact.
Things get even more convoluted when looking at professional football, as the AFL and NFL – America’s two football leagues – merged beginning in 1967. Accounting for that, we can mostly give credit for breaking the color barrier in “modern” football to 4 players: Kenny Washington, Marion Motley, Bill Willis, and Woody Strode. Washington gets extra credit for being the first to sign a professional contract.
What’s even more remarkable is that Washington, Motley, Willis, and Strode entered professional football in 1946 – a year before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. That in no way takes away from JR’s accomplishments, of course, but it does make it odd that those four names aren’t on the mind of every sports fan alongside No. 42′s.
Filed under: Black History Month.
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