Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Then Henry McDonald, John Shelburne and Ink Williams should also merit mention ...

Fair enough.

Given all the success Slater had as a linemen (six All-Pro selections) in an obvious terrible era for African Americans, and how he thrived off the field after his playing days, I should think he deserved to be mentioned. He was a better pro player than Robeson.

I'm just thinking that being an African American in the early days of pro ball pretty much automatically made you a marked man. Success or level of fame notwithstanding, every black player endured shitty treatment whether from opposing players (and teammates), team owners, hotel managers, and so on. That any were able to achieve the level of success that Slater and Pollard did is truly extraordinary, but they all carried the extra burden of representing--and being punished for--their race.

Can someone give me some background on this show/documentary? I googled it and it says its from "Epix"?

Did they mention the connection between Branch Rickey playing football with Charles Follis? I'm guessing they mentioned the Kenny Washington/Jackie Robinson college teammate connection.

Something that intrigues me is the PCFL - I think its the closest thing Football had to Baseball's "Negro Leagues" - I suspect there are football players who played in the PCFL because they were excluded from the NFL based on their race who are really forgotten (unknown?) (as opposed to black players who played from the beginning to 33 whose names show up in accounts of football history) - players like Washington who may have been stars in the NFL, but we'll never know. And that was 1940 when the PCFL league started. From 34-39, not sure there was anyplace for a black player to play football or more importantly who the excluded players even were......

The thing I'm getting at is more on the football side than the racial struggle side. "What if" type questions - could Josh Gibson have led the league in home runs? Could Kenny Washington have led the league in rushing? Did we miss a HOFer who would have been in their prime, but had no league to play in, etc.

Versatile John wrote:Fair enough.

Given all the success Slater had as a linemen (six All-Pro selections) in an obvious terrible era for African Americans, and how he thrived off the field after his playing days, I should think he deserved to be mentioned. He was a better pro player than Robeson.

You're 100 percent dead on with this, Versatile John, and I'm glad you were here to say it. This documentary gets me fired up, for sure...here was my overall review of it:

http://nealrozendaal.com/2014/10/09/for ... ll-review/

Fritz Pollard always gets held up as the "gold standard" in these discussions, which is largely historical revisionism from the last 20 years. And Robeson seems to get mentioned frequently too - due to the fame he achieved in other arenas later in life - despite the fact that he had a fleeting NFL career. But Slater, who dominated for a decade, never seems to get anything. That's absurd, whether it's the focus of the documentary or not.

The focus of the documentary, of course, is that the "Forgotten Four" aren't lauded historically the way that Jackie Robinson has been. That naturally ignores the fact that the "barrier" the Forgotten Four shattered wasn't as enduring and seemingly indestructable as baseball's, which had stood for over half a century (the relevant memory of most people watching the sport), precisely because of the achievements of men like Slater and Pollard.

Basically, if baseball had had a Willie Mays-caliber player running around MLB 15 years before Jackie entered the league, Robinson's accomplishment would doubtlessly be viewed differently, too. It's a false comparison, and what the "Forgotten Four" did should stand on its own without being put on the level of what Jackie did. To do otherwise is to marginalize the contributions of Slater and others because they were "pre-modern" players (with "modern" being conveniently defined as starting when the Forgotten Four showed up).

I guess that's my point...credit the Forgotten Four for breaking the barrier, no doubt, but stop suggesting Kenny Washington was Jackie Robinson. That faulty comparison has caused a lot of well-meaning fans to erroneously posit that Washington was the NFL's first black player, and that's maddening.

Neal, I loved reading all you've written on this on your site. Great work.

To play devil's advocate - this reminds me a little of the "who discovered America" argument. The black players in the early days of the NFL weren't in the large markets until we started seeing small market teams fold and the Cardinals picked up Slater (I got this from your site - great work!). So black participation was minimal and it didn't increase. My weak analogy is that if the Vikings discovered America, it didn't really lead to anything. The forgotten four coming in led to integration (analogous to colonization in my America analogy). I'm not saying that means one of the four deserves more credit than "the original 12", but I get why 46 is historically significant. Maybe because I'm not a baseball fan, but I don't have much trouble including any of these guys (16?+?) who played a contact sport in with Jackie Robinson. Or even the later guys like Joe Perry.

TanksAndSpartans wrote:Neal, I loved reading all you've written on this on your site. Great work.
The black players in the early days of the NFL weren't in the large markets until we started seeing small market teams fold and the Cardinals picked up Slater (I got this from your site - great work!)

Exactly, it wasn't on the national stage. The '46 integration symbolized a cultural momentum.
I'd be curious to know what Rozehawk thought of the recent doc "Before The League"?

TanksAndSpartans wrote:Neal, I loved reading all you've written on this on your site. Great work.

To play devil's advocate - this reminds me a little of the "who discovered America" argument. The black players in the early days of the NFL weren't in the large markets until we started seeing small market teams fold and the Cardinals picked up Slater (I got this from your site - great work!). So black participation was minimal and it didn't increase. My weak analogy is that if the Vikings discovered America, it didn't really lead to anything. The forgotten four coming in led to integration (analogous to colonization in my America analogy). I'm not saying that means one of the four deserves more credit than "the original 12", but I get why 46 is historically significant. Maybe because I'm not a baseball fan, but I don't have much trouble including any of these guys (16?+?) who played a contact sport in with Jackie Robinson. Or even the later guys like Perry and Motley.

Truly appreciate your point of view. There's something to be said for the Vikings analogy...Duke Slater was a very successful figure in the NFL from 1922-1931, but he has honestly been forgotten. And I think a lot of that boils down to the fact that unlike Jackie Robinson or Jesse Owens or even the "Forgotten Four", the world didn't change with Duke Slater. He didn't "break the door down" in the NFL...he admirably held the door open for a time, but then it still slammed shut, anyway. There's no Hollywood happy ending to Duke Slater's NFL career, just the inevitable advance of segregation.

But in the final analysis, I feel that says nothing about Slater and everything about the time in which he played...the world just wasn't ready to change yet. I truly believe Slater did all he could, but it wasn't the right time, and the forces working against him at that moment in American history were just too strong for one athlete to overcome.

Along the same lines, and again, I mean no disrespect...but as talented as he was, I don't necessarily buy the narrative that Kenny Washington and the rest of the Forgotten Four "led to integration." Again, it's not like in baseball where Robinson came in in 1947, immediately led the league in stolen bases, won the ROY award, and was the league MVP within three years. Washington had some nice moments, but he didn't have a Jim Brown-career where team owners around the sport would have said, "Man, we need a player like him!" That would be analogous to Robinson.

That's not Washington's fault...he was victimized by the fact that he was near the tail end of his career with injuries by 1946. But he also benefitted by having enough gas in the tank in 1946 to be a part of the "Forgotten Four" in the first place, unlike, say, Ozzie Simmons and Willis Ward.

I want to be very clear, though...the dozen or so pre-war African-American players, the "Forgotten Four", several dozen other black trailblazers in the 1950s and '60s (many of them covered well in Piascik's Gridiron Gauntlet) - they all deserve an incredible amount of admiration and respect for what they endured, in the same way we accord that respect to trailblazers in other sports.

I just disagree with the notion of singling out the "Forgotten Four" as the first "modern" black players. Maybe the NFL wasn't a "national" league in 1926, but I can't believe that racial conditions were somehow better in 1926 when the pre-war guys were suiting up than they were twenty years later. In my mind, calling them the first modern black players creates a slippery slope where many might believe that black players before them somehow don't count, because they were "pre-modern"...when, in fact, the pre-war black players dealt with pretty much all the same stuff the early "modern" guys had to face.

What irks me about the Kenny Washington situation is that a lot of folks are making emotional appeals to put him in the Hall of Fame and to overlook the fact that he had a shortened pro career because he faced racial discrimination. A lot of guys from that era did, and it shortened their careers - or in the case of Simmons, took it away entirely. Duke Slater faced the same kind of racial prejudice, somehow overcame it to have a ten-year career anyway - one that many on this board would consider Hall-of-Fame worthy - and he still can't get a fraction of the publicity Washington has received.

Basically, I feel like Kenny Washington has gotten a ton of publicity but is an extreme longshot to get into the Hall of Fame because - fair or not - he didn't play long enough or well enough in the NFL. Meanwhile, Slater played long enough and well enough to get into the Hall of Fame, but his candidacy doesn't have the groundswell of support that Washington's has because he hasn't been granted the same publicity. And I think that's sad.

JohnR wrote:

TanksAndSpartans wrote:Neal, I loved reading all you've written on this on your site. Great work.
The black players in the early days of the NFL weren't in the large markets until we started seeing small market teams fold and the Cardinals picked up Slater (I got this from your site - great work!)

Exactly, it wasn't on the national stage. The '46 integration symbolized a cultural momentum.
I'd be curious to know what Rozehawk thought of the recent doc "Before The League"?

To be honest, I haven't seen it...I don't have Time Warner Cable, and I haven't seen it available elsewhere. Has it played on any systems outside of TWC? Can I watch it online anywhere?

Neal - awesome post - everything you said makes sense to me. For what it’s worth, I think you’ll see Slater and not Washington among the top 10 “HOF snubs” in a different thread. Kenny Washington got excluded from playing during his prime (unless you count the PCFL) which is very sad, but I don’t think equates to the HOF esp. with Motley and Willis unequivocally in.

My major thing was I personally don’t elevate Jackie Robinson above any of the football players. He fits well with that thing you mentioned about it being human nature to want ONE hero/villain, baseball gave us that and football didn’t. It wouldn’t have changed anything to me if someone had decided Robinson needed a roommate, but they didn’t. And there wasn't an AAFC and NFL in baseball - it was one league and one player.

The average football fan I talk to wouldn’t know who Marion Motley was, so it doesn’t bother me that much to give people a taste of history at least - not ideal I know when there are exclusions/inacuuracies, but these documentaries are at least an appetizer to learn more.

I learned more today - I love this chart on your site - I’m a visual person and this helps me see something I never saw:

1920 – 2 (Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall)
1921 – 4
1922 – 5
1923 – 5
1924 – 3
1925 – 5
1926 – 5

1927 – 1 (Duke Slater)
1928 – 2
1929 – 1 (Duke Slater)
1930 – 2
1931 – 2
1932 – 1 (Joe Lillard)
1933 – 2 (Joe Lillard and Ray Kemp)

Combined with your point about small and large markets - it was really educational - the NFL wasn't as open minded as I thought from 20-33, but given what society was, it shouldn't be surprising.

John