Last Saturday while attending a funeral repast I engaged in conversation with a White male whose name I can’t recall when the topic turned to football. I stated that I was no longer a true football fan, because I had lost interest. He was astounded that I was not a Steelers fan, and I had to clarify that football no longer held the kind of excitement it once did. I explained to him and others that the first professional game I attended was in 1948 between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angles Rams and the Rams had a colored running back Kenny Washington. It was an awesome feeling to see a colored football player and he was a star.
I then went on to explain that when the Cleveland Browns came into the NFL they had at least six or seven colored players and all of them were outstanding. I continued by telling him that a group of us went to Cleveland every other weekend to see the Browns because of the colored players and colored fans from Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities would attend in record numbers for the same reason. He had some difficulty understanding the importance and the significance of us witnessing colored players performing at that level.
Those of us who went to Cleveland in those years, who are still alive, will never forget us witnessing colored punter Horace Gilliam, super full back Marion Motley, awesome guard Bill Willis and the prototype of defensive ends Len Ford. For the first time in our lives those of us who played football could dream about duplicating these colored super stars in the NFL. Then in later years there were some unbelievable changes made in the ranks of professional baseball as great colored super stars appeared. There was Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, etc. Once again young colored kids across America now could dream of going to the major leagues to duplicate what the great ones had done.
Fortunately all Black heroes are not athletes. There was Attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, A. Phillip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, the great Nelson Mandela, Bernard Jones (Pittsburgh), Muhammad Ali, Attorney Wendell Freeland (Pittsburgh), Mal Goode (Pittsburgh), Congressman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell and last but not least in many, many situations my DADDY.
I could write pages of names of deserving individuals, not just men but women also.
This column is just an attempt to inform some, remind others, that we must begin to stand and be counted by duplicating the courage, strength and conviction of all those mentioned above.
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(Louis “Hop” Kendrick is a weekly contributor to the Forum Page.)
