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Fight for Old DC: George Preston Marshall, the Integration of the Washington Redskins, and the Rise of a New NFL
In 1932 laundry-store tycoon George Preston Marshall became part owner of the Boston Braves franchise in the National Football League. To separate his franchise from the baseball team, he renamed it the Redskins in 1933 and then in 1937 moved his team to Washington DC, where the team won two NFL championships over the next decade. But it was off the field that Marshall made his lasting impact. An innovator, he achieved many “firsts” in professional football. His team was the first to telecast all its games, have its own fight song and a halftime show, and assemble its own marching band and cheerleading squad. He viewed football as an entertainment business and accordingly made changes to increase scoring and improve the fan experience.
But along with innovation, there was controversy. Marshall was a proud son of the South, and as the fifties came to a close, his team remained the only franchise in the three major league sports to not have a single black player. Marshall came under pressure from Congress and the NFL and its president, Pete Rozelle, as league expansion and new television contract possibilities forced the issue on the reluctant owner. Outside forces finally pushed Marshall to trade for Bobby Mitchell, the team’s first black player, in 1962. With the story of Marshall’s holdout as the backdrop, Fight for Old DC chronicles these pivotal years when the NFL began its ascent to the top of the nation’s sporting interest.
But along with innovation, there was controversy. Marshall was a proud son of the South, and as the fifties came to a close, his team remained the only franchise in the three major league sports to not have a single black player. Marshall came under pressure from Congress and the NFL and its president, Pete Rozelle, as league expansion and new television contract possibilities forced the issue on the reluctant owner. Outside forces finally pushed Marshall to trade for Bobby Mitchell, the team’s first black player, in 1962. With the story of Marshall’s holdout as the backdrop, Fight for Old DC chronicles these pivotal years when the NFL began its ascent to the top of the nation’s sporting interest.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2016
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About the author
Andrew O'Toole
12 books6 followersAndrew OToole is the author of six books including Sweet William: the Life of Billy Conn, and Smiling Irish Eyes: Art Rooney and the Pittsburgh Steelers. A native of Pittsburgh, OToole today resides in Lebanon, Ohio with his wife, Mickie."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 14, 2023
The fight for civil rights in the United States was waged on many fronts, including the gridirons of professional football. The National Football League desegregated in 1946 – one year before Major League Baseball – when Kenny Washington and Woody Strode took the field for the Los Angeles Rams. Within a decade, every team in the N.F.L. was integrated – but one. The Washington Redskins remained all white, and the team’s owner, George Preston Marshall, was adamantly determined that his team would never sign a black player. And Andrew O’Toole provides a clear and helpful recounting of this seminal episode from D.C., pro sports, and civil rights history in his 2016 book Fight for Old D.C.
O’Toole has written a number of sports-related books, with a number of them focusing on leading N.F.L. figures like Paul Brown and Art Rooney. It makes sense, therefore, that he would take an interest in the story of George Preston Marshall, the Integration of the Washington Redskins, and the Rise of a New NFL (the book’s subtitle). Throughout the book, O’Toole focuses well on the troubling contradictions inherent in Marshall’s career.
The same man who could be considered forward-thinking in terms of how to market pro football to a wider audience – halftime entertainment, a college-style fight song, a variety of measures to make the game experience more congenial for women fans– was also a die-hard segregationist, whose determination to keep the Redskins all-white was absolute. In a time when Washington, D.C., was the southernmost team in the N.F.L., Marshall aggressively marketed the team to Southern whites – calling the Redskins “the Team of the South,” and seeking out players from Southern universities. This appalling marketing strategy had appalling results on the football field as well, as the Redskins, for more than a decade, were consistently the worst team in the N.F.L.
The early chapters of Fight for Old D.C. chronicle Marshall’s birth in West Virginia, his rise to wealth through a chain of laundromats, his 1933 acquisition of an N.F.L. franchise in Boston, and his move of the old Boston Braves to Washington, D.C., in 1937. The team name reflected Marshall’s interest in Native American curios: “Inside the Redskins’ Ninth Street headquarters the ornamentation of Marshall’s personal office consisted of Native American images and artwork…mingled with a few photos that documented the Redskins’ glory days” (p. 53).
Those glory days were long over by the time a free-lance writer for Sport magazine interviewed Marshall in 1957; the Redskins that year were on their way to a characteristically bad 5-6-1 season. But the team owner knew that his interviewer would be wanting to discuss not the Redskins’ poor on-field performance but rather the team’s segregated status – and therefore Marshall “chose his words very carefully” when asked whether the Redskins, already facing organized demonstrations by civil-rights protesters, would ever integrate. Marshall told the interviewer, in an article aptly titled “Big Noise in Washington,” that “There has been so much pressure placed on us that it would appear as if we were trying to exploit the race angle” (pp. 54-55).
It was a convoluted argument, and one that Marshall would offer a number of times down the years – that he couldn’t end his own policy of keeping the Washington Redskins’ roster all white because doing so would somehow “exploit” the race issue. No one reading the article could have failed to understand that Marshall would do everything he could to keep the Redskins segregated.
But Marshall had plenty of antagonists who were as determined to see the Redskins integrated as he was to keep the team segregated. One such antagonist who particularly got Marshall’s goat was sportswriter Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. Povich regularly used his Post column to denounce Marshall’s segregationist ways – perhaps most famously in 1960, after the Cleveland Browns clobbered the host Redskins, 31-10. Alluding playfully, and acidly, to elements from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education from six years earlier, Povich wrote that the Browns’ star fullback Jim Brown “integrated the Redskins goal-line with more than deliberate speed…perhaps exceeding the famous Supreme Court decree” (p. 103). Stung by Povich’s critiques, Marshall tried suing him; but Marshall enjoyed no more success in court against Povich than Marshall’s Redskins experienced against integrated teams in N.F.L. stadiums.
The beginning of the end of Marshall’s maintenance of racial segregation on his football team came with the advent of John F. Kennedy’s presidential administration in 1961. Stewart Udall, President Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior, became the point man for the Kennedy Administration’s attempts to desegregate the team, and Udall had a powerful card to play against Marshall: Washington’s brand-new D.C. Stadium, a facility in Southeast Washington built to accommodate both major league baseball’s Washington Senators and the N.F.L. Redskins. Marshall was tired of his Redskins playing in the cramped confines of Washington’s old Griffith Stadium, and desperately wanted to see the Redskins playing at D.C. Stadium; but because of Washington’s status as the nation’s capital, the federal government could mandate that the Redskins would not be able to play at D.C. Stadium unless and until the team integrated.
The integration battle between Marshall and Secretary Udall told on both men. When reporters at a November 1961 press conference wanted only to ask about Marshall and the Redskins, “It was a subject that had begun to wear on Stewart Udall, and this annoyance was evident as the press conference began” (p. 151). Ultimately, Udall and the Kennedy Administration, and the cause of civil-rights reform, prevailed: in the December 1961 NFL draft, the Washington Redskins selected two African American players, Ernie Davis and Ron Hatcher. As O’Toole puts it, “The federal government had boxed [Marshall] into a corner, and despite all his defiant rhetoric, George Marshall succumbed” (p. 157).
The first African American to play for the Washington Redskins was Bobby Mitchell, number 49 – a halfback and flanker from the University of Illinois. Mitchell was a tough and smart player – he would play in four Pro Bowls, and would be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame – and in his first year playing for Washington, he immediately made a major difference for the traditionally woeful Redskins, as the 1962 team posted a record of 5-7-2. That record may not sound like much, but it was the Redskins’ best record in five years! As O’Toole aptly puts it, “Washington fans had been treated to a talent the likes of which they had never had on their side before” (p. 201).
Today, the Washington Commanders, with a new name and a new logo, are as diverse as the city and metropolitan area they represent, and the franchise has enjoyed a reasonable measure of success in the post-Marshall era, winning three Super Bowls. And Fight for Old D.C. provides a salutary reminder of how difficult the campaign for civil equality and equity in America has always been – even in venues that may be far from the best-known milestone sites from the fight for Civil Rights.
O’Toole has written a number of sports-related books, with a number of them focusing on leading N.F.L. figures like Paul Brown and Art Rooney. It makes sense, therefore, that he would take an interest in the story of George Preston Marshall, the Integration of the Washington Redskins, and the Rise of a New NFL (the book’s subtitle). Throughout the book, O’Toole focuses well on the troubling contradictions inherent in Marshall’s career.
The same man who could be considered forward-thinking in terms of how to market pro football to a wider audience – halftime entertainment, a college-style fight song, a variety of measures to make the game experience more congenial for women fans– was also a die-hard segregationist, whose determination to keep the Redskins all-white was absolute. In a time when Washington, D.C., was the southernmost team in the N.F.L., Marshall aggressively marketed the team to Southern whites – calling the Redskins “the Team of the South,” and seeking out players from Southern universities. This appalling marketing strategy had appalling results on the football field as well, as the Redskins, for more than a decade, were consistently the worst team in the N.F.L.
The early chapters of Fight for Old D.C. chronicle Marshall’s birth in West Virginia, his rise to wealth through a chain of laundromats, his 1933 acquisition of an N.F.L. franchise in Boston, and his move of the old Boston Braves to Washington, D.C., in 1937. The team name reflected Marshall’s interest in Native American curios: “Inside the Redskins’ Ninth Street headquarters the ornamentation of Marshall’s personal office consisted of Native American images and artwork…mingled with a few photos that documented the Redskins’ glory days” (p. 53).
Those glory days were long over by the time a free-lance writer for Sport magazine interviewed Marshall in 1957; the Redskins that year were on their way to a characteristically bad 5-6-1 season. But the team owner knew that his interviewer would be wanting to discuss not the Redskins’ poor on-field performance but rather the team’s segregated status – and therefore Marshall “chose his words very carefully” when asked whether the Redskins, already facing organized demonstrations by civil-rights protesters, would ever integrate. Marshall told the interviewer, in an article aptly titled “Big Noise in Washington,” that “There has been so much pressure placed on us that it would appear as if we were trying to exploit the race angle” (pp. 54-55).
It was a convoluted argument, and one that Marshall would offer a number of times down the years – that he couldn’t end his own policy of keeping the Washington Redskins’ roster all white because doing so would somehow “exploit” the race issue. No one reading the article could have failed to understand that Marshall would do everything he could to keep the Redskins segregated.
But Marshall had plenty of antagonists who were as determined to see the Redskins integrated as he was to keep the team segregated. One such antagonist who particularly got Marshall’s goat was sportswriter Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. Povich regularly used his Post column to denounce Marshall’s segregationist ways – perhaps most famously in 1960, after the Cleveland Browns clobbered the host Redskins, 31-10. Alluding playfully, and acidly, to elements from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education from six years earlier, Povich wrote that the Browns’ star fullback Jim Brown “integrated the Redskins goal-line with more than deliberate speed…perhaps exceeding the famous Supreme Court decree” (p. 103). Stung by Povich’s critiques, Marshall tried suing him; but Marshall enjoyed no more success in court against Povich than Marshall’s Redskins experienced against integrated teams in N.F.L. stadiums.
The beginning of the end of Marshall’s maintenance of racial segregation on his football team came with the advent of John F. Kennedy’s presidential administration in 1961. Stewart Udall, President Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior, became the point man for the Kennedy Administration’s attempts to desegregate the team, and Udall had a powerful card to play against Marshall: Washington’s brand-new D.C. Stadium, a facility in Southeast Washington built to accommodate both major league baseball’s Washington Senators and the N.F.L. Redskins. Marshall was tired of his Redskins playing in the cramped confines of Washington’s old Griffith Stadium, and desperately wanted to see the Redskins playing at D.C. Stadium; but because of Washington’s status as the nation’s capital, the federal government could mandate that the Redskins would not be able to play at D.C. Stadium unless and until the team integrated.
The integration battle between Marshall and Secretary Udall told on both men. When reporters at a November 1961 press conference wanted only to ask about Marshall and the Redskins, “It was a subject that had begun to wear on Stewart Udall, and this annoyance was evident as the press conference began” (p. 151). Ultimately, Udall and the Kennedy Administration, and the cause of civil-rights reform, prevailed: in the December 1961 NFL draft, the Washington Redskins selected two African American players, Ernie Davis and Ron Hatcher. As O’Toole puts it, “The federal government had boxed [Marshall] into a corner, and despite all his defiant rhetoric, George Marshall succumbed” (p. 157).
The first African American to play for the Washington Redskins was Bobby Mitchell, number 49 – a halfback and flanker from the University of Illinois. Mitchell was a tough and smart player – he would play in four Pro Bowls, and would be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame – and in his first year playing for Washington, he immediately made a major difference for the traditionally woeful Redskins, as the 1962 team posted a record of 5-7-2. That record may not sound like much, but it was the Redskins’ best record in five years! As O’Toole aptly puts it, “Washington fans had been treated to a talent the likes of which they had never had on their side before” (p. 201).
Today, the Washington Commanders, with a new name and a new logo, are as diverse as the city and metropolitan area they represent, and the franchise has enjoyed a reasonable measure of success in the post-Marshall era, winning three Super Bowls. And Fight for Old D.C. provides a salutary reminder of how difficult the campaign for civil equality and equity in America has always been – even in venues that may be far from the best-known milestone sites from the fight for Civil Rights.
October 12, 2016
The Washington Redskins have had their share of recent controversy on social and racial issues but that is nothing new for the franchise. They were the last team in the National Football League to have an African-American player, mainly due to the hiring practices of their long-time owner George Preston Marshall. Andrew O’Toole penned this excellent book that details Marshall and his beliefs and business actions as well as the struggles of the Redskins team during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.
While the book is not marketed as a biography, that is the best description as the reader will get an extensive look at the man who brought the Boston Braves to the nation’s capital. Also, the author is to be given credit for not focusing solely on the discriminatory practices of Marshall. Marshall was an innovator in professional football with rule changes and was able to get public funding for a brand new state-of-the-art stadium.
However, this did not come without much inquiry into why the Redskins would not let black players suit up in the burgundy and gold. Marshall’s reasons that were made public did sound like poor excuses and rather than pile on the criticism, O’Toole writes about this in a matter-of-fact style that allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusions. Marshall is not made out to be an evil or despicable man, but is certainly not excused for his behavior by the author.
This book also took a different approach to integration in a professional sport in that instead of focusing on the first black player to sign with the team, Bobby Mitchell, it instead focuses on the owner who won’t sign black players. Many other books on sports integration will concentrate on the struggles of the black player or players who made the groundbreaking appearances. O’Toole does write some about Mitchell and other black teammates who were the first black players for the Redskins in 1962, but their adventure is secondary to those of Marshall and his fight with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who threatened to pull back on support for the new stadium unless the Redskins could show they did not have discriminatory hiring practices.
This book was one that I enjoyed reading and is one that anyone interested in the integration of professional football will want to add to his or her library. The words and pages flow quickly as the reader in placed inside the mind and thoughts of one of the most interesting and controversial owners of professional football.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
While the book is not marketed as a biography, that is the best description as the reader will get an extensive look at the man who brought the Boston Braves to the nation’s capital. Also, the author is to be given credit for not focusing solely on the discriminatory practices of Marshall. Marshall was an innovator in professional football with rule changes and was able to get public funding for a brand new state-of-the-art stadium.
However, this did not come without much inquiry into why the Redskins would not let black players suit up in the burgundy and gold. Marshall’s reasons that were made public did sound like poor excuses and rather than pile on the criticism, O’Toole writes about this in a matter-of-fact style that allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusions. Marshall is not made out to be an evil or despicable man, but is certainly not excused for his behavior by the author.
This book also took a different approach to integration in a professional sport in that instead of focusing on the first black player to sign with the team, Bobby Mitchell, it instead focuses on the owner who won’t sign black players. Many other books on sports integration will concentrate on the struggles of the black player or players who made the groundbreaking appearances. O’Toole does write some about Mitchell and other black teammates who were the first black players for the Redskins in 1962, but their adventure is secondary to those of Marshall and his fight with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who threatened to pull back on support for the new stadium unless the Redskins could show they did not have discriminatory hiring practices.
This book was one that I enjoyed reading and is one that anyone interested in the integration of professional football will want to add to his or her library. The words and pages flow quickly as the reader in placed inside the mind and thoughts of one of the most interesting and controversial owners of professional football.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
October 20, 2018
Interest
The author was fair. But in point in the character. He refeclets the time of how people saw each other .
The author was fair. But in point in the character. He refeclets the time of how people saw each other .
December 3, 2016
Really enjoyed this book because it filled in a lot of history about the NFL, which I did not know about. Also you got a story and look into George Preston, the owner of the Washington Redskins, who was the last NFL team to have an African American play on the team. To break the color barrier in baseball was 47 and in football was in by 1946 Kenny Washington. There was Blacks playing before, but in 1933 when it just so happen when Marshall took over the Redskins he also lead a rule change to discriminate, so from then until 46 no one played on a team. The author takes you back in time at the look of the league and being small how just a few strong owners could sway the rest to vote one or another. Something else that was interesting was that commissioner Bert Bell in the fifties wanted to do away with the extra point back then, saying it made the game boring. This now is not something new. I also found out that some of this new commissioners ideas are really the same as Bell’s from the fifties, and I found that to be fascinating. The story itself was a good read and I enjoyed it. Watching Bobby Mitchell play for the Redskins when I was a kid I did not know all of the history behind him being the first African American player for the Redskins in 61. I simply enjoyed the game and the way he ran the ball. Now knowing the history behind it, it makes me think that maybe if he would have changed his ways his team would have been more successful on the field. Just my thought. Overall a book. I got this book from netgalley. I gave it 5 stars. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews