In nineteen forty-seven Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Fourteen years later the pro football team in Washington DC drafted celebrated Syracuse University running back Ernest “Ernie” Davis. Davis, who was the first African American Heisman Trophy winner, refused to play for owner George Preston Marshall of Washington and was traded to the Cleveland Browns for Bobby Mitchell in 1962. I was six years old and Mr. Mitchell became my Jackie Robinson.
Hall of Famer, Robert Cornelius Mitchell was a four sport star athlete in Hot Springs, Arkansas, while attending Langston High School. He was drafted in 1958 by the Cleveland Browns and became the Robin, to Jim Brown’s Batman. The team in Washington was an enigma in the league, refusing to draft or trade for a Black player until pressure over the long term lease of the stadium they occupied was threatened by Interior Secretary, Stewart Udall.
My great-grandmother worked for the Palace Laundry chain, owned by George Preston Marshall, and would recount to me stories of his openly racist attitudes for his minority employees. My great granny, whom I called “Ma” folded sheets at the Palace Laundry, a business Mr. Marshall, inherited from his father. My great uncle, Ma’s son, hated the hometown team, and as a child I could never understand why. I had no idea of how racial and political discourse affected me or my family, my only thought was to question his loyalty for the hometown team. George Preston Marshall purportedly in a story written by, famed Washington Post reporter Shirley Povich, entitled, ‘No Boredom or Blacks Allowed,’ specified in his will that no money he donated or designated for children’s welfare programs could be given to groups that advocated, “integrationist notions.”
At the age of ten, I became a true fan of the “team of the South” as Marshall billed them, and have followed them passionately since then. The ongoing controversy over the team’s moniker has given me pause to look at my colorfully decorated burgundy and gold team gear and wonder aloud about my own morality when it comes to subtle bigotry. I began to have these feelings about 10 years ago and have not worn in public my “REDSKINS” gear since. Quite frankly, I would be embarrassed to try and explain the deriding caricature depicted on the logo, were I ever to be confronted by a Native American. For those of you with a public persona and microphone who use scoffing terms like, “you name changers” like, Kevin Sheehan of ESPN 980 sports radio in Washington DC, to a sixty-year-old Black man that sounds an awful lot like, “you people” and does not help persuade folks like me to your point of few. The nickname pride, professed by those who feel the name no longer holds a bad meaning, I feel, is more stubbornness than reason.
Proponents say, plenty of Native American groups don’t object to the word “Redskins,” my answer to that... plenty of Black millennials, rappers and racist don’t object to the word. “Nigger,” but despite the excuses of taking the power from the word by using it freely, it has been banned from use in public forums.
I am agonized to even use the word here, but I think it was needed to make the point.
I don’t for one minute think every fan of the football team in Washington is a racist, my sons use the nickname every season and they are Black men. However, I do not believe the original intent was honorable, the continued use is not honorable and those who defend it, on the basis of commerce and tradition, are more concerned about holding onto legacy than advancing morality. I get the pride that comes with nostalgia. I screamed, “go skins” on every pass to Charlie Taylor, Jerry Smith and Roy Jefferson. “Scalp ‘em” on every run by Larry Brown and John Riggins and flung my arm forward in front of the TV mimicking Sonny Jurgensen, but like Sonny’s talent, time passes and so do bad ideas.
When the team returns from training camp every year, they hold an annual welcome home luncheon. Part of the ritual is to sing the team’s fight song, one of the original lines was, ‘fight for ole Dixie’ which has subsequently been changed to, ‘fight for ole DC.’ Rest assured, a lot of old southerners wanted to hold onto the pride they felt for the original words, Barney Breeskin and his wife wrote. Bobby Mitchell, tells the story of not wanting to sing the song and Mr. Marshall pressuring him to join in. “Sing Bobby, sing,” he’d say to Mitchell, who would move his lips, and I imagine, tasted the bitterness with each breathless lip syncing syllable. I have my memorabilia stored away, my team’s logo laden burgundy and gold hats, slippers and blankets neatly folded and packed away. I hope someday I can pack away the name that has long since lost its effectiveness, its pride and its misplaced glamour. I apologize to my great uncle who hated the team of my youth. His mother’s scorn was not up for debate, not even in a, “FIGHT FOR OLE DC.”