Eric
Guest
Mar 03, 2005
3:23 PM
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Since Swanson and company brought it up, let's examine the roots of the Washington football "tradition". The great Redskin patriarch who brought the team to D.C. in 1937 was a man named George Preston Marshall. Marshall, in the words of the late sports writing legend Shirley Povich, "was widely considered one of pro football's greatest innovators and its leading bigot."Marshall's Skins were the last team to integrate in the entire NFL. Povich once wrote famously that "the Redskins colors are burgundy, gold and Caucasian."
Marshall finally integrated the team in 1962 only when the Kennedy Administration's Interior Secretary, Stewart Udall, issued an ultimatum: sign an African-American player or be denied use of the new government financed 54,000-seat D.C. Stadium. Marshall responded by making Ernie Davis, Syracuse's all-American running back, his No. 1 draft choice. One problem: Davis's response was a forthright "I won't play for that S.O.B." Davis was traded, to Cleveland, for all-pro Bobby Mitchell.
Marshall's racism was more than just was more than just bad ideas. It was the material foundation upon which the Redskins empire was built. He had brought his football team to Washington with a plan to make them "the South's team."He signed TV contracts with stations in Southern cities, and he drafted players mostly from Southern colleges. The team, once again to quote Povich, "became the Confederates of the NFL." In fact, in the original version of the ever-present fight song "Hail to the Redskins," the line "Fight for Old D.C." was "Fight for Old Dixie."
In the face of this history, it is hard to imagine Marshall as a student of the cultural intricacies of the red-clay warriors. Far more likely, he was merely marketing a minstrel show in shoulder pads, preying on bigotry for big bucks. Critics may call this "overly sensitive," but in 2002, when a group of Native Americans and non-Indians at the University of Northern Colorado turned the tables and named their intramural basketball team the Fighting Whites and created a stereotypical mascot-a 1950s-style white man in a suit and tie carrying a briefcase-the "anti-racial sensitivity crowd" freaked out. The Fighting Whites and their tongue in cheek slogan "Every Thang's Gonna be all White" became a national debate.
I don't know about you, but there always needs to be time during periods of war and recession for debates that involve intramural basketball. But even the hullabaloo over the Fighting Whites was a function of the Redskins and their ilk feeling the heat.
Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Patent and
Trademark office ruled in favor of seven Native Americans who filed a complaint against the Redskins in 1992. The board ordered the cancellation of the federal registration of seven Redskin trademarks, under a 1946 law that says names cannot be protected if they are "disparaging, scandalous, contemptuous or disreputable."
They are absolutely right: it is contemptible and an absolute scandal. That is why we, here at the Prince George's County Post, do not use the name "Redskins" on our sports page. But it will take far more than that to exorcise the ghost of George Preston Marshall.
Washington football is Sonny Jurgenson, "The Diesel" John Riggins, Darrel Green, Doug Williams, Smurfs, Hogs, and the great Joe Gibbs. There is no reason why it also has to be Dixie, minstrelsy, and gutter racism.
Therefore we at the Prince George's Post are starting a contest, the winner receiving little more than peace of mind and a small place in history, to rename the Washington Football Team. Send your ideas to editor@pgpost.com.
The winner will be announced (when else?) on Columbus Day.
Dave Zirin is the News Editor of the Prince George's Post in Prince George's County Maryland, for which he writes the sports column Edge of Sports. His work can be read at www.edgeofsports.com. To have his column sent to you every week, just e-mail edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com.
Contact the author at editor@pgpost.com link to entire article: http://www.edgeofsports.com/2003-08-28-18/ Eric
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