That preseason, the Rams were scheduled to play the reigning NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles in an exhibition game in Dallas, the first integrated professional football game in the Deep South. They lived in Detroit and Seattle before settling in Alhambra, California.Loggins attended San Gabriel Mission High School, graduating in 1966. Kenny Washington (musician) Football and the NFL During World War II - WWII Memorial. Friends (Strode was cut before the 1947 season.) She just wants the world to know what he did, to place him up there with other African American pioneers, like Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens. The New Orleans native, now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, appeared in 2013 at Jazz At Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra to perform . In the decades since Washington broke the NFLs color barrier in 1946the year before Robinson got to the Brooklyn Dodgersthe league has hardly acknowledged his importance, especially compared with the way Major League Baseball has burnished Robinsons legend. Or we could note that this year's Super Bowl, with its renewed interest in Black history, played out as long-standing allegations of racial bias in the NFL's landmark concussion class-action settlement made headlines again. Washington was gregarious, a big man on campus. He came out of UCLA, where he played alongside two other great black football players, Woody . Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Kenny Loggins was born on 7 January 1948 in Everett, Washington, USA. Finally, in 1946, under a threat that the team would lose its lease on the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Los Angeles Rams signed Washington (along with Woody Strode, to be his roommate), ending the 12-year ban on black players in the NFL. Rams general manager Charles Chile Walsh hemmed and hawed, publicly vowing that the Rams would not bar any player on the basis of race, but privately fearing a racist backlash from owners around the league. As Robinson became a star in Americas most beloved sport, Washington quietly had his most productive NFL season, averaging 7.4 yards per carry in limited duty. The Black journalists who led a grassroots movement to pressure the Coliseum Commission and the Rams into signing our Kenny Washington are the heroic champions in this tale. Kenneth Bruce Gorelick (born June 5, 1956), known professionally as Kenny G, is an American smooth jazz saxophonist, composer, and producer. [5] Washington was a star in both baseball and football at Abraham Lincoln High School,[6] where he was nicknamed "Kingfish" after a character in the radio show Amos 'n' Andy. In the decades that followed, Washingtons struggles, and his pioneering role in NFL history, would barely be discussed at all. Courtesy of the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation, liberal-minded and full of common sense., According to Hank Shatford of the Pasadena Junior College Chronicle, the first Black lieutenant watch commander in the LAPD, Washington initially refused to participate, Washington campaigned on behalf of Richard Nixon, Washington became a part-time scout for the team, remembered Washington in the magazine Gridiron, The Most Captivating Rookie in Baseball Has Brought Hope to the Hopeless, The Most Shocking College Football Coach Firing in Recent Memory, The Biggest Misconception About the Trans Athletes Debate, The Historic Thrill of Baseballs Greatest Hitting Stretch in Years. Audience Relations, CBC P.O. Bypassed by the NFL, Washington took his talents to Hollywood. 2014-09-18 23:25:13. It makes sense that the end of segregation in the NFL wouldve caused less of a splash at the time, given that pro football was comparatively a fringe sport. Washington initially refused to participate, fearing threats to his personal safety. After surgery in April 1946, he rode a bicycle as much as he could to get his legs back into playing shape. [14] The Los Angeles Tribune was especially outspoken, thanks to its African-American sports editor, William Claire "Halley" Harding, a former professional athlete and member of the debate team at Wiley College. American football player, jurist, and writer, American football player and social activist. Following that season, many in the white press suggested that Washington ought to retire or that the Rams should cut him. And the more he learned, the more he believed a disservice had been done to Washington's legacy. [26] His alma mater Abraham Lincoln High School has annually awarded the Kenny Washington Trophy to the school's best football player since 1949. The Supreme Court's decision to strike down race-conscious admissions in cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina had elicited an array of partisan reactions: dismay from some . Later, one of his teammates on those Bruins teams, Woody Strode, remarked that when Washington left the field for the final time as a UCLA player, the ovation that thundered for him sounded as though "the pope of Rome had come out.". As Arnold Rampersad recounts in his biography of Robinson, the gossip had so much traction that Robinson felt obliged to address it, claiming he was too smart to mix it up with a man of Washingtons size and strength. "It didn't do him any good because he could not play for the NFL," she said. Washington was also passed over by the NFL, which had not had an African American player since 1933. In 1967, Washington told the Sacramento Bee that young minorities needed to be more patient about the rate of change in America. When the NFL started, in the 1920s, a handful of African Americans played in the new league. When UCLAs head coach took Washington out of that USC game with 15 seconds to play, fans in the packed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stood and applauded for what seemed like an eternity. Kenny was primarily raised by his grandmother, Susie, aided by his uncle, Rocky. Still, NFL teams refused him. Kenneth Stanley Washington (August 31, 1918 June 24, 1971) was an American professional football player who was the first African-American to sign a contract with a National Football League (NFL) team in the modern (post-World War II) era. Kenny Washington: Broke Color Line in NFL - America Comes Alive None of you chose him.. No museums are being built as permanent tributes to his legacy. You know, he went on to become the first African American player to. Kennys storycomplicated, messy, and sadresists easy narrativizing. Despite the obscurity of the two leagues he played in, Washington became a star, whose profile was as high as that of any NFL player. The reverends influence upon Robinson was clear during his college years: Robinson had little patience for inequality. Even in college, they had fundamentally different attitudes about race. She says the unfortunate part about her dad's story is that we'll never know how great he could have been, if he'd been recruited, young and fresh, right out of UCLA. Who Broke the NFL Pro Football Color Barrier? - Bleacher Report Updated: February 26, 2019 | Original: February 2, 2018. Though there are no known copies of the film in existence, it seems to possess roughly the same plot as 1931s The Galloping Ghost starring Red Grange, the greatest player of his age. He signed Washington's and Strode's UCLA teammate Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in 1947.[4]. After all, Black taxpayers had financed the stadium, along with their white counterparts. Kenny Washington: Early Life. Though they were both 27 years old when they made history, Robinson was still in his prime while Washington, given the state of his knees, was a shadow of his former self. Historian Michael Oriard notes that While Thousands Cheer was the only one out of 120 full-length football films produced between 1920 and 1960 to feature a Black star. We know how that story goes in Canada. Disclamer I'm not shitting on Matt or Pat at all, I respect their decisions entirely and appreciate them for trying to entertaining us Aside from But if the phrase "reckoning on race" entails organizations wrestling with their racist pasts, centring the truth,and moving toward equity, the inclusions and omissions in this version of Washington's story do something different. The NFL's Jackie Robinson. Both the NFL and big league baseball started out integrated, gradually became all-white, and then stayed segregated. Kenny Washington played football and baseball with Jackie Robinson at UCLA. Kenny Washington had an eventfuland in some ways contradictorylife ahead of him. Biography. How Kenny Washington Broke the NFL's Color BarrierAnd - Narratively Washington was born in 1918 in Los Angeles, the only child of a Black American father and a Jamaican mother. Decades after Washingtons death, the NFL seems to have decided that football fans are now primed to consume his story, and so theyre feeding it to them. Soundtrack: Footloose. Log in. Sharing in this triumph was Washington's best friend and fellow Bruin, Woody Strode, whom Washington had insisted the Rams . Wolff theorizes that weve forgotten Kenny Washington because his story is one of rupture rather than redemption. This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. The cheers you have given me went to my heart and not my head, Washington told the crowd. Chile Walsh, the Rams general manager, did not crusade on Washingtons behalf the way Branch Rickey did for Jackie Robinson. Either way, it's more unsettling evidence of the extent to which race, and racism still shape the modern NFL. Kenny Washington. The practice, known as "race norming," was invented as a way to avoid over-diagnosing Black students as learning-disabled, correcting for the segregated, under-resourced schools they might have attended. The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of Kenny Washington was 6 ft 1 inch, 212 lb (1.85 m, 96 kg). [4] As a result, the team signed Washington on March 21, 1946, followed by Strode on May 7. Perhaps the greatest symbol of Washingtons historical erasure was his appearance in 1950s The Jackie Robinson Story. After placing 39th out of 1,837 candidates who took the departments entrance exam, Kenny joined the force in April 1942 and was appointed to the motorcycle detail a month later. According to Hank Shatford of the Pasadena Junior College Chronicle, When [Robinson] felt he was right and the other guy was wrong, he didnt hesitate. Slate is published by The Slate During the lead-up to this past Super Bowl, a CBS segment at last acknowledged his singular breakthroughcalling it a Jackie Robinson moment. So why, all these decades later, dont we talk about Jackie Robinsons debut as a Kenny Washington moment? 2023 But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! https://www.britannica.com/facts/Kenny-Washington, Kenneth Stanley Washington Kenneth S. Washington. It then switches, not so seamlessly, to a shot of whats supposed to be the same player getting up from the ground. Kenny Washington's UCLA football career began in 1937, wearing what would be his signature number, 13 (23, 29, 30, 31). In 1946, Kenny Washington Broke NFL's Color Barrier Yet they remain worlds apart in our. Washington died of heart and lung problems in Los Angeles in 1971 at the age of 52. Few would imagine you were describing Jackie Robinson, who followed Washington at UCLA as a football and baseball player. One story has it that Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher wanted to offer Washington a contract to play for the team, but only if he went to Puerto Rico first, which Washington refused to do. I n 1939, Kenny Washington was the college football star, leading the NCAA in total yardage and winning the Douglas Fairbanks Trophy as most outstanding player. Downs was an activist who had published a call to arms, Timid Negro Students! in the magazine of the NAACP, arguing that by substituting courage for timidity, young Black people could help end injustice. When teammate Bob Waterfield tracked them down and urged them to come back to the original hotel and be with their team, Washington and Strode held up their Tom Collinses, gestured to Basie, and told Waterfield that theyd rather stay segregated. (In contrast, Jackie Robinson forced the issue when he was told he could not stay with the rest of the Dodgers at the Chase Park Hotel in St. Louis. The Interrelated Back Stories of Kenny Washington Reintegrating the NFL They led the Bruins to a 604 record and within 4 yards of defeating intracity (and all-white) rival USC and earning a trip to the Rose Bowl. Toward the end of the 1948 season, it became clear that Washingtons NFL career was coming to a close. Super Bowl LV took place in the first Black History Month since the slaying of George Floyd prompted governments andindividuals to confront racism in new ways. Early life. Fans called for the Rams to sub in Washington throughout the game, and head coach Adam Walsh finally gave in with five minutes to play. His dominance continued at University of California, Los Angeles, where he starred on the university's football and baseball teams. Washington starred in the semi-pro Pacific Coast league, alongside Strode and Ezzrett(Sugarfoot)Anderson, another future CFL standout. All Rights Reserved. The seven-minute clipis correct in the details it includes. This is the real answer to ending discrimination, he said. Washington was a single-wing tailback at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), from 1937 through 1939, during a period when only a few dozen African American athletes played on marginally integrated teams outside the South. He was abusive and gross. [1] He was posthumously inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame. Later created, hosted and co-produced "Sportonomics," a weekly video series examining the business of Sport. The NFL was segregated, until Kenny Washington broke the color barrier [11] Neither Washington nor Strode has been inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, although both Marion Motley and Bill Willis of the AAFC's and NFL's Cleveland Browns have received that honor. Baseball feels vindicated by Robinson. Kenny Washington, byname of Kenneth S. Washington, (born August 31, 1918, Los Angeles, California, U.S.died June 24, 1971, Los Angeles), one of the first African American college gridiron football stars on the West Coast and one of two black players to reintegrate the National Football League (NFL) in 1946. For a decade, his implicit task was finding the next Jackie Robinson. "We had two missions in mind with the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation," Sariana-Lampson . Dick Hyland, an L.A. Times columnist whod asked his readers in 1941 whether Kenny Washington might be the greatest football player who ever lived, asserted in 1946 that the NFL has never had a rule against the use of Negro players.. He was born too soon. Somehow, having a gun pulled on him after a white motorist called him and his friends the N-word marked him as dangerous at UCLA. Kenny Washington, who broke the NFL's color barrier, was nearly forgottenunlike Jackie Robinson, his UCLA teammate. Kenny Washington | NFL Star, UCLA Football Legend | Britannica Around that time, the integrated, semipro Pacific Coast Professional Football League was getting off the ground. It is difficult to imagine more than a handful of men having a greater impact on the league, and yet theres no Kenny Washington Day in the NFL when everyone wears his No. But watch closely, and you may notice him in another scene, this one establishing Robinsons football cred. In the Black press, the spotlight shifted to Robinson, who debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947. However, for many years, Washington was ignored by the NFL and the story of professional football's postwar integration received little attention. Washington played three seasons on knees that had been surgically rebuilt and he held his own, averaging over six yards per carry before his retirement in 1948. [8] This was a rarity to have so many African Americans when only a few dozen at all played on college football teams. Washington was a single-wing halfback, in a role not unlike that of a modern-day quarterback in an option-style offense. He was the teams field general, and the Los Angeles Times took to calling him General Washington.. The Black sports writers who stumped for Washington werent nave. In October 1948, around the time of the release of Rogues Regiment, a film in which he co-starred, Washington told the Pittsburgh Courier that he now preferred acting over football. Washington's move wasn't unusual simply because it made the Los Angeles native, already a star at UCLA in the late 1930s, a rare 28-year-old NFL rookie. Kenny Washington (American football) Updates? A variety of newsletters you'll love, delivered straight to you. Morgan is also a TedX lecturer, and a frequent contributor to several CBC platforms, including the extremely popular and sorely-missed Sports Culture Panel on CBC Radio Q. How did Kenny Washington die? - Answers They set out to do something they love. Meet Kenny Washington, the First Black NFL Player of the He grew up in the Stapleton Houses and attended P.S. 'The Forgotten First': Remembering Black Players Who Broke The - NPR But Washington wasnt satisfied with his largely symbolic role, where his duties included talking to kids about the importance of staying in school and playing for the LAPD baseball team. Ezzrett Anderson and Washington's UCLA teammate Strode were also on that team. Forgotten story of four who broke color barrier in pro football to But the NFL usurped Major League Baseball as the nations sports obsession in part because Kenny Washington broke that same barrier. Washington with the Lincoln High School football team in 1962, in Los Angeles. 0. According to Stephen Sariana-Lampson, the president of the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation, Washingtons story will be celebrated on Jan. 9, 2022the final Sunday of the NFL seasonwhen the Los Angeles Rams take the field wearing a decal on their helmets to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Washingtons signing with the team. But in less than a week, he was given his walking papers. But in 1939 that wasnt an option. He held out all of his life clinging to that notion that if we can demonstrate our decency, our discipline, our competitiveness, our intellectual capability and commitment, and our subscription to law and order, we too will be accepted as equalswe too will be considered legitimate as human beings and citizens in this country. [3] Kenny Washington was raised by his grandmother Susie Washington, his uncle Rocky, the first black uniformed lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD),[4] and his aunt-in-law Hazel. What college did Kenny Washington attend? By all accounts, he received an unusually large ovation when he walked onto the field. Forget about a two-part, four-hour PBS documentarythere is not a single feature film that tells Washingtons story. Despite their similar backgrounds, their shared educations, and their mirrored experiences dealing with the abuses of a racist systemnot to mention their athletic prowesstheir lives and experiences are so different. The truth about Kenny Washington, NFL contradicts the myth that racism Therefore, it was no surprise that, as college football fans celebrated Kenny Washington, the NFLs 10 teams ignored him, through 22 rounds. But he eventually gave in, and rushed for 60 yards in a contest that went off without any major incidentsthough the 500 Black fans in attendance were forced to sit in segregated seating in the end zone. Despite his impressive college numbers, an NFL career was not available to Washington upon graduating from UCLA. Death Year: 1971, Death date: June 24, 1971, Death State: California, Death City: Los Angeles, Death Country: United States, Article Title: Kenny Washington Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/athletes/kenny-washington, Publisher: A&E; Television Networks, Last Updated: October 15, 2020, Original Published Date: April 2, 2014. Football player. This year Target is selling Black History Month t-shirts, and the UFC is positioning this month's fight cards, with Black athletes in main events, as a celebration of Black history. Washingtons signing was not just a civil rights breakthrough. It is going to take a piece of doing, he wrote, for Jackie Robinson to fill his shoes.. He died early. Its unfair to the memory of Kenny Washington to frame his desegregation of the NFL as a Jackie Robinson moment when, if anything, its the other way around. Like Robinsons well-chronicled experience in Major League Baseball, Washington suffered his share of slurs and cheap shots in the NFLperhaps more than he had while playing for UCLA or in the PCPFL, when he was less likely to compete against players from the South. Kenny Washington played halfback and defensive back. They seem less about confronting ugly history than rehabbing the league's image. They've even partnered with organizations like the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation to build facilities in his name and fund scholarships for student athletes. But he knew life, too, had curved him. By mid-August, he had to have fluid drained from it and was forced to wear a clunky steel brace. [11] He earned all-league recognition each year, including his first year when he suffered a knee injury that prevented him from being conscripted for the war. Washington's experience contradicts the myth that racism recedes with time. Other images from the same period show Washington photographed with his fellow black teammates, Robinson and Woodrow Strode. He gambled on horse racing and wasnt home a lot, and June eventually filed for divorce. Best Known For: One of the first African American college football stars, Kenny Washington was one of two Black athletes to reintegrate the NFL in 1946. The NFL was all-white at the time. Kingfish: The Story of Kenny Washington [7], Washington was a Republican in his younger years and strongly supported Richard Nixon's 1950 U.S. Senate campaign. He was in there., While Washington was embraced on campus, Robinson was held at arms length, in part due to a run-in with a motorcycle policeman in Pasadena in September 1939 immediately before he arrived at UCLA. It's also true that he first played for the Rams in the fall of 1946, half a year before Robinson suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Washingtons return to form was short-lived. On the surface, the two shared much in common. [1] Kenny G is one of the best-selling artists of all time, with global sales totaling more than 75 million records. All Rights Reserved. For his contribution to sports in Los Angeles, Washington was honored with a Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum "Court of Honor" plaque by the Coliseum commissioners. Similarly, the NFL may now have an incentive to tell Washingtons story more prominently, to mollify the blowback that the league has earned for its craven treatment of Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matteraligned protesters, and former Black players suffering from brain injuries. A 2006 exhibition at the Pro Football Hall of Fame called Breaking Through: The Reintegration of Pro Football focused on the Cleveland Browns Marion Motley and Bill Willishalf of the sports forgotten four of pioneering Black players, along with Washington and Woody Strode (who signed with the Los Angeles Rams two months after Washington). Washington, Strode, and Robinson made up three of the four backfield players that year. Kenny Washington Biography, Life, Interesting Facts And he spent his last two years at the Star authoring the Sports Prism initiative, a weekly feature covering the intersection of sports, race, business, politics and culture. Growing up in Los Angeles County in the 1970s and 1980s, Kirk Washington knew that his grandfather had been a beloved athlete. (He also played baseball for UCLA alongside Jackie Robinsonaveraging .454 in 1937 and .350 in 1938.). George Washington South Park . Super Bowl 2022: Forgotten pioneer Kenny Washington gets his Instead, Washington briefly coached the freshman team at UCLA, joined the city's police department and played four seasons of semi-pro football, first for the Hollywood Bears and later for the San Francisco Clippers. If you watched the Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday,you probably saw the National Football League and CBS shine a well-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on Kenny Washington, the American football legend who signed with the Rams when they moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles in 1946. Rams release film on trailblazing RB Kenny Washington, who reintegrated After signing Washington, the Rams also acquired Woody Strode, a former UCLA star and future Calgary Stampeder, and hit the field in 1946 with two African-American players. RT pic.twitter.com/Rz41txOejb But if research leads you to advocates like Harding,it should also take you to Washington's one-sentence summary of life on pro football's racial frontier. He was one of four African American players on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, the others being Woody Strode, Robinson, and Ray Bartlett. But the optimism that followed his signing was offset by Washingtons ongoing knee woes. 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