Want to win a bar bet some day? Ask someone to identify the following people: Earl Lloyd, Woody Strode and Kenny Washington, and Willie O’Ree. Give up? They are, respectively, the first black players in the NBA, NFL, and NHL.
The NBA integrated in 1950-51. While Lloyd was the first black man to play in a game, Chuck Cooper was the first black player drafted (by the Celtics), and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first to sign a contract (with the Knicks). The impetus for NBA integration was the Harlem Globetrotters, who beat the National Basketball League/Basketball Association of America champion Minneapolis Lakers two games out of three in 1948 and 1949. Many innovations in dribbling and passing can be traced to the Globetrotters as well.
(I saw the Globetrotters live as a kid a couple of times. They were tons of fun to watch. I can totally relate to this quote from that ESPN article:
Said longtime Globetrotter “Sweet Lou” Dunbar: “Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal were so popular because they were on TV. We’d be on ABC Wide World of Sports, although you had to endure a little bowling first.”
I happily endured bowling any number of times in the 70s to catch a few minutes of the Trotters.)
An interesting commentary on integration and competitive advantage can be found on this page, which has photos of all of the Celtics’ NBA championship teams from the 1950s on. Start at the top and count the number of black players on the team each year for the 11 seasons that Bill Russell was their center. Equally interesting to contemplate is that the recent influx of players from Europe and Asia likely means that NBA champions of the near future (such as, perhaps, the Sacramento Kings or Dallas Mavericks) will feature more non-black faces than champs of the near past. The circle we’ve come is so full we’re on our second or third lap.
The NFL has a longer history of integration, as the precursor leagues of the early 20th century featured black players. The NFL was integrated when it was founded in 1922, but it adopted a no-blacks policy in 1933. That lasted until 1946, when the league faced competition from another league, the All-American Football Conference, which was integrated. The AAFC folded after four seasons, partly because they had one team, the Cleveland Browns, that thoroughly dominated the rest (the Browns won all four AAFC championships, going 52-4-3 overall). Absorbed into the NFL in 1950, the Browns served notice of their abilities right away, defeating the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10 in their first game, on their way to winning the Eastern Conference for six straight years.
The NHL has been a mostly white league for its entire existence. Though they never had an official color line, they also never had a black player until O’Ree debuted in 1958. Unlike the other pioneers, O’Ree did not lead a wave of black athletes into his league. The NHL reverted to being all white from O’Ree’s departure in 1961 until 1978.
For what it’s worth, when Grant Fuhr came up in the 80s, the explanation I always heard about hockey’s whiteness was that the vast majority of players came from Canada, which presumably had a lower proportion of blacks in its population. Regardless, the NHL is more American and international now, and while Willie O’Ree sees more blacks and Hispanics making it in pro hockey, it wouldn’t surprise me to see players from Asia make an impact some day.
As for baseball, I just want to mention that the first black player in the major leagues was Moses Fleetwood “Fleet” Walker, who played with Toledo in the American Association in 1883. His brother Welday also played a few games with Toledo that year, but the infamous color line in baseball was erected after that season. Eighty-eight years later (twenty-four years after Jackie Robinson broke in), the Pittsburgh Pirates played a game in which all nine of their starters were black. The Pirates were one of the most integrated teams in the 1970s. They also won two World Series titles and four other divisional titles from 1970-1979.
(Though the idea for this post was my own, I took some inspiration and information from Tony Pierce.)