This article certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture.
https://www.windycitygridiron.com/2019/ ... ck-playersQuote:
“What makes the NFL so unique is that it’s a full-fledged league and it starts off integrated,” says professor, author and historian Louis Moore, whose work includes the podcast The Black Athlete. “What you’re hinting at is the historical amnesia that we do have.”
From the league’s inaugural season of 1920 until 1933, black players not only played — they dominated. All-Pro halfback Fritz Pollard led the league’s first champions, the Akron Pros; the next year, he became player-coach. Tackle Duke Slater was among the most decorated players in the league of his day, honored in six seasons on an All-Pro team. End Inky Williams of Hammond earned All-Pro honors in 1923. Ten years later, the final full-time black player before the ban, Joe Lillard, led his Cardinals in rushing yards, passing yards, total yards and points.
And then suddenly, they were all gone. There was no press release. Nothing on paper. Over the years, the owners involved maintained that no such ban ever occurred. Halas in particular twice offered implausible explanations as to why the league had black players during its first 14 years and none for the next 12.
In an interview for the 1970 book “The Game That Was” by longtime Steelers broadcaster Myron Cope, Halas claimed that he didn’t know why black players were out of the league for 12 years, but speculated that, “Probably it was due to the fact that no great black players were in colleges then.” He also told Cope that there was no ban, “in no way, shape or form.”
And in an interview with the L.A. Times in 1976, Halas again said that he didn’t know why the NFL had 12 years of all-white football, but posited that, “probably the game didn’t have the appeal to black players at the time. Probably they didn’t realize the possibilities of the game at the time.”
I read the full article. What I was struck by was that there really is no "smoking gun" about the NFL banning black players anywhere so if they did it , it was done under the table so to speak. If George Halas was racist, then where is the absolute evidence against him? He was CHEAP for sure, but extended money to many players who had fallen on tough times, black and white. I think that articles like the one referenced are done to make money for the author and not much else. It is akin to the charges that show up often about how the Founding Fathers were racist an evil.
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