Marlin Briscoe becomes the first African-American Quarterback in modern-era football
Marlin Briscoe becomes the first African-American Quarterback in modern-era football.
10/06/1968
The Detroit Tigers win the World Series a year after the Detroit Uprising
The city of Detroit celebrates the Tigers winning the world series a year after the 12th Street Uprising. On the night the uprising began Detroit Tiger Willie Horton took to the streets in his Tigers uniform to encourage peace.
10/10/1968
Tommie Smith and John Carlos stand for human rights at the 1968 Olympics
Drawing inspiration from sociologist Harry Edwards, American track & field athletes Carlos and Smith after medaling in the 200-meter dash at the Mexico City Olympics stand atop the podium during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with bowed heads and their fists in the air, each wearing a black glove. The iconic protest, Smith says, is a “… cry for freedom and for human rights. We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.” The International Olympic Committee bans Carlos and Smith from the Olympic Village for their political message and threatens to ban the entire USA Track & Field team after the US Olympic Committee refuses to send Carlos and Smith home. Eventually, the IOC does expel them from the Mexico City Olympics, and the two return to the United States where they are ostracized from Olympic competition for the next 30 years. The silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman, is the one who gives Carlos and Smith the idea to each wear a glove. Norman, who like Carlos and Smith wears a “Olympic Project for Human Rights” badge on the medal stand, tells them to each wear a single glove after Carlos forgets his at the Olympic Village as an alternative. Norman himself uses his badge as a form of protest for the racist “White Australia” policies at the time. His form of allyship effectively ends his career as he is blackballed from competing for Australia ever again despite running Olympic qualifying times and “suffered to the day he died,” Norman’s son later says.
10/16/1968
Black 14 at the University of Wyoming
During the Wyoming Cowboys season in mid-October, head coach Lloyd Eaton dismisses 14 Black players from the team after they ask to wear black armbands during the upcoming home game against BYU. In their game against each other the year prior, BYU players taunted Black players on Wyoming with racial epithets and spit on them. A week before the 1969 game, the school’s campus activist group the Black Student Alliance asks the Wyoming football team’s Black members to boycott the game to protest the racist events of the last game and the Mormon Church’s refusal to allow Black men in the priesthood. The day before the game, the players don black armbands on their clothes and go to Eaton’s office to discuss how they might show solidarity with the BSA protest. Upon seeing them with the armbands, Eaton immediately dismisses them from the team. According to Joe Williams, a team co-captain before he was suspended: “We wanted to see if we could wear black armbands in the game, or black socks, or black X’s on our helmets. And if he had said no we had already agreed that we would be willing to protest with nothing but our black skins.”
10/17/1969
Frank Robinson Becomes first African-American manager in MLB
Frank Robinson debuts as first African-American manager in major leagues for the Cleveland Indians.
04/18/1975
Tom Flores becomes the first Hispanic coach to win the Super Bowl
The Oakland Raiders’ Flores becomes the first minority and Hispanic head coach to win a Super Bowl as the Raiders defeat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV. Three seasons later, Flores would win a second Super Bowl. Before coaching, Flores in 1960 becomes the first Hispanic quarterback to start for a professional football team, starting for the Raiders.
01/25/1981
Doug Williams overcomes racism to make NFL history, blaze trail for future quarterbacks
In 1978, Williams becomes the first Black quarterback to be drafted in the first round, coming out of Grambling State University, a historically Black college. Throughout his career, Williams faces racism from NFL fans as well as from the team that drafted him, the Buccaneers. After being forced out of the NFL for a few years, Williams signs with Washington and eventually leads the team in Super Bowl XXII, becoming the first Black quarterback to start a Super Bowl, which Washington wins in a 42-10 route behind Williams’ play. Williams, who is now a senior adviser for Washington and co-founder of the Black College Football Hall of Fame, blazes a trail for the next generation of Black quarterbacks. Entering the 2021 season, four of the five highest-paid players in the NFL, three of the past six MVPs and the past two passing yardage leaders are Black quarterbacks.
01/31/1988
Bob Johnson Buys NBA Expansion Team in Charlotte
The NBA awards its expansion franchise in Charlotte to Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, making him the first African American to become the principal owner of a major league sports team.
12/18/2002
The NFL establishes the Rooney Rule
Named after Dan Rooney, the chairman and president of the Pittsburgh Steelers and former chairman of the league’s diversity committee, the NFL institutes the Rooney Rule in 2003, requiring teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching positions. At the time the rule was created, only seven minority candidates had been head coaches in NFL history. In 2020, the rule is amended to require teams to interview at least two minority candidates from outside their organization for any vacant head-coaching job and at least one minority candidate from outside their organization for any vacant offensive, defensive or special-teams coordinator job. Additionally, it is expanded to include a requirement that teams and the league office interview minority and/or female applicants for executive-level positions.
12/20/2002
Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the NFL work with developers to reopen the New Orleans Superdome in record time–a year after Hurricane Katrina
Defeating the Atlanta Falcons in their first home game since Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Saints reached across racial, and socioeconomic lines to bring together a City that was ravaged by the deadliest hurricane the U.S. had ever seen.
09/25/2006