Isn’t It About Time To Call A Penalty
For Unsportsmanlike Conduct?

The mainstream media didn’t cover the racially charged protests against the Washington Redskins in 1961, sparked a half-century ago by outrage over owner George Preston Marshall‘s refusal to integrate his all-white team.

The black press, however, was all over the story, particularly the Afro-American Newspapers, whose legendary sportswriter Sam Lacy wrote countless columns on Marshall’s racist ways.

It wasn’t just Lacy, though. Above is a cartoon that ran in the Afro on August 15, 1961, just before a group of justice seekers from the Tidewater area of Virginia picketed a Redskins/Colts exhibition game in Norfolk.

Cartoon by Thomas Stockett, Afro Newspaper Cartoonist. Used with permission from the Afro-American Newspapers Archives.