Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Five

When Bobby Mitchell came

After deciding to make the Redskins a new home in DC, the government decided to get in George Preston Marshall's business. One way or another, a black player was coming to this team. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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The 1961 NFL season opened for the Redskins with two games on the road before their first game in their new home, the price tag of which had risen to twenty-four million dollars. When Sunday 1 October 1961 finally rolled around, the Redskins lost to the New York Giants in a game that featured Washington scoring three touchdowns in the first quarter behind rookie quarterback Norm Snead to take a commanding 21-7 lead. The Redskins would not score again as New York quarterback YA Tittle led the Giants to seventeen unanswered points.

More than thirty-seven thousand people attended the game, sixteen thousand more than had attended either the 1960 season opener or closer.

Media opinion of the new stadium itself was mixed; DC Stadium was the first of a new breed of stadiums and most viewed it somewhat as a curiosity; its nonstandard lines were off-putting to some and the reflection of noise back from the cantilevered roof was instantly noticeable to others.

There were others at this inaugural game besides fans and media: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people. Angry NAACP supporters picketed the stadium over the team's lack of black players, fifteen years as it was after black players came back to the NFL following the 1933 lockout, and nine years after the next to last team had begun using players of any color on its roster.

Still unsatisfied with the team's position on integration, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall pledged publicly following that first game in DC Stadium that he would personally boycott Redskins games as long as the NAACP continued picketing, which was of course by the NAACP's own position until such time as the Redskins signed black players to the active roster.

It was two more long months before the 1962 draft was held, during which time the Redskins went 0-4 in DC Stadium, averaging nine points per game on offense. When the 1962 NFL Draft was finally held on December 4, 1961, the Redskins famously drafted Ernie Davis first overall. Ernie, a Syracuse tailback, was the first black football player ever to win the Heisman Trophy and was highly coveted in both the NFL and AFL. A bidding war for his services was expected to ensue between the two leagues.

As the story goes, the Redskins traded Ernie's rights less than two weeks later to the Cleveland Browns. In a sad twist of fate, Ernie would never play a down in the NFL, he was diagnosed with leukemia in the 1962 offseason and would succumb to the illness a year later in 1963. In exchange for Ernie, the Redskins would receive Bobby Mitchell, a tailback and flanker who would come to revitalize the Redskins franchise, Bobby was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 1983 and remained in the Redskins organization altogether for more than forty years.

But before that trade even happened, something else memorable happened following the draft: The Redskins signed their first black player, eighth round pick Ron Hatcher, a tailback out of Michigan State. Ron was not heralded, and certainly would never have garnered the headlines of an Ernie Davis, still he will always be remembered as the first black player signed by the Redskins, the last team to include players of color in its roster. Ron would appear in three games, amassing no plays for no yards in his one year NFL career.

The cynical eye may regard Ron as the exact token black that Bobby Kennedy and Stewart Udall had no interest in seeing.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part six, Palace Intrigue.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Four

Colored players need not apply

An intractably racist owner, a presidential administration committed to equal rights. The Redskins and the government were on a collision course. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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Washington's rising new multipurpose venue was at the center of a complex federal-local government partnership, one that thirty-five years later would be a factor in thwarting Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke's efforts to keep the team in the District once RFK was no longer a viable NFL stadium. District of Columbia Stadium would be built on federal parkland, Anacostia Park, a reclaimed spit of land at the far end of East Capitol Street. Managing the stadium and the revenues from its use would be the DC Armory Board, a branch of the DC government created by Congress in 1949 to administer federally owned properties in the District for non-military and commercial uses.

Although the stadium was to be managed by the District, the ultimate authority on its use, or nonuse, was the US Department of the Interior, the federal government entity responsible for administering US parkland resources. Stewart Udall, John Kennedy's Interior Secretary, shared Bobby Kennedy's concern for the Redskins' resistance to integration, and as Interior Secretary, had the authority to back his concern with action.

In March of 1961, as DC Stadium was rising and the Redskins were planning their inaugural season in that new home, Secretary Udall wrote a letter to owner George Preston Marshall, alerting him to certain recent civil rights laws, and the penalties of prosecution for violating them.

Whatever response George and the team offered were not sufficient, for five months later in August of 1961, Secretary Udall wrote a second letter, this one to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. This letter was right to the point: Department of Interior would consider using its authority to prevent the Redskins from using DC Stadium if they did not hire black players. And not just any black players, talented black players, ones that would not simply ride the bench as tokens of compliance.

The Redskins owner shot right back, swearing the Redskins had no hiring bias, it was simply that the Redskins had not yet come across the black players they wanted. To bolster his argument that the Redskins did not actually have a no-blacks policy, George publicly displayed interest in Syracuse star tailback Ernie Davis, a player who happened to be black. And the Redskins had the number one overall pick in the upcoming 1962 NFL Draft, to be held in December.

The government relented and approved the Redskins use of DC Stadium for the 1961 football season.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part five, Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Three

Colored players need not apply

With the government already agreeing effectively to bail out the Redskins in the form of a new stadium, all that remained was to work out the details. The absence of black players happened to be one of those details. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
References

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While the Redskins were struggling in the present, a famous and influential figure was examining the Redskins past. Senator John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, had been elected president in November 1960, upon taking office President Kennedy named his brother Robert, or Bobby, Kennedy as attorney general. Both the president and his brother were vocal proponents of civil rights and racial equality, the president having been in office as a senator during the passage of the first two major civil rights bill in Congress since Reconstruction, in 1957 and 1960.

Bobby Kennedy was personally appalled by the failure of the Redskins to integrate, the team still had not had a black player in George Preston Marshall's entire tenure as owner, dating back twenty-eight years to 1932.

Prior to George joining the fraternity of NFL owners, there had been a handful of black NFL players between 1920 and 1933, most notably Fritz Pollard. At his first meeting as an NFL owner in February 1933, George floated a package of proposals, many of which individually would be seminal in the development of the NFL as a sport of mass appeal: That the league should be split into Divisions, better to host a World Championship game; that the old school 'fat' football should be slimmed down so as to facilitate the passing game; and that the goalposts should be moved to the goal line so as to increase scoring.

George's package also included one unfortunate proposal: That roster spots should be denied, indefinitely, to black players.

The proposal before the owners was approved, with the inclusion of the lockout of black players. The proposal might not have passed were it not for the endorsement of the plan by Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas; many believe Halas was agreeing to take the bad with the good for the better of the league.

And so the NFL did not have any black players between 1933 and 1946, thirteen long years. By 1952, every team but the Redskins had at least one black player. And nine years later in 1961 the Redskins still were all-white.

But Bobby Kennedy had found a way to exert influence on the team and its headstrong owner: Threaten to take away DC Stadium from the Redskins before they had even played in it.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part four, A Complex Relationship.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Two

Shovel ready

By the 1960 season, the Washington Redskins had long faded from their heights of the 1930s and 40s, attendance was winding down and the city was rapidly falling out of love with NFL football. Who better to rescue the team than the government? Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Race and Football
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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With Griffith Field already forty-six years old and no new local stadium projects on the horizon, in June of 1957, US Representative Oren Harris, Democrat of Arkansas, proposed legislation to authorize construction of a fifty thousand seat, municipal stadium in the District of Columbia. Representative Harris was a well known supporter of sports business, also proposing in 1957 that the NFL be granted an antitrust exemption in the style of baseball's, in place since 1922.

By June of 1958 the US Treasury had agreed to guarantee bonds worth up to six million dollars, the principal projected cost of the stadium project. One month later in July President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing construction of the stadium into law. The new venue would be called District of Columbia Stadium, or DC Stadium for short. It would be located at the end of East Capitol Street, hard by the Anacostia River.

The first shovel went into the dirt on the site of RFK Stadium in July 1960. What emerged over the next fifteen months was the first of a generation of multiuse, or 'cookie-cutter' stadiums. Round or slightly oblong, with cantilevered roofs and miles on concrete, these venues were designed to accommodate 1960s appetites for both football and baseball, though in the end by modern standards they did both relatively poorly.

Other stadiums that would rise in the decade that followed and look an awful lot like DC Stadium included Shea Stadium (1964), Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (1965), Busch Stadium (1966), San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium (1967), Three Rivers Stadium (1970), Riverfront Stadium (1970) and Veterans Stadium (1971).

That fall and winter the Redskins would stagger through their 1960 season, finishing 1-9-2. In a move trumping even future owner Dan Snyder's postgame firing of head coach Jim Zorn in January 2010, team owner George Preston Marshall fired head coach Mike Nixon before the team's 38-28 season ending loss to future Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgenson and the Philadelphia Eagles.

In coach Nixon's place the owner would promote 34 year old Bill McPeak, an assistant under Mike Nixon with no previous head coaching experience.

The Redskins were limping into their new home by the river.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part three, Football and Race.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part One

What came before

Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, former home of the Washington Redskins, celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2011, on October 1st. Fifteen years gone are the stadium's football days of tailgates, bouncing bleachers, noise and home field advantage. Today RFK sits, an aging memorial to past glory, slowly decaying by the Anacostia River, still looking down East Capitol Street toward Capitol Hill and the government that gave birth to it, then nearly took it away.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Race and Football
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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When quarterback Ralph Guglielmi and the Redskins jogged off the field for the last time to end the 1960 season, a 38-28 loss to Sonny Jurgenson and the Philadelphia Eagles, the once-proud Washington NFL franchise was in complete freefall. The team had won one game that season, and a total of four over the two season tenure of head coach Mike Nixon.

Season ticket subscriptions had been below ten thousand for three years and Griffith Stadium, the twenty-five thousand seat baseball stadium the Redskins had called home since moving to Washington in 1937, was showing every bit of its fifty years of continuous service.

Much as it must seem a generation ago to today's fans that the Redskins were a feared team in the 1980s and early 1990s, so it must have felt to those fans in 1960 about the dominant teams of the 1930s and 1940s, when Slinging Sammy Baugh and the Redskins appeared in six NFL Championships in a ten year span. The Redskins had fallen on hard times.

The horizon was bright though. Washington had the number two overall pick in the 1961 draft, and were set to move into their new, fifty thousand seat, federally funded municipal stadium just down the street from the US Capitol for the 1961 season.

But before the field that would later be known as RFK Stadium could become the new home of the Redskins, before it could assume its place of honor in the hearts of Redskins fans and be iconic in the NFL community by its name alone, the Redskins would be forced to confront the modern realities of racial integration, risk losing the stadium altogether, and navigate a playing field as political as the city of Washington itself.

In the end the Redskins would integrate, the last NFL team to do so, and be rewarded immediately with a future Hall of Fame player. Later the team would be forever linked by tragedy with the man most responsible for the team's racial integration.

This is the story of RFK Stadium.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part two, Government Intervention.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Coming Tomorrow: The History of RFK

Sunday best

Last Saturday, a Washington milestone passed: The fiftieth anniversary of the opening of RFK Stadium. It was precisely fifty years ago, 1 October of 1961, that the Redskins played their first game in what was then known as DC Stadium. The Redskins would play every home game there for the next thirty-six years, through the 1996 season.

The stadium, the experience, the emotion, the home field advantage all became part of the culture of the nation's capital. Redskins fans over a certain age (40? 35?) get wistful just at the mention of RFK.

Now, it has been fifteen years since the Redskins played at RFK. Fifteen long seasons in Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, later known as Redskins Stadium, now known as FedEx Field. None of it is the same, nothing in that stadium captures anything of the experience of RFK.

I worry that Washington and Redskins fans at large are losing this part of our history. Why do I worry?

Because this milestone went largely unnoticed. Last week, Tom Boswell of the Washington Post wrote a column on the occasion, it was mostly a misty eyed revisitation of his youth, the early days of RFK and what it meant to have that thing in your neighborhood. A colleague told me Andy Pollin and Steve Czaban and Thom Loverro discussed the occasion on The Sports Reporters on ESPravda 980 this week, wondering aloud if RFK was not drifting out of memory and into lore.

It should not. I will not be letting this moment pass without giving RFK Stadium its proper due. All through the Redskins bye week, we will be running a special eight part series on the history of RFK Stadium, how it came to pass, how it was almost taken from us, and how the Redskins became forever intertwined with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Starting tomorrow. Only on Curly R.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Curly R: The Year In Exile

Outside looking in

*Sigh* I've been downgraded.

At first I thought it was just one level, from superfan to fan.

Later though I realized I have no idea what is happening with the 2011 Redskins and who plays for them. Barry Cofield is the last addition I remember.

Tim Hightower? You mean the guy from Arizona with the fumbling problem? Donte Stallworth? Isn't he the guy that ran a guy over in Florida?

Nope, don't know any of them, not the draft picks, not the post lockout pickups. That is when I realized my downgrade was a two level demotion, from superfan through fan straight to casual fan. There is only one level left below me now, observer, before sweet football oblivion.

And I do not even care. I was already mad at the team for botching the post Joe Gibbs transition, sandbagging Gregg Williams from the job by trumping up some bullshit story about betraying coach Gibbs over the Missing Man Formation after Sean Taylor's death, note carefully here that Gregg Williams IS NOT the guy I thought should have the job.

Dan Snyder then promptly turned the team over to the one guy everyone knew could not manage his way out of a paper bag, shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato, they wait around for a top shelf candidate that was never coming and promote Jim Zorn, the coordinator they had stupidly hired before a head coach, as the candidate of last resort.

The team then spent two years eating itself as Vinny tried the old dodge where he was responsible for hiring coach Zorn but not for his results, those two stopped speaking, then Dan soured and fired Vinny then fired Zorn on the plane ride home from the last game.

In come these two football professionals, general manager Bruce Allen and head coach Mike Shanahan, both of whom have great football pedigrees, their first move? To trade two picks to a Division rival for a perennial Pro Bowl quarterback they can count on for a couple of seasons until they get the offense where they want it.

But they don't do that. Instead they nitpick Donovan McNabb's footwork and practice ethic after the guy had only been to six Pro Bowls, won five Division titles, been to five Conference Championships and one Super Bowl, while not giving him any new targets to throw at and utterly failing to plan at the tailback position.

And in so doing squander an opportunity to install and stabilize a new offense and develop young players by focusing like a laser beam on how this guy that has been successful his whole career is just not perfect for us. Wah fucking wah.

Donovan had to be sacrificed because the Shanahans can do no wrong, that is axiomatic.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the ball Jim Haslett was busy destroying a perennial top ten defense, one with experienced players and a history of savvy coaches that could flex with talent, forcing the switch from an historical 4-3 to the more trendy 3-4. Players were moved into new positions and out of places where they had performed well for years.

And in so doing squander an opportunity to maintain some continuity in what is historically the best part of the team while a new offense can be installed and stabilized.

Too many variables in play, too many plates in the air.

And so the result of that 2010 season was an unmitigated disaster, one in which those two picks for Donovan were squandered to the Eagles, Donovan was benched and dragged under the bus, those Eagles, Donovan's former team, went for 59 on Monday Night Football, the night the team announced Donovan's quote contract extension unquote. Three games later Donovan was benched for the rest of the year.

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That's just the stuff in the game. Off the field the team was busy pushing fans away as well.

The owner is suing newspapers. All these years and the guy cannot just sit back and let the football do the talking.

They ripped out ten thousand seats from Redskins Stadium, the somewhat absurd plan announced at the time was to create standing room only party decks, yet now that the seats have been ripped out along with supporting sections of upper deck concrete, and construction on no decks has begun, it seems transparently obvious to me that the team has no intention of building decks, that removing seats was all about reducing capacity because people are not renewing tickets and no one is there to buy them in replacement. As anyone that has read this blog or listened to me over the past decade will tell you, the million mile long season ticket waiting list simply does not exist.

Sure ticket prices did not go up, thank you Mr. Snyder sir, a beer bought at your seat is now nine bucks.

And I did not even mention Albert Haynesworth. Until just now.

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The season then ended and the lockout began, two greedy camps, owners and players, arguing nakedly right in front of you over who should have more of your money, in all the negotiations, the recriminations and pontifications, which party was not at the negotiating table for those six months? You. And then the lockout, after a summer of grim warnings of ZOMG NO FOTOBALL IN 2011!!!1!! just COINCIDENTALLY happens to end right as training camps were to open, the only game that was lost to the whole drama? Yep, the Hall of Fame Game, the one played in a neutral stadium where no one gets guaranteed ticket revenues.

So now, after the players did not work out all summer while coaches could still meet and overthink their gameplans, after a hurried free agent period of extreme player movement, do you really think we are set to see quality football in the NFL before Thanksgiving?

Going to be a sloppy season.

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And so I went poof and that was it, I have not had the energy to put pen to paper for this blog since February 2011, and that was for a 2008 story. In the offseason I found other things to occupy my time:

I coached my sons' lacrosse team, the under-nine Fort Hunt Purple Pelicans, we went 2-5-1 with nine rookies on a thirteen man roster, we peaked at the end of the season and I expect we will improve heading into the 2012 season.

I also watched a crapload of college lacrosse including my alma mater the University of Virginia winning their fifth national championship.

I bought a decent bicycle and recommitted to bike commuting, my ride is twelve miles each way each day, I logged 1242 miles on the road from the start of the lockout to the end. My wife also bought a road bike and now we go on vacations based on where and how far we can ride. I have not lost any weight but all my dimensions have changed and I look a hell of a lot better.

I also spent another crapload of time watching Grand Tour bicycle racing, the Tour de France and currently the Vuelta a Espana, I missed the Giro d'Italia because it was during lacrosse season.

I bought a bunch of bicycle tools and taught myself bicycle maintenance, many summer nights I would have spent writing about football, instead I spent in the shed with Tony Almeida refurbing old bikes, I have tuned up all five operating bikes we own, rebuilt two others from the hubs up and have three in queue for complete refurb. Just last night I FINALLY finished my first bartape job. Ever try wrapping bartape on a drop handlebar? To do it right is a fucking bitch.

Now I am working on a public policy slash advocacy project to increase bicycling's profile in the nation's capital. Maybe someday I can ride my bike to a Redskins game.

So yeah, while football was forgetting about me, I was forgetting about it.

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And then when it came back, I was not one of those guys in a forgiving mood. All the league apparatus cared and care about was getting back to status quo AND FAST! Do you read the papers or listen to sports talk radio or even the league owned Sirius NFL Radio? Do you ever hear about the lockout and what it meant and means to football this season? Of course not, it is not in anyone's interest to dwell, have you seen the NFL commercial that's all like, It's Back to Football?

So that brings us to the 2011 Redskins season, I did not follow the post lockout frenzy of signings or training camp, I watched some of the Colts preseason game and also one other one that was on in the background at a party, I think they won that one too, I missed final cuts and read with a yawn that Rex Grossman was the guy over John Beck, the shrieking ExtremeSkins fanboys will be calling for Becks within four games. I may even be at a preschool open house when the Redskins kick off against the Giants on Sunday afternoon.

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So here is where I say thank you for all the emails, comments and text messages wondering where Curly R has been all offseason, to everyone reading this, I am not signing off. Curly R is not gone, it is, has been and forever will be, my creation and my outlet, all I ever wanted out of Curly R was to be a part of the discussion, to help make the Redskins a better football team. Over the past five years I have learned a lot about football and I am grateful for every pageview, every comment and every email.

Five years and I do not think the team really wants to get better. Maybe they do and this Bruce Allen slash Mike Shanahan regime will hit an upswing, it will not happen this year, I am looking at a 5-11 to 8-8 record AT BEST this season, another season with temporary players in key positions.

Curly R is not gone, it just has nothing to say right now, superfans have blogs, casual fans do not. As any Redskins fan over the past two decades can tell you, winning is not the only thing that draws fans to a team, what draws fans to a team is the feeling that their emotional investment is rewarded with smart football people making good decisions for both the short term and long term health and success of the team. We all know Dan Snyder does not own the team, we do, Dan is just the steward.

When the Redskins and football win me back, you will see Curly R back to daily posting. Do you hear that guys?

Win me back.



Photo by me.