George Taliaferro, 1st black drafted by NFL team, at 91
George Taliaferro, the star Indiana running back who in 1949 became the first black player drafted in the NFL when George Halas and the Chicago Bears took him in the 13th round, has died. He was 91.
The university spoke with Mr. Taliaferro’s family about his death in Mason, Ohio, senior associate athletic director Jeremy Gray said yesterday. Other details were not disclosed.
Mr. Taliaferro was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981. In the NFL, he played seven positions and earned Pro Bowl honors in 1951-53.
He was the leading rusher on Indiana’s 1945 Big Ten championship team that went 9-0-1, the only undefeated team in school history. During his four years in Bloomington he led the Hoosiers in rushing twice and passing once.
It wasn’t an easy transition — the segregation in Bloomington was jarring — and Mr. Taliaferro told the Indianapolis Star he once called his father in Gary, Ind., and suggested he might come home and work together in one of the U.S. Steel plants. His dad wouldn’t hear of it.
“I lay awake all night trying to figure ... out ... why ... he wouldn’t help me,” Mr. Taliaferro told the Star. “And it came to me: That for the first 18 years of my life, every day I left my father and mother’s house to go to school, they told me two things: ‘We love you; you must be educated.’ It came to me that the other reason for my being at Indiana University ... on the campus at Bloomington ... Indiana — was to be educated.”
Indiana said university President Herman Wells once intervened with a local restaurant to make sure he and Mr. Taliaferro would be able to eat there. When the manager balked, Wells said he would make the restaurant off limits to the student body and the manager relented.
The Bears selected Mr. Taliaferro with the 129th overall pick — a potential dream come true for the Gary native who grew up following the Bears. The problem was that Mr. Taliaferro had signed a week before the draft with the Los Angeles Dons of the rival All America Football Conference, which had welcomed black players since its debut in 1946.