Remembering a pioneer
Bobby Mitchell did more than integrate the Washington Redskins.
Less than a week after the 1962 NFL draft, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell got a late-night phone call from George Preston Marshall, founder and thenowner of the Washington Redskins.
“That’s a helluva trade we just made,” Marshall told Modell.
“What trade?” a startled Modell asked Marshall.
Modell told me about that conversation a few years before he died in 2012. Unbeknown to the owner, his coach, Paul Brown, had traded versatile All-Pro running back Bobby Mitchell to the Redskins in a package that included Washington’s first-round draft choice that year, Syracuse running back and Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis.
Modell never forgave Brown, a Hall of Fame coach, but the trade was the main reason the Redskins were allowed to play at D.C. Stadium, then owned by the federal government.
Until Mitchell, a Hall of Famer who died Sunday at age 84, arrived, Washington was the last NFL team without a black player. When training camp opened in 1962, Mitchell was one of three black athletes on coach Bill McPeak’s roster, joining former Steelers guard John Nisby and fullback Ron Hatcher from Carnegie High School.
President Kennedy’s secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, had been pressuring Marshall, an unabashed segregationist, to integrate, and Udall told him unless it happened, his team would be playing elsewhere.
Mitchell immediately demonstrated the idiocy of Marshall’s shameful policy. In his first home game, Sept. 30, 1962, Mitchell, whom coach Bill McPeak (who played for both Pitt and the Steelers) had moved from running back to flanker, caught seven passes for 147 yards and two touchdowns in a 24-14 victory against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“You’re performing for a group of people and you’re not sure if they want you, so I had a lot of mixed emotions about that game,” Mitchell told the New York Times. “I still don’t believe I performed as well as I did, knowing how I felt all week long getting ready.”
Mitchell performed brilliantly over the next seven years before he retired. He seemed on track to make more history as the NFL’s first black general manager. After Washington coach George Allen left to lead the Los Angeles Rams after the 1977 season, Mitchell thought he would get the job. Instead, president Edward Bennett Williams chose Bobby Beathard. But Mitchell stayed in the Redskins organization until he retired in 2003 after 41 years as a player and team executive.
In Cleveland, he teamed with Jim Brown to make up what I consider the greatest backfield in NFL history. Brown was bash; Mitchell flash.
In Washington, with Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen pitching and flanker Mitchell, Hall of Fame receiver Charley Taylor and tight end Jerry Smith catching, every Sunday was an offensive extravaganza. In 1966, Taylor led the league in receptions, with Smith second and Mitchell fourth. Surely, that’s the greatest receiving trio in NFL history.
Bobby Mitchell always said those exploits were how he wanted to be remembered.