Recognizing Ray Kemp, first Black Steelers player
Black and Western History rich history Pennsylvania’s Month of Black sports pioneers necessitates the highlighted recognition of Ray
Kemp, former Duquesne University tackle and, most significant, the first Black player in Pittsburgh Steelers history.
Kemp’s achievements precede by decades those of Jackie Robinson and our own Chuck Cooper (who finally seems to be getting the recognition that he so richly deserves through the hard work of his son Chuck Cooper III and others), and he remains grossly underappreciated today.
Ray Kemp was born April 7, 1907, in Cecil and a mere 20 miles away from his future alma mater, Duquesne University. Upon graduation from Cecil High School in 1926, he worked in a local coal mine for a year prior to enrolling at Duquesne.
While at Duquesne, he played for the legendary coach Elmer Layden, one of Knute Rockne’s “Four Horsemen” of Notre Dame fame and later an NFL commissioner. Kemp would become a starting tackle during his sophomore year and reportedly received honorable mention as a senior on some AllAmerican teams.
After graduating from Duquesne in 1931, Kemp agreed to play for his dear friend and former Dukes “gridder” Art Rooney, who ran a local barnstorming semi-pro team called the J.P. Rooney’s. Rooney’s team traveled across the country in search of football games to play before Pennsylvania blue laws were amended to allow pro football to be played on Sundays. While playing for the J.P. Rooney’s during that 1932 season, Kemp also coached line at Duquesne and was a “ringer” for the Erie Pros.
The next year, in 1933, Art Rooney was awarded an NFL franchise, Pirates, later and the the Steelers, Pittsburgh were born. Kemp chose to continue to play for Rooney and, at that time, was one of only two Black players in the NFL. After starting at tackle the first three games, he was cut by Pirates head coach Jap Dowds, who also happened to play Kemp’s position. Kemp left the team and went to work in a steel mill, but Art Rooney needed his old ringer and recalled Kemp to start for the Pirates against the New York Giants after the team had lost five of seven games. The night before the game at New York’s fabled Polo Grounds, Kemp was forced to leave the hotel. The team and the NAACP urged Kemp to file a lawsuit in response to the racial discrimination, but Kemp refused, fearing the backlash it would cause Rooney. In a 1994 article written by Vito Stellino of The Baltimore Sun, Kemp’s appreciation for Rooney was noted: “I always admired Rooney. He gave me a chance to be a pioneer.” Ray Kemp was the player who, even though it wasn’t discussed, began the Rooney Rule. Kemp went on to achieve much more as the director of athletics, coaching varsity football, basketball, and track and field at historically Black schools Bluefield State in West Virginia, Lincoln University in Missouri and Tennessee State. Despite being the NFL’s second Black player and one of only 13 in the NFL’s formative years, there were none from 1934 until 1946. Many believe the banning of Blacks in 1934 was a result of Major League Baseball’s ban, while others believe it resulted from then Washington team owner George Preston Marshall’s racist beliefs and a “gentlemen’s agreement” among team owners. Washington did not have a Black player until Bobby Mitchell in 1962.
Kemp laid the foundation in the NFL for much of what is taken for granted today, as did Robinson in Major League Baseball and Duquesne University’s Cooper in the National Basketball Association. Robinson and Cooper’s histories are undoubtedly better known than Kemp’s, likely due to the obscure nature of the NFL in the 1930s as well as the fact that there already had been Black players in the NFL at inception.
Nonetheless, Kemp has been recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame as one of the Black pioneers of the game. Kemp is also a member of the Duquesne University Hall of Fame, the Western Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, and was honored by the NFL as an honorary captain during the 75th anniversary season of the NFL at the Pittsburgh Steelers/ Colts game in 1994.
Black History Month’s nascence can be traced to 1926, when historian Carter G. Woodson declared the second week of February as “Negro History Week,” coinciding with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. While recognizing that Western Pennsylvania sports history is but a small part of Black history, a subject much larger than one man or one topic, it was often through sports that Blacks were given the opportunity to compete with and against white society. To that end, the woefully underappreciated achievements of Ray Kemp, both on the field and off, should be acknowledged and celebrated and moving forward mentioned in the same conversations with the most significant pioneering Black athletes.