The player who broke an NFL color line

As the 1949 NFL draft approached, George Taliaferro was certain he wouldn’t be selected. The three-time All-American at Indiana University thought his skin color would disqualify him, because while the NFL’s ban on AfricanAmerican players had ended in 1946, no black player had yet been drafted by an NFL team. Then halfway through the draft, Taliaferro was selected by the Chicago Bears—his favorite team growing up. But his color barrier– breaking selection came too late: A week earlier, he had signed with the Los Angeles Dons, who played in the more integrated All-American Football Conference (AAFC). Taliaferro considered handing his $4,000 signing bonus back to the Dons and joining the Bears, until he spoke with his mother. “She said, ‘What did you promise your father?’” he later recalled. “I knew right away. I had to be a man of my word.” Taliaferro was raised in Gary, Ind., where his father worked in the steel mills and his mother was a homemaker, said The New York Times. The star of his high school football team, Taliaferro established himself “as one of the top players in college football” during his three seasons at Indiana University. “Fast, strong and elusive, he played halfback, quarterback, defensive back, and kicker.” In 1945, he rushed 719 yards and led the Hoosiers to an undefeated season and its only outright Big Ten title. Despite his triumphs on the field, Taliaferro was “the subject of routine segregation” at Bloomington, said The Indianapolis Star. He couldn’t eat in the campus cafeteria, live in a dorm, or swim in the pool. “The thing I liked about football was hitting people,” he said in 2008. “It allowed me to vent my frustrations with being discriminated against.” After Taliaferro’s rookie season with the Dons, the “AAFC was absorbed into the NFL,” and Taliaferro went on to play for a string of NFL teams, said the Chicago Sun-Times. After successful stints with franchises including the New York Yanks, the Baltimore Colts, and the Philadelphia Eagles, Taliaferro retired from football in 1955. He became a social worker in Baltimore and a dean at the city’s Morgan State University. He later returned to Indiana as a professor and a champion of diversity initiatives. “I have been and I remain,” he said in 2008, “a thorn in the sides of those who would think they are better than I am.”