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Recruiting Southern white players, he said, was a business decision-he didn’t want to offend his white Southern radio and TV audience. He claimed that the Redskins lacked blacks because the team recruited players from segregated Southern colleges. Marshall sounded off to a reporter: “I am surprised that with the world on the brink of another war, they are worried about whether or not a Negro is going to play for the Redskins.” He downplayed the discrimination charge: “All the other teams we play have Negroes does it matter which team has the Negroes?” The problem was that his lawyers overlooked the Park Service and Interior.”
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“He had good reason to scoff,” Udall told me, “as his lawyers had gotten an ‘airtight’ lease giving him a free hand from the Stadium Armory board. Marshall wrote a defiant letter to Udall claiming he’d broken no laws, had signed a lease on that basis, and had turned the matter over to his attorneys. “I never realized so many fans were interested in a football team that won only one game.” He joked that if Udall could get Lenny Moore-the Baltimore Colts’ star African-American running back-he’d certainly use him. “I don’t know what the hell it’s all about,” Marshall told reporters. The New York Times and Washington Post ran front-page stories on Udall’s ultimatum. Udall pointed out that the lease also contained language stating that the Redskins would comply with all Interior Department regulations: “He knew that when he did it.” But at Marshall’s insistence, the clause relating to players was removed.Ī reporter asked if Marshall could cry foul-the team’s owner had negotiated a lease in good faith, and now the terms were being altered.
The owner had no problem with the provision as it pertained to stadium employees. Udall told reporters that when the Armory Board negotiated the lease with Marshall in 1959, the board inserted nondiscriminatory hiring language. With Kennedy’s approval, on March 24 Udall notified Marshall that the Interior Department had signed off on regulations prohibiting job discrimination by parties contracting to use “any public facility in a park area.” Udall added that “there have been persistent allegations that your company practices discrimination in the hiring of its players.” At a news conference, Udall said that if Marshall continued his ban on blacks, he’d be denied use of the new D.C. Udall didn’t anticipate that he’d provoke a showdown. The Interior Department owns the ground on which the new Washington Stadium is constructed, and we are investigating to ascertain whether a no-discrimination provision could be inserted in Marshall’s lease.”
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Udall notified JFK in his weekly report on February 28, 1961: “George Marshall of the Washington Redskins is the only segregationist hold-out in professional football. Knowing that JFK and attorney general Robert Kennedy were committed to ending racial discrimination in hiring, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall decided to challenge the hiring practices of Redskins owner George Preston Marshall. In March 1961, Kennedy issued an executive order creating the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, aiming to stop discrimination in federal employment and federally contracted jobs. Yet he failed to deliver on a promise to abolish discrimination in federally subsidized housing and to seek civil-rights legislation ending discrimination in public places. Duncan, to the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. In his first months in office, JFK appointed more than 40 blacks to important federal positions and named the first African-American, John B.
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