Abstract
Sports have long been a prominent frontier where issues of racism, exploitation, labor, and power have been debated and contested. In this respect. North American football has been no exception and. indeed, has represented a particularly rugged stretch of terrain on this frontier. The National Football League (NFL), which had only a handful of black players in its early decades and which included legendary artist, civil rights activist, and socialist luminary Paul Robeson was a whites-only enterprise during the Depression years and World War II. Black players of this era were largely relegated to secondary leagues or formed their own all-black barnstorming teams, like the Harlem Brown Bombers and Chicago Black Hawks. Though black reintegration began during the 1940s, for decades thereafter, unofficial quotas capping the number of black players on team rosters were commonplace, and black players were effectively barred from positions thought to involve considerable leadership, like center and quarterback.