Doug Williams, Vince Evans & the History of Black Quarterbacks in the NFL

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is unsung history, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to unsung history on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. On September 17, 1920, in the Hupmobile Showroom in Canton, Ohio, a group met to found the American Professional Football Association. At the beginning, the association, which would soon rename itself the National Football League, had trouble finding good players, and unlike Major League Baseball at the time, Black players were welcomed, albeit in small numbers. Starting in 1933 though, the league segregated via a gentleman's agreement, possibly at the instigation of Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, who would later be the last owner to integrate his team. In 1946, the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles, and petitioned to use The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Because the Coliseum was publicly owned, Black sports writer, Halley Harding insisted that the team should integrate to get to play there. Los Angeles officials agreed, and the Rams hired UCLA stars, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. In the same season, the newly formed Cleveland Browns, of the All America Football Conference, brought on Ohio natives Bill Willis and Marion Motley. Even as the league began to reintegrate, racist stereotypes kept teams from drafting Black players into so called "thinking positions," like quarterback. Black players who started at quarterback in college would be drafted into the NFL, only to be converted into running backs or wide receivers. In 1967, the NFL and the American Football League agreed to merge, beginning the modern Super Bowl era of the NFL. Marlin Briscoe is considered the first Black quarterback to start an NFL game in modern NFL, when he started the last five games for the Denver Broncos in the 1968 season. He threw 14 touchdown passes that season, but was released at the end of the season, and later converted to a receiver. Over the next decade, Black quarterbacks slowly entered the league. It wasn't until 1979 though, that two Black quarterbacks started a game against each other. On September 30, 1979, in Chicago, in what CBS called, "The Battle of the Bombers," Vince Evans started for the Chicago Bears, and Doug Williams started for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As Dave Brady wrote in The Washington Post, "The Doric colonnades rimming Soldier Field were appropriate backdrops today for a game that showed the National Football League is catching up with the sociological progress of the nation." Williams and the Bucs beat Evans and the Bears, 17 to 13. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  4:26  
Douglas Lee Williams was born on August 9, 1955, in Louisiana, to Robert and Laura Williams. He told people he was from Zachary, the nearest town, since he was sure people wouldn't know his home community of Cheneyville, so small that he joked they couldn't hang out on the corner because, "There was only one road running straight through."  In Cheneyville, about 25 miles northeast of Baton Rouge, Williams grew up in poverty in a house that didn't even have running water until he was 14. After high school, Williams headed to Grambling, a historically Black college in northern Louisiana, where he played for coach Eddie Robinson. Partway through the 1974 season, Williams had his first career start against Mississippi Valley State, where he threw for 225 yards and two touchdowns. In his ensuing college career, Williams went 36 and seven in his starts, leading his team to three Southwestern Athletic Conference Championships. He was twice named Black college player of the year, and was fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting. In the 1978 NFL draft, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers chose Williams in the first round. The Bucs were a recent expansion team that had started their time in the NFL 0 and 26, so they were not exactly a powerhouse when Williams joined them. Williams helped turn things around, and in the five seasonshe started, the Bucs went to the playoffs three times, including one trip to the NFC Championship game. Despite his success, Williams was the lowest paid starting quarterback in the league, and he sat out the 1983 season when the Bucs refused to meet his salary demands. After two years in the USFL, Williams returned to the NFL, leading the Washington Redskins to victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII. He was named Super Bowl MVP, throwing a then record 331 passing yards. It was the first time in NFL history that a Black quarterback won a Super Bowl. Williams retired a few years later, and moved on to coaching at various levels, from high school to professional. In 1998, he succeeded Eddie Robinson as head coach at Grambling. He's currently the senior advisor to Washington Commanders president, Jason Wright.

Kelly Therese Pollock  7:41  
Vincent Tobias Evans was born on June 14, 1955, the second of four boys born to Robert and Reva Evans in Lancaster, South Carolina. When he was a toddler, they moved to the southeast side of Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1971, the federal government forced Greensboro to integrate their schools, upending established high school football teams. Vince Evans went to Ben L. Smith High School for his junior and senior years, where one of his assistant coaches said he was, "one of the best I ever saw as far as tenacity." Evans had one college offer, to a historically Black college, North Carolina Central, but he refused to sign. Instead, he sent a highlight tape to the University of Southern California. They weren't ready to admit him, but suggested that he attend Los Angeles Community College to bring up his grades and show what he could do on the field. By the 1975 season, he was USC starting quarterback. At USC, Evans played under Coach John McKay, who later coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In 1977, Evans led USC to a 14 to six Rose Bowl victory over Michigan, and he was named MVP of the game. In the 1977 draft, the Chicago Bears selected Evans in the sixth round, with the 140th overall pick. It wasn't until his third season that Evans had the chance to start a game, going 0 and three that year. In 1981, he started all 16 games, throwing 2354 yards. But with the bears slumping, the coach was fired and Evans was booted to backup. Evans left for the USFL for a couple of seasons, and returned to the NFL in 1987, playing for the Los Angeles Raiders as backup quarterback for the next nine years. He retired after the 1995 season in which he made three starts at 40 years old. After his football career, Evans worked in real estate. He's currently the president and CEO of a company that sells football helmet themed K cup coffee machines. As of September, 2024, three Black quarterbacks have won the Super Bowl: Doug Williams with the Redskins in the 1987 season, Russell Wilson with the Seattle Seahawks in the 2013 season, and Patrick Mahomes with the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2019, 2022, and 2023 seasons. Super Bowl LVII in February, 2023, between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, marked the first time that two Black quarterbacks faced off in a Super Bowl, with Mahomes starting for the Chiefs and Jalen Hurts starting for the Eagles. Warren Moon is the first and so far, only Black quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Moon is also the only player inducted into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. He played his first six seasons with the Edmonton Eskimos when no NFL teams showed any interest in drafting him. Joining me now is Dr. Louis Moore, Professor of History at Grand Valley State University, and author of, "The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback."

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:14  
Hi, Lou. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Louis Moore  12:16  
Thank you for having me.

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:18  
Yes. So I would love to hear how you came to write this book. I know you have a couple of other books on sports and race, but how you came to write this particular one.

Dr. Louis Moore  12:29  
Yeah. So first, like, one of the things I do as a historian, and the only thing I'll do as scholarship, I'm pretty picky about that, is, is really tell the story of America through the Black athlete, right? And so as you said, I had two other books, one's about boxing in the 19th century. The other one's about the Civil Rights Movement and the Black athlete. And so I wanted to tell another story, and it was covid. It was 2020. I had a sabbatical coming up the following year, which I lost because of covid, and had to wait another year, but I still got it. And I was just kicking around ideas. And I knew I wanted to do something with football. I knew I wanted to do something with the Black quarterback. And then I started to talk to folks like, hey, is this possible? The other thing I wanted to do was write, you know, for a public audience. I'd done that, you know, in short form, you know, 1000 word pieces, but I wanted to write a book. And so I really had to find something captivating. And so if I was going to write this book about the Black quarterbacks, I had to think about what would it be? You know, would it be this big, long book that has every quarterback in there? And if so, who? How would I pitch that? Who would want to read that? It turns out that between the time I thought what I was going to do and the time I actually finished this book, two of those books came out right? So luckily, I didn't go that route. And then I was just, you know, going through eBay, looking up some some quarterback stuff, going through my notes I had, and I discovered this 1981 it's called, "Pro Football Magazine." And it had Doug Williams, who, you know, I know it's like, one of the most famous quarterbacks ever, and I had Vince Evans, who most people know, but I the most people don't know, but I know. And I said, wow, it's interesting. Why are they both in this together? And I started to read these parallel articles. I said, "You know what? This is the story." And from that moment on, in the summer of 2020, the moment in the middle of covid, I said, "This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make it work." And and the hardest part about making that work is one guy everybody knows, the other guy nobody really knows. And so how do I make that important? And that's what I did for about three years of researching or writing, trying to tell that story. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:37  
Can you talk a little bit about the kind of research you did, the sources you were looking at? And I get the impression reading the book, that you must have watched a lot of game tapes as well. 

Dr. Louis Moore  14:46  
What I did is, I did a lot. So people know me as a historian, and they know me as a researcher. So I'm at a small R2 or some say, teaching school, and we don't have a, we don't have a big budget. And so what I've always done is newspapers, right? It doesn't cost money to get a newspaper. We could use interlibrary loan. So I, that's what I'm known for, right? I have files and files. So for example, that civil rights and the Black athlete book called, "We Will Win the Day," I, you know, PDF, every single sports page of like newspapers from like 1955 to 1968. I have every, every Ebony and Jet. So I already had that stuff going in, and then there was the extra stuff, right? The, you know, newspaper.com gets better every year, they add on more. So I was like, let me get that subscription. Um, I have a subscription to what we call SABR, or this was the Society of American Baseball Research, and that could get you the Black history newspapers, and then I just hit eBay, like, hard, like, I would just randomly buy Pro Football Magazines from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. If it said, oh, it's talking about this guy, or it looked interesting on the cover, I would get that. And I would try to get like, them in groups. Like, if you know, I could get like, eight for 20 bucks, even if I didn't use the other seven. And I was like, "Yeah, this is what I have." So I had, like, these magazines, you can't see it now, but all over the place, and that's what I did. I read everything, uh, newspapers, magazines, and I also watched film. So like a lot of these games, luckily, they're on YouTube. It's probably pretty illegal to have them on there, but they're there and and so I'm not complaining. So for the game, you know, the introduction, I start with the game first two modern Black quarterbacks started against each other, Vince Evans and Doug Williams and I, and that's the 1979 and I watched that a million times. I watched it when I was on the couch. I watched it when I was working out on the treadmill or something like that. Obviously I was going really slow, but I just, you know, over and over again, so I could understand the nuances of the game and what they were doing. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  16:47  
So I want to talk a little bit about the stereotypes that they were both facing, the reasons that Black quarterbacks were having trouble getting positions in the NFL. So and some of them are, they just feel so deeply racist when you hear it. And this wasn't that long ago. This history is not that old. So can you talk a little bit about what, what it was people were saying about Black quarterbacks?

Dr. Louis Moore  17:13  
Yeah, so everything, right? Anything to keep them out of that position for so for the number one thing, though, it's really relating race to lack of intelligence. And so what happens early in pro football, if you look at it? I think I had this line and introduction say like it looked like by the late 1960s that Bull Carter was forced to pick an integrated team right, because down the middle of the field there were no Black guys because that was seen as thinking positions. So quarterback, center, middle linebacker, safety, all those guys were thought to be, have to be smart. And so the knock on the Black quarterback, just because he was black didn't matter what school you went to, if he was like a Wisconsin, which is a great school, or Michigan, that didn't matter, was that he couldn't think. So that was number one. The other thing that come up was this idea of courage, right? We think of a quarterback, as the most courageous person, because he stands there, and at any time, one of 11 guys could come at him, and they're 250 pounds, they're 350 pounds, and he has to stand there, right? And the knock was the Black quarterback would just run, because he's fast. And then that gets you to the other knock: he's fast. Why have him at this position when I could throw him at running back, cornerback or wide receiver, and that's what happened to a lot of these guys. So if you look in the 50s and 60s, you'll start to see more and more Black quarterbacks play at college, because the offense was suited to like kind of a very speed game. But as soon as they got to a pro they were done, right? They were too fast, and they switched over. And then there's like these little things, like his, his, his dialect, right? If most of these Black quarterbacks came from the south, and these white owners and coaches and general managers just thought white players couldn't understand them. The other thing that came up was leadership. Would white athletes follow? Now, if we look at the NFL today, it's about 70, 75% Black. In the 60s, it wasn't that, and so there was this real concern about, would the white offensive line, lineman from the south listen to the Black quarterback? And if you look at those, those Doug Williams, Tampa Bay Bucs team, I think four of his offensive linemen are from, like the deep south, and it wasn't a problem. So what we discover as the more these guys play, we realize all this was just stereotypes to keep them out of position. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  19:33  
So I thought it was interesting as you were telling these parallel stories that the difference in upbringing and the difference in their experience with integration or lack thereof, in the case of Doug Williams, like how it differently prepares them for the NFL. If you're someone like Doug Williams, who's coming from you know, a Black school and then an HBCU, or if you're Vince Evans and you're coming from an integrated high school, and then going to USC. Could you talk a little bit about that and what what that meant for them as they got to the NFL? 

Dr. Louis Moore  20:06  
Yeah, I got I got so lucky when I was writing this story that they actually did have different lives, even though they were both born in the south, because it made the narrative to me so much better. So as you said, Doug, who's the big name, he grows up in rural Louisiana, Cheneyville. So it's a, it's a town so small that's not even on the map, right? It's just an all Black town, and he goes to all Black high school. Now it does integrate because of forced integration. That's so if you guys, if listeners have ever seen the movie, "Remember the Titans," just think this is when they're going to school. And so everybody's dealing with this in the South. It just so happens that Doug lives in an all Black community, so the white students like, yeah, we're not, we're not going to the Black school. But then he goes on to a Black college, a historically Black college, Grambling, which is at that time, probably top five football program in America regardless of size, regardless if it's integrated or not, it's one of the best. And he plays for a Black coach who now, when he retired in the 1980s all time winningest coach, he's a legend, and it's also a coach who, starting in the 1960s made it his mission that I'm going to get a Black quarterback as a professional proactive right? And so he changed his entire system in the 1960s to do that. How do I get a Black man in this game, well, he has he thought, well, he's got to be tall. He can't run, because the moment he runs, the NFL will say no, and he's got to throw the ball a lot in college. So his guys, even before Doug Williams, like a James Harris or Matthew Reed, did all this, and Doug was just the best of them. He was the one who followed next, whereas Vince Evans, also born in the south, rose up in North Carolina, but Vince grows up in a city, Greensboro, which is really the hub of the civil rights movement. It is where the sit ins take place in 1960. It is ,the best way to explain it when he's going to high school. It's Remember The Titans. It's only the fact that he's the Black quarterback that gets bused into the white school, though, right? Other Blacks there, there is a Black school, just like there was in that era, Remember the Titans was, but there's not a movie about that. There's a Black school in Greensboro, Dudley, but he doesn't go there. He goes to the white school, Smith, and he's the leader of integration. He's the face of it. And then, instead of staying in the south, he has an option to go to an HBCU. But he dreams big. And he says, "You know what, I'm going to USC." But when he goes to USC, USC is not a quarterback school. It's a running back school. And in fact, Vince Evans is the best way to put it, a running back. He plays in this old, outdated offense, the single wing, where they don't really throw it much they run. And it's only by sheer will that he says, "You know what, I'm going to be a quarterback," and makes himself a quarterback at a running back school. And so when they come to the NFL, they both come from the south, but as you said, they come from two different places, right? City, country, integrated, you know, HBCU, white coach, Black coach, and yet, they're trying for the same goal to be a Black quarterback in the NFL.

Kelly Therese Pollock  23:11  
So you were just talking a little bit about how the like, the type of offense that USC had. Before we started recording, I mentioned this, but I, you know, I grew up in the Midwest. I've watched a lot of football in my life, but I understand very little about offensive formations, except that there are different offensive formations. So can you talk a little bit about what how the game was changing, and what that meant for this style of play?

Dr. Louis Moore  23:35  
Yeah. So, so one of the things I did when I had to read this book is actually learn a lot about offensive formations. Like, when I was in the middle of this research, I was the most impressive teacher or professor if you played football, because I would just sit there rattle off stuff like, "Oh, they're in this formation." And, and I'd had ex football players in my class, just like, oh my gosh, this guy knows everything. I did. And I was just like, in my groove, but, but football up until the mid, let's say up until 1940 most of football is played what you would call the single wing offense. So we can go kind of pretty far back. So before the single wing offense is just an offense called the regular offense, and they wind up being in what you call, we would call now a T formation. So there's this, there's the offensive line, there's a quarterback right behind the center, and behind him, he has running backs kind of formed in the T and they would hand it off. So they're not even throwing the ball to like 1907, and so that's the formation you have. You have mass plays. And then if listeners remember the great school, Carlisle, it's a Native American boarding school, top powerhouse in football at that time, they have a coach, Pop Warner, who starts tinkering around with the offense and the rules once the NCAA allows for forward passing, and he comes up with a single wing. The best way to describe the single wing to someone, uh, today is there's this formation that was pretty popular that came out a few years ago, called the wildcat. Essentially, the ball is hiked the quarterback's in more of like a shotgun, so a couple yards away from the center, and he's able to run the ball, roll the ball, but really it's like 90% run inaccurate deep bombs. And that's how football was until 1940, and then along I know this long story short, the offenses change, right? It becomes T formation heavy. And what happens is, because these guys, Clark Shaughnessy is one of them, one of the innovators, he realizes that out of the T formation, you can get a better read on your defense, especially if you send a man into motion, you put out another wideout, and then from that moment on, the offenses switch. So by mid 1940s it's about 90% of this formation. But it also means that the quarterback is going to become the most important player, because he has to know all his plays, he has to read the defense. He also now has to throw the ball accurately, and all these innovative offenses are going to be developed from this formation. And so it really depends, once you get to the 60s, 70s, what you want to do as a coach? Do you want to run the ball? Do you want to trick, you know, the defense with with variations like a veer or triple option, or do you want to just kind of chuck the ball down the field? And each team had its own style of play. Now, if you're somebody who's going on to be a pro quarterback, that doesn't matter, because the NFL is only one running one offense. It's basically one offense still, still added some shotgun, but it's what you call the pro formation, or the T formation, right? The difference between the T formation, which is like a T behind the quarterback and the pro formation is they just took one of their running backs and put them as a slot receiver. Now you have multiple receivers to throw to. That's what the pros were doing. Now I noticed a lot, what a lot of colleges were doing to take advantage of like integration and their own stereotypes about Black athletes being better athletes, they started to put Black black athletes at the quarterback positions, not as throwers, but as runners. Starting in mid 60s and even the mid 70s, you had a lot of major programs even in the south with Black quarterbacks. They just weren't throwers. They're runners, so that by the time they got to the NFL, they're automatically either being switched, not making it, or having to go to Canada.

Kelly Therese Pollock  27:32  
So I thought it was so interesting that Vince Evans was so committed to playing quarterback that he when he starts playing for I think it's the Bears, he has it in his contract that he only wants to be quarterback. Could you talk a little bit about that? And, like, what kind of mindset that was, you know what that meant for him, and you know essentially what that meant for his career, then that he was like, "No, I'm gonna be a quarterback"?

Dr. Louis Moore  28:00  
Yeah. Like, to me, it's one of the most important things that happens, right? Because the other guys that came before him, there was none of that. It was take it or leave it for them, right? It was, and there were great guys who came before him, and they didn't have that option to say, "No, I'm only going to be a quarterback." What happens to a lot of Black quarterbacks, so Evans was drafted in 1977. Before that, if there was, as we said before, one inkling that this kid could run, he was done. He was somewhere else. And it was like, okay, is your dream to play in the NFL, or is it just to play this position that you'll never get a play? And a lot of coaches approached these guys and gave him that option, and they would choose others. They'd go, "Okay, I'll be a receiver, I'll be a cornerback." But Evan said, no, just give me that chance. He believed in his ability so much that if they just got to look at him, and I think in many ways, he was correct to think that, because he had a powerful arm, he could throw the ball 80 yards, right? And he was also fast. And he was like, well, built, right? He's like, 220, pounds, six foot two, of solid muscle. He's a great athlete. And so one look at him that could get him that next look, and that's what he was hoping for. But again, it was such a powerful move, because other guys could not do that, would not do that, but he was good enough, because he, you know, he goes to a big school, USC, he wins the Rose Bowl to, like, really challenge the Bears on that to say, "Look, just give me one, one opportunity. And you, you know, then, then, then I'll prove myself to you."

Kelly Therese Pollock  29:36  
And then Doug Williams is with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and he's with this team that's just terrible before he gets there. He really is part of what helps turn them around. But the fans, it seems, are so fickle and so like quick to turn on him, don't give him maybe the patience that they would a white quarterback. Could you talk a little bit about his experience and the difficulty of being back in the south, in the deep south, and the fan base and how they were treating him?

Dr. Louis Moore  30:05  
Oh yeah. So even every quarterback went, every Black quarterback went through it right? Like that was some stuff that, as we write this book, stuff gets cut. Like 50,000 words get cut. And so those other stories get cut to kind of maintain this narrative. But Doug's the first starting Black quarterback in the deep south, and that meant something right to a lot of people. Now, we don't talk about it now like that, but that really meant something, right? It's less than what? Oh, gosh, so he's drafted in '78, so we're, we're 10 years away from, you know, the civil rights housing. We're 13 years away from voting, 14 years away from Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Act, that a lot of things still weren't really integrated. And now you're the face of the franchise in the deep south, that, as you said, it is no good. I think they're like two and 26 before he gets there, and you're expected to start and you're expected to lead. And right when you get there, you hold out for a contract. Now, fans, I don't care if you're Joe DiMaggio, even when Joe DiMaggio held out in the 1940s fans didn't like that. So they're really not gonna like a Black quarterback being like, you know what? I need no more money. But he was right, because the blocks their owner, he says it several times. You know, was racist, but from the beginning, they tried to shortchange him. And and Doug was the most prolific college quarterback ever up to that point, and he's like, "You know what? You're treating me like just some other guy. I'm not." And, and even after he signs his contract, by the time it's time to renegotiate, he's the 54th highest paid quarterback in the league. So, so he was right, but from that moment, you know, fans like, oh, I don't know, I like this, but he was also, as a player, captivating because he had this big arm, right? As I say in the introduction. He has an arm made by God in a gun company. I mean, he has the best arm to lead. He throws these beautiful passes. And so as a fan of a terrible franchise. When you see him unleash that ball, you have to be like, oh, you know what, I might be a little racist, but I like this guy until things go wrong, and then it's like, you know what, he's Black and and it was just constant racism. At the end of his first year, someone sent a rotten waterman to him in the mail. He got called all kinds of names from the state. He's a hometown fan. So, you know, people would have signs like Doug's crew, right? Fans would come in, and then he would also hear the n-word. His coach, John McKay, who's a legendary coach, one of the greatest college coaches of all time. And it's also known as this, as I say, this kind of the Jackie Robinson of Black quarterbacks, even though, you know none of the disguise. But first he got called all kinds of names because he had Black quarterbacks, because he had a lot of Black players on his team, and he always stuck up for Doug no matter what, even when ownership didn't have his back, and they didn't. That's why he ultimately leaves to the USFL, even when fans were on him, his white coach, and I think that's important, had his back, and it really sets the template for others to follow. If you're going to have a Black quarterback, they're going to receive hate mail all the time. They're going to receive death threats all the time. If you're a white coach, you better have his back.

Kelly Therese Pollock  33:15  
I want to talk too a little bit about mentorship from I think James Harris, who was with the Rams, was mentoring both of them, if I remember correctly. And then later you talk about, I think, in the epilogue, that players like Doug Williams were then mentoring the generation of Black quarterbacks that came after them. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that? You know, especially when they can't maybe see anyone that looks like them as they're growing up. What it means to have someone to reach out to who understands? 

Dr. Louis Moore  33:47  
Yeah, you know what I realized through the research and reading everything is, as you come to realization, it's such a small fraternity, even nowadays, but back then, it was really small. So, so Harris, you know, his first year, I wouldn't say he didn't have anybody. So Harris gets drafted from Grambling in 1969 to the Buffalo Bills. And so that's the same team, like OJ Simpson's on it. And so a lot of the attention goes to OJ, but Harris starts his first game. Now what's interesting about that team? There is another Black quarterback on that team, Marlin Briscoe. Now, Briscoe was the first Black quarterback to ever start, modern Black quarterback to ever start. Does it the previous year, 1968 for the Denver Broncos. He was a great small school quarterback. Gets drafted as a defensive back. The Broncos in 1968 have three quarterbacks that go down, boom, boom, boom, and all of a sudden, they had to come to their cornerback say, "Hey, do you want to play quarterback?" And Briscoe lights up the the a NFL, right? That the teams haven't merged yet, and he's second and Rookie of the Year, and at the end of the year, we have no use for you. They go and cut him like just like that. And I was like, "Wow, how, you know? Why is this, you know?" And he pouts a bit, then winds up in Buffalo, and he has to play receiver. And Marlin Briscoe becomes all pro receiver. Never played the position in his life, but when Harris was going through everything, Briscoe was there, and I think it taught Harris the importance of needing mentorship in that moment, because Harris went through a lot of, I hope I could say crap on this, on this podcast, he went through a lot, and every time Briscoe was there for him. Briscoe, later on, gets into some really bad stuff, some heavy drugs, and stuff comes out of it, you know, clean on the other side, eventually, and Harris was they were like best friends, and helped him out a lot, but Harris returns that favor to other Black quarterbacks, and you think about it, when he's at the Rams and Doug Williams is at college, you know, Harris is getting on death threats, a lot of racism, but every day, he's picking up the phone and talking to Doug Williams at Grambling, and never mentioning to him what's going on, because he doesn't want Doug scared. When Vince Evans is at USC, he's struggling. There's, there are bumper stickers after the 1975 season that says, "Save USC football. Shoot Vince Evans" and Harris is there for him. And one of the things he tells him is, never switch your position, right? Don't listen to these racists and never switch your position. Believe in yourself. Another quarterback that's there in LA at the same time that Harris mentors is Warren Moon. Now Moon doesn't weren't like fans of football will know Warren Moon is a Hall of Fame quarterback. In fact, he's the only black quarterback right now in the Hall of Fame. He's actually the same draft class of Doug Williams, but doesn't get drafted because he says, you know, I'm not dealing with this racism going to Canada, but Moon's from LA, and so Moon has mentorship with James Harris. And even when he's in college, he's coming home. And so James sets the template for others to follow. And then later on, when there's more quarterbacks coming in the league, late 80s, early 90s, it's Doug Williams and James Harris who will come back and help out, even though Harris is out the league, and they still act as that. And then, as I mentioned in things towards the last chapter and even into the epilogue, all these Black quarterbacks got together in early 2000, like almost all of them who had ever played, and formed a mentorship group to help out the next guys. And they would show up for a while. For every Super Bowl, they would show up. They would talk to current Black quarterbacks in the league. And then also school young Black quarterbacks what to expect, right going to college or trying to make the pro and and it's, it's a really fascinating thing that this one position creates this, this long line of mentorship, because they know everything that goes into being a Black quarterback. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  37:38  
So then to bring it maybe into the present day. We of course, have some great Black quarterbacks now, one who has won several Super Bowls. Do you expect then that we will have more Black quarterbacks in the Hall of Fame, and that, you know, the that there's finally an expectation that, yes, of course, there's no difference, Black men can play quarterback just as well as white men, if not better. You know, do you think that there has been sort of a turning of the page?

Dr. Louis Moore  38:07  
So yeah, I do. I do. And if you look at the drafts, and you look at these, these recent Super Bowls, you'll see that. Now, I think a lot of people look at Patrick Mahomes, and just set them to a different plane, right? But they can't do that with Lamar Jackson, who is like a 4.4 40 guy. Like I say to a lot of people, Vince, there was Vince Evans before there was Lamar Jackson. So when listeners read this book, and you should read this book, just think about Vince Evans as being the Lamar Jackson of his time and and what that means that Lamar Jackson is a two time MVP. If you looked at drafts, back to back drafts now that we have two Black quarterbacks taking one and two and and so we're getting to a point where NFL teams are more comfortable taking them. Now the problem is, is what happens when they mess up? What happens when the process is too slow? And so someone like Justin Fields, who actually just got replaced by a Black quarterback, the first pick of the draft, a lot of the stuff when he was playing with the Bears, it was about the knock on him was about, well, can he read the defense? Can he process this information quick enough? And I think, like every quarterback gets that right, can you process this? A legitimate question that they all get asked. I think because of the history they get, because of the history of America and how we see Black people, and even today, right now, I won't get you a joke about your podcast, but now we say everything's DEI, right, like everything's DEI, even if you're running for the president United States. I think we look at these people differently, and I think we still kind of critique their game. Justin Fields is critiqued differently, because if he misses a throw now it's well, he processes things slow, and I don't think you can disconnect that from the history of America and the history of how this position was treated.

Kelly Therese Pollock  39:50  
You just mentioned that everyone should read the book. I agree. Can you tell listeners how to get a copy of the book? 

Dr. Louis Moore  39:56  
Oh, man. So one of the things I learned to do is, and I'm because I'm bad at this, is not tell people where, where to spend the money. They just spend their money get the book. So so some people like Amazon. It's on there for Amazon, if you're looking to buy it, like a Black bookstore Source Books in Detroit. It's a Black owned bookstore. I'll be doing a talk there in late October. It's a good place to have the links for that book. So it just really depends. It's everywhere. I got lucky. It's a trade deal, so it should be everywhere. And hopefully, let's cross our fingers that it'll be at your local Barnes and Noble. We'll see. I'm, I'm learning how that market works. Hopefully it gets into a few of them. I'm just, you know, I'm an academic, so, you know, we don't, we're not taught any of this stuff, you know, we learn, like, as we go, how this kind of marketing works for the big time, like, if it's an Academic Press, I could tell you where to get it. It's a trade press. So now we're just hoping that, you know, those those stores buy it and sell it to their customers. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  40:51  
Yeah, and I think it would make a great gift for dads and brothers and anyone you're looking for. As I was reading it, was thinking that my dad would get a lot more out of this book than even I do. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talk about?

Dr. Louis Moore  41:05  
No, no, no, no. I'm just, I'm just grateful for being on here. And I just hope people, when, when they read it, they appreciate it, right? I spend a lot of time just kind of thinking of the narrative and and and now thinking about the next, what's my next opportunity? Can I write another narrative? And I just hope people, you know, appreciate it, because there's not a lot, I don't want to do this, but there's not a lot of historians that get to do this, academics, that get to write a trade press, and there's not a lot of folks who get to write sports as as a trade press. So so I'm lucky, and I just hope people really enjoy it because, because really, honestly, when I wrote the book, I wrote it for for a public audience, I have a decent following on on Twitter. I'll still call it Twitter right, and a lot of these folks were in mind when I wrote it right. So, so the research, I put everything into it, the writing, trying to craft the right sentences and stuff like that. So I really hope people enjoy it.

Kelly Therese Pollock  41:54  
Yeah, yeah. I hope so too. I really encourage people to read it and and to remember just how very recent this history is. I mean, most of what you're talking about in the book is in my lifetime, and that's sort of incredible to think about.

Dr. Louis Moore  42:07  
Right, right? And one last thing, and any of you don't like sports, right? It's not a book, it's not just a book about sports, it's a book about America. And so whenever you read, you know, my books, just read them from that perspective. This is, this is a book about America, told through the lens of sports. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  42:23  
Well, Lou, thank you so much for speaking with me. 

Dr. Louis Moore  42:26  
All right. Thank you for having me.

Teddy  42:41  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode of suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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