Warren Moon became the first Black quarterback in the modern era to be inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame on Aug. 5, 2006.
There are few positions in sports that elicit the kind of power and awe as the football quarterback. The quarterback is
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This position for many years was reserved for white players alone. Even many successful Black high school and college quarterbacks today are converted to wide receivers or cornerbacks once they make it to the next level. Sports writers still often describe Black pro quarterbacks in terms of their physical abilities and not their mental prowess.
Warren Moon’s long, successful career and admission into the Hall of Fame has helped shatter the racist stereotypes surrounding Black football players and the quarterback position.
Moon was born in Los Angeles in 1956. He played high school football at Hamilton high school and was highly recruited by college teams. But nearly every college wanted Moon to play another position. Racism surrounding the quarterback position was more prominent during the beginning of Moon’s career in the late 1970s and early 80s than it is today.
Moon eventually decided to play at the University of Washington, primarily because the team allowed him to play quarterback. During his collegiate career, Moon led the Huskies to a Rose Bowl victory in 1978 over the favored Michigan Wolverines. He was also awarded the game’s most valuable player award. Yet, no National Football League team would draft Moon as a quarterback, despite his remarkable talents and college career.
He then turned to the Canadian Football League, where he lead the Edmonton Eskimos to five league championships, won the outstanding offensive player award twice and set countless other records. In 2001, he was inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame.
After his tremendous success in Canada, the NFL’s Houston Oilers finally signed Moon as a quarterback in 1984. This began his stellar NFL career: nine pro bowls, 3,988 pass completions for 49,325 yards, 291 touchdown passes, 22 rushing touchdowns and 1,736 yards on the ground.
Warren Moon ranks among the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time, and yet he had to struggle very hard just to play the position in the league. This is a clear sign of the entrenched racism in pro football, reflective of the United States as a whole.
Moon recently said, “I take enormous pride in being the first Black quarterback inducted into the Hall. This honor continues to legitimize that Black quarterbacks can succeed at every level, and that we have a chance to be honored on football’s greatest stage.”
He also recognized the racism surrounding how he was perceived by pro football owners and managers. Even after he passed for 3,338 yards in his first NFL season, Moon noted that he was considered an “aberration”: “People would say things like, ‘You’re special. You’re one of the few,’ thinking they were complimenting me. But what were they really trying to say?”
The long struggle for equality in football
When given the chance, Black quarterbacks have been tremendously successful in the NFL. Moon is not the only one.
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The success of Black quarterbacks comes as no surprise. Many NFL players, including some of the most beloved superstars, are African American.
Although the current NFL is well-represented at virtually every position by African American athletes, it was not always the case. The league had several Black players until 1933, one year after George Preston Marshall became the owner and president of the Washington Redskins. Marshall’s policies not only excluded Black players from the team that he owned, but also influenced the entire league to bar African Americans altogether until 1946.
Black players were only allowed to come back into the NFL by the financial success of a competeing pro football league—the All-America Football Conference, which allowed Black people to play. The lure of more profits induced the NFL to permit some Black players to enter the league.
Still, the arch-racist Marshall refused to sign Black players until threatened with civil rights legal action by the Kennedy administration in 1962. The action stated that Marshall had to reverse his discriminatory practices or he would be in violation of the lease on the then-new D.C. stadium. The stadium was controlled by the U.S. Dept. of Interior at the time.
The government’s move came only after the Black-led civil rights movement had begun sweeping the nation in the mid-1950s. Even the highest seats of capitalist governance couldn’t ignore the massive push for equality and were forced to take action against the most deeply entrenched racist bosses. Black players began to play in the league again, many rising quickly to prominent positions on their teams.
The Denver Broncos were the first modern-era team to have a African American starting quarterback, Marlin Briscoe.
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Through the 1970s, the door remained closed to African American quarterbacks for many NFL teams. Then came Warren Moon, Doug Williams and many others who followed.
In his speech at the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony, Moon acknowledged the struggle of Black quarterbacks throughout the years: “A lot has been said about me as being the first African American quarterback to go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s a subject that I’m very uncomfortable about sometimes, because I always wanted to be judged as just a quarterback. … I accept the fact that I am the first, but I also remember all those guys who came before me and blazed that trail.”
Moon’s success helped expose the racist fallacy that Black quarterbacks can’t “make it” in pro football. The induction of a Black quarterback into the pro football Hall of Fame is a belated but welcome development in the struggle for equality.
