Victory: How a Lawyer, a Minister, and Twenty Professional Football Players Helped End Segregation in Virginia and Professional Sports

*Alex Long is the Williford Gragg Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law. Thanks once again to Becca Kite for her reference librarian skills. Thanks to Bill Mercer for his comments on an earlier draft. Thanks also to Danita Wilkinson and Nathaniel Benjamin for their insights.Show More

Introduction

As Chapman Law Dean Matthew Parlow has noted, “[a]thletes in professional sports have long sought to use their platforms as celebrities to bring greater societal awareness to issues of social justice and racial inequality.”¹ 1.Matthew J. Parlow, Racial Protest and Racial Progress in Professional Sports, 31 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 239, 253 (2022).Show MoreOne of the clearest examples is the 2020 NBA player boycott following the shooting death of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a boycott that spread to several other professional sports organizations.² 2.Id. at 242–43; Marc Stein, Led by N.B.A., Boycotts Disrupt Pro Sports in Wake of Blake Shooting, N.Y. Times (Sept. 4, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/sports/basketba‌ll/nba-boycott-bucks-magic-blake-shooting.html.Show MoreMultiple media outlets covering the 2020 boycott referenced an event that garnered national attention in October 1961, when several members of the Boston Celtics and St. Louis Hawks refused to play in a preseason NBA game in response to discrimination in a hotel in Lexington, Kentucky.³ 3.See, e.g., Des Bieler, Bill Russell Led an NBA Boycott in 1961. Now He’s Saluting Others for “Getting in Good Trouble,” Wash. Post (Aug. 27, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.co‌m/sports/2020/08/27/bill-russell-nba-boycott/.Show MoreSome of the stories referred to this incident as the first professional athlete boycott related to a civil rights issue.⁴ 4.Dustin Jones, As a Racial Justice Activist, NBA Great Bill Russell Was a Legend Off the Court, NPR (Aug. 21, 2022, 5:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2022/08/01/1114795613/racial-j‌ustice-pioneer-nba-bill-russell [https://perma.cc/E3TX-99XE]; Darren Hartwell, Bill Russell’s Civil Rights Legacy Rivals His On-Court Accolades, NBC Sports Bos. (Feb. 7, 2023, 8:51 AM), https://www.nbcsportsboston.com/nba/boston-celtics/bill-russells-civil-righ‌ts-legacy-rivals-his-on-court-accolades/284760/ [https://perma.cc/3KSD-V3CU].Show More

Just two months earlier, however, another group of professional athletes—this time, a group of football players—had agreed to boycott a professional athletic event in protest of racial discrimination in Roanoke, Virginia. The athletes did so at the behest of a local minister, who was a prominent civil rights activist. At the same time, a local civil rights lawyer was pursuing litigation to challenge the discrimination at issue, specifically enforcement of a Virginia law that prohibited integrated seating at public events, including professional sporting events. But that summer, the lawyer, the minister, and twenty football players would use a preseason NFL game to bring attention to the injustice of Virginia’s law and challenge its constitutionality. In the process, they would play an important role in helping to end segregationist practices in the NFL, establishing precedent for future racial protests by professional athletes and helping to bring about an end to Virginia’s discriminatory law.

This Essay tells the story of this largely forgotten event from the summer of 1961. The event represents a success story in the history of the civil right movement and illustrates how both legal and extra-legal methods were necessary to achieve the goals of the movement.⁵ 5.See William P. Quigley, Ten Ways of Looking at Movement Lawyering, 5 How. Hum. & C.R.L. Rev. 23, 34 (2020) (stating that social justice lawyers “are always part of a team that mostly includes non-lawyers” and rejecting the assertion “that lawyers led and shaped the civil rights movement”).Show MoreMuch of the focus on how the civil rights movement brought about change in the law focuses on the role that lawyers played.⁶ 6.See generally Jack Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (1994) (chronicling the history of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the civil rights movement).Show MoreBut the history of civil rights advancement is a history not just of how lawyers helped change the law and society, but how non-lawyer organizers and activists were equal partners in the undertaking.⁷ 7.See Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Elites, Social Movements, and the Law: The Case of Affirmative Action, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 1436, 1522–23 (2005) (“[T]he moral suasion of participatory democratic groups of nonlawyers, and typically nonelites, was integral to law’s movement from a Jim Crow regime to a constitutional order in which formal equality was the norm.”). See generally Jennifer Gordon, The Lawyer Is Not the Protagonist: Community Campaigns, Law, and Social Change, 95 Calif. L. Rev. 2133 (2007) (describing the role of lawyers in supporting community-led campaigns for justice); Ascanio Piomelli, Appreciating Collaborative Lawyering, 6 Clinical L. Rev. 427 (2000) (advocating for an approach of collaborative lawyering).Show More

This Essay focuses on how the lawyer at the center of the boycott in Roanoke, along with those who came before and after him, used the legal process to help change the law as well as societal norms regarding racial segregation. At the same time, the Essay explores how the non-lawyers involved in this episode played a vital and complementary role in the desegregation effort. In short, the Essay explores how Virginia’s segregation laws were toppled through a combination of legal action and activism. Most importantly, the Essay memorializes the forgotten role that these individuals played in helping to desegregate professional sports and in laying the foundation for future protests by professional athletes.

1.  Matthew J. Parlow, Racial Protest and Racial Progress in Professional Sports, 31 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 239, 253 (2022). ↑
2.  Id. at 242–43; Marc Stein, Led by N.B.A., Boycotts Disrupt Pro Sports in Wake of Blake Shooting, N.Y. Times (Sept. 4, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/sports/basketba‌ll/nba-boycott-bucks-magic-blake-shooting.html. ↑
3.  See, e.g., Des Bieler, Bill Russell Led an NBA Boycott in 1961. Now He’s Saluting Others for “Getting in Good Trouble,” Wash. Post (Aug. 27, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.co‌m/sports/2020/08/27/bill-russell-nba-boycott/. ↑
4.  Dustin Jones, As a Racial Justice Activist, NBA Great Bill Russell Was a Legend Off the Court, NPR (Aug. 21, 2022, 5:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2022/08/01/1114795613/racial-j‌ustice-pioneer-nba-bill-russell [https://perma.cc/E3TX-99XE]; Darren Hartwell, Bill Russell’s Civil Rights Legacy Rivals His On-Court Accolades, NBC Sports Bos. (Feb. 7, 2023, 8:51 AM), https://www.nbcsportsboston.com/nba/boston-celtics/bill-russells-civil-righ‌ts-legacy-rivals-his-on-court-accolades/284760/ [https://perma.cc/3KSD-V3CU]. ↑
5.  See William P. Quigley, Ten Ways of Looking at Movement Lawyering, 5 How. Hum. & C.R.L. Rev. 23, 34 (2020) (stating that social justice lawyers “are always part of a team that mostly includes non-lawyers” and rejecting the assertion “that lawyers led and shaped the civil rights movement”). ↑
6.  See generally Jack Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (1994) (chronicling the history of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the civil rights movement). ↑

7.  See Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Elites, Social Movements, and the Law: The Case of Affirmative Action, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 1436, 1522–23 (2005) (“[T]he moral suasion of participatory democratic groups of nonlawyers, and typically nonelites, was integral to law’s movement from a Jim Crow regime to a constitutional order in which formal equality was the norm.”). See generally Jennifer Gordon, The Lawyer Is Not the Protagonist: Community Campaigns, Law, and Social Change, 95 Calif. L. Rev. 2133 (2007) (describing the role of lawyers in supporting community-led campaigns for justice); Ascanio Piomelli, Appreciating Collaborative Lawyering, 6 Clinical L. Rev. 427 (2000) (advocating for an approach of collaborative lawyering). ↑