Pitarresi: Woody Strode, NFL Pioneer

   

The late Woody Strode was one of my favorite character actors.

 

He played the black gladiator who defeats Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus” and was one of the outlaws blown away by Charles Bronson in the atmospheric opening scene in “Once Upon a Time in the West.” I remember him best for two of his roles the John Ford films “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “Sgt. Rutledge.” In the first he plays John Wayne’s hired hand - the movie is terrific, by the way, and Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance is one of the most imposing film villains of all time – and in the second, he is a black cavalryman who is unjustly accused of rape and murder. It’s one of the very first and very few Westerns in which a black man is the hero.

 

Way before that, however, Strode, of mixed black and Native American heritage, was an outstanding decathlete and great football player at UCLA. He, Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson started in the Bruin backfield in 1939. Everyone knows Robinson broke baseball’s color line in 1947. What almost no one remembers is that Strode and Washington, past their primes, broke football’s color line in 1946. By what some say was a silent agreement, no blacks had played in the National Football League since 1933.

 

Alexander Wolff has a terrific story in the current Sports Illustrated on the topic, mostly centered on Washington, but with plenty of stuff on Strode, too. Be assured, being the first black players in the league in 13 years wasn’t easy.

 

“Integrating the NFL was the low point of my life,” Strode once said. “If I have to integrate heaven, I don’t want to go.”

 

Strode died in 1994 at age 80. I have no idea if he did get to heaven – I hope so – and I sure hope he didn’t have to integrate it.