Details of the history of black players in professional American football depend on the professional football league considered, which includes the National Football League (NFL); the American Football League (AFL), a rival league from 1960 through 1969 which eventually merged with the NFL; and the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), which existed from 1946 to 1949.
Early years
Charles Follis is believed to be the first black professional football player, having played for the Shelby Blues from 1902 to 1906. Follis, a two-sport athlete, was paid for his work beginning in 1899.
From its inception in as a loose coalition of various regional teams, the American Professional Football Association had comparatively few African-American players; a total of nine black players suited up for NFL teams between 1920 and 1926, including future attorney, black activist and internationally acclaimed artist Paul Robeson, as well as famed race record producer J. Mayo Williams. Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall were the first black players in what is now the NFL in 1920. Pollard became the first (and until 1989, only) black coach in 1921; during the early-to-mid-1920s, the league used player-coaches and did not have separate coaching staffs.
1927 through 1933
After , all five of the Black players that were still in the subsequent National Football League left the league. Several teams were kicked out of the league that year, and with a large number of available, talented white players, Black players were generally the first to be removed, never to return again. For the next few years, a black player would sporadically pop up on a team: Harold Bradley Sr. played one season with the Chicago Cardinals in 1928; Phil Scott started at the end position for the Orange Tornadoes in 1929; and Dave Myers played for the Staten Island Stapletons in 1930 and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1931.
In contrast, ethnic minorities of other races were fairly common. Thanks to the efforts of the Carlisle Indian School football program, which ended with the school's closure in 1918, there were numerous Native Americans in the NFL through the 1920s and 1930s, most famously Jim Thorpe. The Dayton Triangles also featured the first two Asian-Americans in the NFL, Chinese-Hawaiian running back Walter Achiu and Japanese-Scottish quarterback Arthur Matsu, both in 1928, and the first Hispanic players in the NFL, Cuban immigrant Ignacio Molinet of the 1927 Frankford Yellow Jackets and Jess Rodriguez of the 1929 Buffalo Bisons, played in the NFL during this time frame.
1934 to 1945
In 1933, the last year of integration, the NFL had two black players, Joe Lillard and Ray Kemp. Both were gone by the end of the season: Lillard, due largely to his tendency to get into fights, was not invited back to the Chicago Cardinals despite in 1933 being responsible for almost half of the Cardinals' points, while Kemp quit of his own accord to pursue a coaching career (one that turned out to be long and successful). Many observers will attribute the subsequent lockout of black players to the entry of George Preston Marshall into the league in 1932. Marshall openly refused to have black athletes on his Boston Braves/Washington Redskins team, and reportedly pressured the rest of the league to follow suit. Marshall, however, was likely not the only reason: the Great Depression had stoked an increase in racism and self-inflicted segregation across the country, and internal politics likely had as much of an effect as external pressure. Marshall's hostility was specifically directed at the black race; he openly allowed (and promoted) Native Americans on his team, including his first head coach, Lone Star Dietz, widely believed to be a Native American at the time. The choice of Redskins as his team name in 1933 was in part to maintain the native connotations that came with the team's previous name, the Boston Braves. Another reason for Marshall's anti-black sentiment was to curry favor in the Southern United States. Marshall's Redskins had a strong following in that part of the country, which he vigorously defended, and he stood up against the NFL's efforts to put expansion teams in the South until Clint Murchison Jr.'s extortion attempt after he acquired the rights to "Hail to the Redskins", the team's fight song, and threatened not to let Marshall use it unless he got an expansion team in Dallas.
By 1934, there were no more black players in the league. The NFL did not have another black player until after World War II.