DR. KING AND EARLY BROWNS WERE ON SAME PAGE

By STEVE KING

Monday is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we recognize and honor the tremendous contributions of the late, great social activist.

It is also a good time for this website to remember how the early Browns teams, long before Dr. King burst onto the scene, epitomized the things – equality and opportunities for African Americans – that he would go on to espouse.

It came with the Browns, through the efforts of founding head coach Paul Brown, permanently breaking the color barrier not just in pro football, but in pro sports overall, when two eventual Pro Football Hall of Famers, middle guard Bill Willis and fullback Marion Motley, both African Americans, took the field for the team’s first game on Sept. 6, 1946.

That’s a full eight months before baseball’s Jackie Robinson, who is largely given credit for breaking the color barrier, was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947. In fact, Robinson, when he was about to join the Dodgers, contacted Willis and Motley to get some advice as to how to what he should expect.

Brown was not shy about shaking up the status-quo and adding African Americans to his team, as, in 1947, he signed punter/tight end Horace Gillom. For almost all of the rest of the pro football teams at that time, such moves weren’t even on the radar screen.

Gillom had played for Brown when he was the head coach at Massillon High School. Also while at Massillon, Brown was impressed with the talent of Motley, who played for rival Canton McKinley.

As for Willis, a Columbus East High School product, he was an All-American on Brown’s 1942 Ohio State team that won the school’s first national championship.

Years later, in 1969, the Browns had one of the first African American assistant coaches in the NFL in former star running back Ernie Green.

 So, hats off to Paul Brown and the Browns for leading the way in something that was as important off the field – socially — as it was on it.