cover image Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins

Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins

Thomas G. Smith. Beacon, $26.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8070-0074-8

Although this provocative title promises a focused account of how President Kennedy forced the Redskins to integrate in the early 1960s%E2%80%94making them the last team in the NFL to do so%E2%80%94historian Smith covers a much broader swath. He opens with a brief prologue establishing the showdown, but it isn't until midway through the book that he returns to describe how Stewart Udall, Kennedy's secretary of the interior, forced Redskins founder and owner George Marshall to draft black players by threatening to cancel the team's lease on D.C. Stadium (later renamed RFK Stadium). The first half details the Redskins' origins in Boston in 1932 (the team moved to Washington in 1937) on through the 1960s. Smith offers a comprehensive look at the life of Marshall, an innovator in the development of the modern NFL, who Smith paints as a "hidebound racist." Despite Kennedy's name prominently in the title, JFK played only a sideline role in the conflict. Readers hoping for insight into another facet of his presidency will be sorely disappointed, but those interested in the story of Marshall and the first 30 years of the Washington Redskins will find much to relish. (Sept.)