Black Players in American Professional Football - 1927 Through 1933

1927 Through 1933

After 1926, 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 played one season with the Chicago Cardinals in 1928, and David Myers played for two New York City-based teams in 1930 and 1931. (Ethnic minorities of other races were also 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, 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.)