1933: Football at the Depth of the Great Depression

by Mark C Bodanza

Overview

In 1933, America was in the midst of the Great Depression. The depth of despair created in the American people earned the panic a singular place in the history of the nation's economic turmoil. Football, a uniquely American game, weathered these hard times, adapted, and made some of the pain a little easier to endure. In 1933, author Mark C. Bodanza examines the important role football played in the midst of the nation's historic crisis. Bodanza recounts this dramatic year both on and off the field of the professional and college gridirons and analyzes it in the context of the times. He tells the story of a momentous season shared by the high schools of Fitchburg and Leominster, Massachusetts, a rivalry dating back to 1894. In the prior thirty-nine seasons, the teams had played each other forty-nine times. But, 1933 was different; the game had never had such significance. More than ever, Depression-wary Americans needed a reprieve from their cares and concerns. Football provided a welcome relief. Including period photos, 1933 narrates how the sport of football-which has created some of the nation's most magical moments in sports-was impacted by the Great Depression in a variety of ways, some with lasting consequences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781450245241
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/09/2010
Pages:	164
Sales rank:	1,113,161
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

Read an Excerpt

1933

Football at the Depth of the Great Depression

---

By Mark C. Bodanza

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Mark C. Bodanza
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4523-4

---

Chapter One

A Nation's Hope

Morning sun and mild temperatures bathed Doyle Field as the Leominster and Fitchburg football squads prepared for their traditional holiday game. In 1933, Thanksgiving came as late in November as possible. November 30 was the last Thursday of the month. Each team wore silk football pants; Fitchburg donned red, and Leominster blue. The fabric shimmered. Ten thousand fans waited in anticipation; partisans crowding the grandstands. Leominster's blue and white dominated the north side, and a throng of red-and-gray-cloaked Fitchburg fans occupied the opposite seats. Earthen embankments that sloped toward each end zone accommodated another three thousand fans for whom there were no seats.

It was the fortieth year of the rivalry between the two central Massachusetts schools. No one could remember a more important game. The match was billed as a pinnacle of the rivalry, a game of games. 1933 was proving a momentous year both on and off the football field.

The nation was in the midst of an economic collapse, ultimately called the Great Depression. The depth of despair felt earned the panic a singular place in the history of American financial turmoil. The Great Depression was preceded by an age of contradictions. The twenties were years of innocence, unbridled optimism, and technological advance. That decade saw the mass production of the automobile, transatlantic telephone service, and a rapid electrification of the country's landscape. It was also a time of excess and wild speculation, filled with bootleggers intent on quenching the thirst of a nation bristling against Prohibition.

When the stock markets crashed on October 29, 1929-"Black Tuesday"-Americans were caught off-guard. The decline was rapid and precipitous. Bank failures rose from 659 in 1929 to 2,294 in 1931. Nearly one-third of American workers were without a job by the winter of 1933. Bank holidays were declared to stem the streams of frightened depositors seeking to withdraw their savings. Hunger haunted every corner of the nation.

The crisis required leadership to protect the American psyche. Ironically, the impoverished looked to a man of privilege in the presidential elections of November 1932. The president-elect, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, faced a huge challenge. Despite the advantages of an education at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia Law School, FDR knew adversity. Stricken by polio in 1921, he required the aid of crutches or a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The press shielded his physical disability from public view.

Even before his illness, Roosevelt demonstrated determination in the face of inauspicious circumstances. His years at Groton were marked by a lack of athletic prowess, an ingredient necessary for real distinction at the school. The headmaster, Endicott Peabody, believed sport integral to maturation and football was at the top of his list. To Walter Camp, "father of American Football," Peabody wrote, "I am convinced that football is of profound importance for the moral even more than the physical development of the boys." The smallish Roosevelt, who lacked any experience in team sports, found a place on the second worst of eight football teams at the school. Perhaps Peabody was correct. FDR never forgot his boyhood days at Groton, the lessons learned both in and out of the classroom. He drew on those experiences early in his presidency.

The first one hundred days of Roosevelt's administration produced a dizzying array of legislative initiatives aimed to right the American economy and establish an equitable distribution of wealth. Government grew quickly, and new agencies emerged, known by acronyms still familiar today. Virtually lost to history is the fact that the whole program almost ended before it ever got off the ground.

On February 15, 1933, the president-elect visited Miami to address a convention of Legionnaires. Roosevelt delivered his speech seated on the top of the back seat of an open car. Roosevelt conversed with Chicago mayor Anton Cermak after the public talk concluded. Cermak, who had supported FDR's primary Democratic Party rival, Al Smith, was in Miami to court the president-elect's assistance for Chicago's ailing school district, which could not afford to pay its teachers. Just forty feet away stood Giuseppe Zangara, a thirty-two-year-old Italian bricklayer. The despondent Zangara had a disdain for the elite. Suddenly, he raised a revolver purchased in a North Miami pawnshop for eight dollars. Five shots were quickly discharged. The assassin's aim was disrupted when Mrs. Lillian Cross instinctively hit his arm with her handbag. Roosevelt was spared by a matter of inches. Cermak was not. The Chicago mayor was critically wounded and died on March 6, just two days after FDR was inaugurated as America's thirty-second president.

Zangara was unrepentant. At his trial he testified, "The capitalists killed my life. I suffer, always suffer. I make it fifty-fifty-someone else must suffer." When asked if he wanted to live, the assassin replied, "No. Put me in the electric chair." He had no remorse. His only sorrow was in failing to kill Roosevelt. One of Zangara's wishes was indulged when he was executed on March 20, 1933.

By all accounts, Roosevelt was fearless throughout the whole ordeal. Those who were with him in the hours just after the assassination attempt found him unfazed. Raymond Moley, a Columbia University political science professor who was assisting with policymaking and speechwriting, was impressed. "I have never in my life seen anything more magnificent than Roosevelt's calm that night ..." This courage would prove essential to the first few weeks of Roosevelt's administration. Circumstances were dire in the spring of 1933.

During his relatively brief inauguration speech, Roosevelt called for God's guidance on a number of occasions. Earlier that morning he established a precedent by attending a prayer service. Roosevelt told his soon-to-be Postmaster General James Farley that "I think a thought to God is the right way to start off my administration." Reverend Endicott Peabody of the Groton School presided over the service, which included readings from the Book of Common Prayer. Roosevelt selected the hymns "Faith of Our Fathers" and "O God, Our Help in Ages Past." During the speech itself, the new president famously declared to the millions listening by radio around the nation:

This great nation will endure as it has endured, and will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

The inaugural address resonated with a public seeking confidence in government, and perhaps more importantly, hope.

FDR acted quickly. On his first full day as president, he proclaimed a national bank holiday to stem disarray in the financial sector of the economy. His second proclamation on March 5 called Congress back into session. More action followed just as decisively though not without considerable deliberation. FDR saw himself as a quarterback. During a press conference on April 13, 1933, he said:

It is a little bit like a football team that has a general game plan against the other side. Now the captain and the quarterback of that team know pretty well what the next play is going to be and they know the general strategy for the team; but they can not tell you what the play after the next is going to be until the next play is run off. If the play makes few yards, the succeeding play will be different from what it would have been if they had been thrown for a loss. I think that is the easiest way to explain it.

FDR's use of a football metaphor to describe his new administration's approach to the Depression was ironic, as the sport itself was on the threshold of change. 1933 was a year of great uncertainty. Not all of the decisions made during these uncertain days would be wise ones.

Chapter Two

Barrier of Shame

Leominster had welcomed black athletes to the gridiron for as long as anyone can remember. The handful of African-American families living in Leominster during the first half of the twentieth century contributed mightily to the fortunes of Leominster High School football. The Hazards, Chesters, Munroes, and Dupees sent a number of talented young men to the field. As early as 1928, Charlie Hazard not only played for Leominster but served as his team's captain.

When the Leominster and Fitchburg football players began their campaigns in 1933, race relations in America were not on their young minds. The same could not be said of their forebears. Both communities had hosted abolitionist activity as early as the 1840s. Each town maintained stops on the Underground Railroad, and both drew the rebuke of President Millard Fillmore after residents helped rescue the fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins in February 1851.

The Minkins case was the first to arise in New England after the passage of a new fugitive slave law, one feature of a legislative package championed by Senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Henry Clay of Kentucky. The Compromise of 1850 was predicated more on the notion of saving the union than principle. Fugitive slave cases were removed from state jurisdiction and the sympathy of Northern juries. New cases were brought before federal commissioners who were paid five dollars if a fugitive slave was freed and ten if the runaway was sent back to slavery. Minkins's hearing before a commissioner was averted when a group of free blacks in Boston stormed the courthouse and spirited the prisoner away. After Underground Railroad stops in Dorchester and Concord, Minkins arrived in Leominster at the home of Jonathan and Frances Drake. After spending an evening with the Drakes, he was transported to the West Fitchburg home of Benjamin Snow before booking passage on a train through Vermont and into Canada and freedom.

On February 19, 1851, President Fillmore, at the urging of Webster, issued a proclamation in response to the Minkins case, calling for Massachusetts citizens to obey the law and respect all military and civil authority. Furthermore, Fillmore called for the prosecution of those persons who aided or abetted the "flagitious offense." Of all the conspirators, Frances Drake of Leominster was the boldest and least deterred. A committed abolitionist, she had hosted some of the greatest anti-slavery notables in her Franklin Street home during the two decades before the Civil War. Her callers included William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass. Notably Mrs. Drake supported women's rights, a notion that placed her in the minority even among fellow reformers. Even more pointedly, Mrs. Drake fervently believed in racial integration, an idea not supported by the vast majority of abolitionists. In an 1843 letter to Maria Chapman Weston of Boston, Drake expressed the following:

One lady to test my principles ask(ed) me if I would marry a coloured man: I answered very frankly (as my mother ever prompted) yes-if he was as worthy in every respect as a white man ought to be. You have no idea what a talk it has made all over town.

Ninety years later in 1933, the owners of the fledgling National Football League were not interested in racial integration. In fact a movement was afoot to segregate the thirteen-year-old league. The reasons for segregation were transparent. Some owners feared that their fans might share their bigotry and reject the idea of black players taking positions away from whites. Why this regrettable course of prejudice was followed by all the team owners is not entirely clear.

Black players were not numerous in the NFL before 1933. Nonetheless, their contributions were significant. Fritz Pollard of the Akron Professionals played and served as his team's head coach between 1920 and 1926. In the first year of the league, Pollard, a star running back, led Akron to an undefeated season and the first NFL championship. In the years between 1920 and 1933, a dozen other black players accomplished much in the face of adversity and prejudice. In 1933, all that changed.

In that pivotal year, George Preston Marshall, a native of Washington DC, became the majority owner of the NFL's Boston Redskins. Marshall was a segregationist. Unfortunately, he was persuasive as well. Marshall brought improvements to the game, among them the formation of two divisions and a championship game featuring the top team from each division. The Redskins owner worked closely on league improvements with the owner of the Chicago Bears, George Halas. In February 1933, the pair implemented rule changes that promoted more scoring and excitement, changes that would boost the NFL's fortunes in the future. Sadly, they also established a color barrier in professional football.

One explanation for the actions of Marshall, Halas, and the other owners, beyond base bigotry, involved jobs and the Depression. Some theorized that owners believed that white fans would disapprove of blacks competing for jobs with white players. Whatever their motivations, there is no satisfactory explanation for the unfortunate stain on NFL history.

The NFL passed its first thirteen years, if not fully integrated, then at least not prohibiting black players. Its second thirteen years featured no black players. In 1946, the curtain of shame began to lift. Two professional teams led the way. One belonged to the NFL and the other to the new All-America Football Conference (AAFC). One team adopted change willingly and the other transfigured itself of necessity.

One year before Branch Rickey famously signed Jackie Robinson to a Brooklyn Dodgers' contract, beginning the integration of baseball, the Cleveland Rams were on the move. The Rams' owner had received permission from the league to leave Cleveland for Los Angeles. The move was motivated in part by competition with the AAFC which planned to establish a franchise in Los Angeles owned by actor Don Ameche. The new team was to bear the name "Dons." Both the Rams and the Dons were competing for a lease to play at the same venue, the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The Los Angeles Coliseum Commission, a public agency, operated the Coliseum. The commission held a hearing on January 15, 1946 to evaluate the two proposals. In attendance was William "Hally" Harding, a prominent member of the local black community. Over nearly two decades, Harding compiled a résumé of sporting accomplishments that included participation in college football as well as black-only baseball and football leagues. Harding went before the commission at the request of thirty colored newspapers. The official record does not include Harding's remarks. Witnesses suggested that he was persuasive. Commissioner Roger Jessue rose to speak. His mind turned to UCLA football star Kenny Washington, whose race precluded him from a place in the NFL. Washington was twenty-eight by 1946, a member of the LAPD. He also starred on the gridiron as a member of the Hollywood Bears of the Pacific Coast Football League. Jessue made it plain: "If our Kenny Washington can't play, there will be no pro football in the L.A. Coliseum."

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from 1933 by Mark C. Bodanza Copyright © 2010 by Mark C. Bodanza. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................xi
Acknowledgments....................xvii
Introduction....................xxi
1. A Nation's Hope....................1
2. Barrier of Shame....................6
3. The Game Reshaped....................12
4. Professional Football's First Championship Game....................23
5. Convincing Starts....................31
6. College Football and the Great Depression....................74
7. Gangsters and Folk Heroes....................84
8. Fitchburg's Football Season....................94
9. Leominster's Season....................107
10. Thanksgiving 1933....................122
11. Humble Leaders....................133
Afterword....................141
Table of Games....................145
Bibliography....................149
Index....................153