Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the athletic fields of UCLA, as both excelled at football and baseball. Yet they remain worlds apart in our nation’s consciousness.
Major League Baseball celebrates Robinson every year for breaking baseball’s longstanding color barrier. But no one pauses to remember that Washington broke the NFL’s modern-era color barrier as a member of the Los Angeles Rams in 1946 — a full year before Robinson’s milestone.
But, he isn’t even in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Some people are trying to change that. Just in time for Black History Month.
Now, a new documentary, “Hero from the City of Angels,” detailing the rise of Washington, who received a standing ovation from a crowd of 80,000 in the Los Angeles Coliseum during the last game he ever played, in 1948
(READ more about him and WATCH a player’s video at NFL.com)