The Washington football team is changing its name...are the Atlanta Braves next?
Will there be an end to Native American mascots?
Written By: King Williams
Edited by: Alicia Bruce
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TOP STORY: The Washington football team will likely be changing its name
In one of the more surprising stories this year, another symbol of racism that has languished for decades is going away.
This comes as the official word is that the NFL’s Washington Redskins are retiring the team mascot, logo, and name of the sports franchise.
This comes as ongoing changes attributed to the outburst of protests in relation to the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, that has evolved over recent weeks. These initial protests on police brutality have evolved into larger protests on other societal issues related to racism in America.
These protests have led to forceful action both by protestors and local governments regarding the removal of racist symbols such as Confederate monuments, names of army bases, street names, and controversial television episodes.
But the name ‘Redskins’ dates back longer than the Washington football team, with that particular name carrying a darker etymology.
The History of the term ‘Redskins’
The term ‘Redskins’ initially revolved around how European colonists described Native Americans, not how Native Americans described themselves. And with that, there is debate regarding when, why, and how skin color became used to describe Native Americans in the United States.
Especially regarding when the term was used and the context used. With questions ranging from whether or not the term was initially meant to be intentionally harmful, descriptive, or both.
The reason why so many people are offended by the Washington football team, in particular, is that by the time the franchise was founded in 1932 it was already considered a slur and for its connection to violence against Native Americans.
Specifically, the notion of ‘Redskins’, has been associated with the bountied killing of Native Americans since at least the 1800s but is based out of a tradition of killing dating back to early colonial America.
Native American Bounties
One of the earliest documented cases of usage of the term ‘Redskins’ and the explicit connection to bountied violence came during the 1800s.
This bountied violence, the setting of prices for the bodies and body parts of Native Americans were quite common in both British/French colonial America and post the establishment of the United States. Some of the earliest documented cases of offering bounties for Native Americans emerging in the 1600s as European colonizers would often set the prices for the killing of Native Americans.
And one particularly horrendous practice—scalping, would eventually become synonymous with the bounties of the ‘Redskins’.
Scalping
Scalping, the forced removal of hair and skin at the top of the skull by bladed instruments was something that existed in both the pre-colonial United States and Europe.
Since the first colonists arrived in the United States there have been violent conflicts. In many of these conflicts, both Native Americans and European colonizers would collect the scalps of their enemies, this included women and children.
A statue of Hannah Duston, a Massachutches colonist who killed and scalped 10 members of the Abenaki tribe. - photo via the Smithsonian Magazine
This wasn’t limited to male combatants, as women have also participated in scalping as well. The story of Hannah Duston, a puritan colonist in the Massachutches Bay became popular folklore from the late-1600s until the mid-late 1800s. Duston’s deemed heroic tale was so popular that it becomes one of the backbones of what we now would consider American western literature.
Duston was abducted by the Abenaki people after a raid on the colony left 27 dead including one of her own children. As a result, Duston killed ten members of the tribe in their sleep including six children, and in the process scalped them, returning to the other colonists with the severed portions of the scalp. As a result of her heroic deed, she was paid a bounty for the scalps of the two adult males, two adult females, and six Abenaki children.
The story dubbed her ‘the mother of American scalping’, and led to monuments being erected in her honor. Stories like Duston’s first-hand account gave fuel to the cause of defending the newly established colonies and became apart of the foundational folklore of American literature for centuries.
This ethos of defending the homeland and dutiful vengeance is a hallmark in the American works of pioneer romanticism, frontiersmen mythology, manifest destiny, vigilante justice, and of course the American western.
Scalping early in the colonial era became quickly connected to bounties. Violent disputes by Native Americans in all of the territories led to the colonies to offer open bounties for any colonist who would collect the bodies and/or scalps of Native Americans. The bounty system in the colonial US would have periods of official and unofficial sanctioning, in the process giving colonists an incentive to proactively carry out violence.
Many scholars on scalping point to the Phips Bounty proclamation of 1755, a document that called for the killing of Native Americans. The document declared war on the Penobscot tribe of the Wabanaki Confederacy, offered bounties for the scalps of Native Americans which included the prices of children’s scalps.
The document was issued by the then-Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Spencer Phips. Prior to his stint as Lt. Governor, Phips was a landowner in the Maine territory. In the years prior, Phips alongside several other land-owning colonists had an ongoing land dispute with the Abenaki people in what was known as the Dummer's War of the 1720s. In the decades after the war, Phips would be in the middle of ongoing disputes between the British colonizers, the French colonizers, and various Native American groups.
But it wasn’t until 1755 that Phips used his powers as then acting governor of Massachusetts to issue that proclamation, which among other things, offered money for the scalps of the Penobscot.
The prices were set at 40 pounds of sterling silver for the scalp of an adult male, 20 pounds of sterling silver for women, and 20 pounds of sterling silver for children.
Phips used the document to gain the acceptance of King George II (to whom the state of Georgia is named after fwiw) as the document called the Penobscot enemies of the crown.
The Washington Football Team
The franchise was founded in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts as the Washington Braves, after the wildly popular baseball team of the same name (side note: the current day Atlanta Braves), and changed the name to its current one, a year later.
The team name came about during the dawn of the Hollywood westerns and the rise of talkies (movies with sound) in the 1930s. Many of these films were standard Cowboys vs Indians themed films.
The Washington Redskins former owner George Preston Marshall, a laundry magnate based out D.C., initially got into sports business with the purchase of the Washington Palace Five, a pre-NBA franchise that started in 1925 and folded by 1928.
Marshall then set his sights on an expansion football team, to which he was awarded in 1932, who named the team the Boston Braves.
Babe Ruth, the most famous baseball player ever and member of the Boston Braves. Photo via MLB
The Boston Braves football team took the exact same name of the Major League Baseball team, the Boston Braves, due to the team playing at the same stadium who at the time were the most popular team in the city.
The team changed their name the following year to Redskins in addition to moving into the neighboring Fenway Park, home of the #2 Boston baseball team at the time, the Red Sox.
Some Washington football fans will also cite the urban legend of Willam ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, a self-identifying Native American, who was the team’s coach in 1933-34 as the reason for the team’s name change. This has been proven false, as owner George Preston Marshall sought to keep the team’s Native American mascot.
The problem was that even as early as 1916, Dietz’s official citizenship with Native Americans was called into question.
The team would later move to Washington, DC in 1937, winning the championship that year and is where they have remained ever since.
It’s also important to note that the team’s fight song, ‘Hail to the Redskins’ developed not because of any connection to Native American history, but to help make the professional league on par with the more popular college football.
Since then, the franchise has always kept the name, logo, chant, and merchandise despite complaints.
**As a result of these presented, the rest of the article will now refer to the football franchise as The Washington ________.**
Race, Racism and the NFL
The Washington _________ additionally, has some very problematic history when it comes to race in the league. The franchise was the last to integrate, and only did so because then President of the United States John F. Kennedy had to step in.
But Washington was hardly alone, in the early 1900s several pre-modern era NFL franchises were not only named after Native Americans, but also featured athletes.
This was because of a special Native American boarding school called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which among other things ‘civilized’ Native American children using what can only be described today as kidnapping and brainwashing children.
But the school produced a powerhouse football program comprised of Native American children, one of them was part-Native American football star Jim Thorpe who became known as the biggest star of the league.
But after the Carlisle school closed in 1918, Native American athletes soon dried up in the NFL. But was also noticeable is that despite there being the Native Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, and even Asian Americans in the early days of the NFL, by the time 1930s rolled around, most non-white players were all but gone.
It must be noted that The Washington _________ team owner, George Preston Marshall was one of the people who was behind the movement to keep African American players out of the league, doing so until 1946.
But it wasn’t just African Americans that Marshall was prejudiced against. He also was fine with the Jews, as long as they paid for tickets…"Oh no, I love Jews, especially when they're customers."
According to Marshall, this was to appease Southern Whites, as the team was the only NFL franchise until the arrival of the southern explosion of professional football teams in the 1960s. Starting with the Dallas Cowboys in 1960, the Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins in 1966, the New Orleans Saints in 1967, as well as the Houston Oilers in 1970.
This lack of competition in the southern US and the attitudes of segregationists coupled well with Marshall’s anti-integration stance, evolving into an ever-shifting rationale for keeping African American players out of the league. This would continue until 1962 when then-US President John F. Kennedy threatened to end his 30-year-lease on the team’s stadium in DC.
It must be of note that during the 23 years of owning the team, Marshall’s team only produced three winning seasons in part because he wouldn’t sign African American players.
The Dan Synder Era
The team was purchased in 1999 for a then-unprecedented $800 million by Dan Synder, founder of Synder Communications. Since then Synder has helped increase the value of the franchise tremendously through a slew of deals which are a benchmark of the modern era of sports ownership.
This includes selling off minority shares to several high net worth individuals including FedEx founder, Fred Smith (15%), who’s company also spent a whopping $205 million dollar naming rights deal beginning in 1999. As well as Synder wanting a new stadium, for the team preferably in the city of DC proper or in neighboring Virginia.
Due to the proximity to the DMV’s (DC-Maryland-Virginia) high profile and net worth clientele, the franchise has gone from about $100 million in revenue when Synder bought the team in 1999 to $493 million in revenue in 2019, this is on top of a franchise evaluation of $3.4 billion dollars.
Impressive since the team has averaged a losing record since Synder purchased them.
Why now?
The current Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent changes have put gasoline on a myriad of adjourning social issues including this one.
It must be noted that over the last decade several Native American groups have increased their profile in getting Synder to change the name of the team. Something that Synder in 2013 said would ‘never happen’.
As a result of this change, many business leaders including Fred Smith of FedEx are now starting to force the hands of Synder by utilizing their purse strings.
The minority owners (Synder owns nearly 60% of the team), are looking to sell their shares, Nike (the official merchandiser of the NFL) has pulled all clothing from their stores, so has Amazon removed items from their official channels, and this on top of the six copyrights the franchise has lost regarding the use of Native American imagery over the years.
There have been several challenges to court over the use of Native American imagery. The most pivotal has been a 1946 case known as The Lanham Act, which among other things set the standard for our copyright and trademark system. The team won a 1992 lawsuit that covered the team against losing that right to use the name and then again another 2014 decision also covered the team.
But the franchised suffered a key loss on the use of the team trademark in 2014 by the United States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO). The ruling removed the rate for the Redskins to maintain ownership on six particular copyrights and trademarks with the distinction being these are of significant historical derogatory slurs. That was subsequently given new life after the Supreme Court in 2017 overturned an unrelated case regarding Asian American rock band The Slants the right to trademark a racial slur in an unrelated case.
The NFL needs goodwill now more than ever
The Washington franchise is making the move now because the NFL has a slew of issues that must be addressed now. The biggest has been if the season can even start due to the ongoing pandemic. The other is making sure that the league is able to secure it’s lucrative television contracts now before it’s up for renewal in the next two years.
The other is the league while it has been growing and is the dominant sports league in the US for the last 30 to 40 years is nowhere near as popular globally as the NBA, it’s nearest rival in the US. The league also has over the last year‘s suffered a serious black eye in regards to the league’s treatment of domestic violence by players, the effects of brain trauma related to CTE, and of course the fallout over the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick.
In addition, the league is grappling with a new paradigm as the average fan is older, now averaging 50 years old. This is in on top of a slowly declining number of young men who are electing to play the game.
This change for the NFL is also one of the reasons as to why the league is starting to make a slow turn towards more progressive and social justice-oriented causes. Millennials and Gen Z’s are noticeably more liberal on social issues than generations prior. This pivot toward progressivism is something that companies such as Nike have managed to pivot towards in recent years by supporting Colin Kaepernick.
Additionally, the league must do everything it can to regain younger participants whose parents have skipped football in recent years for less contact sports like soccer.
The Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves are the longest continually operating professional sports team in US history. Starting out as the Boston Braves in 1871. The Braves were actually one of two professional sports teams in Boston, the other being the Red Sox. It was the Red Sox who were the #2 most popular team in the city.
The Boston Braves were so popular, it was part of the reason why the Boston Braves football team was named that before becoming the Redskins.
It wasn’t until much later that the decline of the Boston Braves in the 1930s that the team would eventually move to Milwaukee in 1952. During this time the Milwaukee Braves are the only team in Major League Baseball history to have no losing seasons and the box office of Hank Aaron.
The team was sold to a Chicago-led ownership group helmed by William Bartholomay in 1962 and shortly thereafter was looking to put the team into a larger market. Atlanta’s then-Mayor, Ivan Allen was looking to keep Atlanta’s growth machine going by looking to attract a professional sports franchise.
So with no prospects, Mayor Allen built a completely paid-for new, dual-purpose Baseball-Football stadium in 1965. Atlanta at the time unsuccessfully tried to get the Kansas City Athletics, who eventually moved to Oakland by 1968.
The strategy worked and in 1965 the Milwaukee Braves announced they would be moving to Atlanta the following season. As well as the NFL announcing that Atlanta would be also gaining an expansion team, the Falcons, who also be playing at the now named Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1966.
The Atlanta Braves —America’s Team
Almost from the start, the Atlanta Braves were immediately popular and as a result of the ownership of a new media-savvy team owner, in 1976 the Braves were being positioned to not only be Atlanta’s team but America’s Team.
This new owner, an upstart media mogul name Ted Turner who started a television company the Turner Broadcasting Station (TBS) in 1976, used his broadcasting abilities, to take the Braves beyond the fringes. Under Turner’s leadership in the 1970s, he took the Braves from an Atlanta team into a team representing the entire growing sunbelt of the country.
The Braves had a very unique advantage similar to that of The Washington _________ in that they were the only professional sports team for an entire region of the US for decades. The Braves upon arriving into Atlanta in 1966 represented the entire southeast from 1966 until 1993 when the Florida Marlins came into the league.
The nearest teams, the Houston Astros (then Colt-.45s), St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Baltimore Orioles were the closest competition. And unlike those teams, they did not have the benefit of national celebrity/media owner in Ted Turner, a steady influx of regional growth (outside of Houston), nor a team with a continual history of winning like the Braves.
But most importantly a nationally syndicated television network in TBS that could broadcast every Braves game to anyone in the Sunbelt.
So…the Florida State thing…
To understand how we got here with the controversy on the Braves we need to understand:
A) The history of the franchise (check),
B) The history of Native Americans as mascots (check), and
C) the impact of Florida State University (and Deion Sanders) on the Atlanta Braves
Deion Sanders
Deion ‘Primetime’ Sanders is on the Mount Rushmore (a site also problematic to Native Americans) of the most popular Atlanta athletes ever, alongside Hank Aaron, Dominique Wilkins, and yes, Michael Vick (say what you want, he made an impact).
photo via Bleacher Report (owned by Turner Sports)
Sanders was a national standout in both football and baseball as student-athlete at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, in the late 1980s. Sanders had the unique luck of being playing professionally for both the hometown Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Falcons team.
Which led to some interesting moments like suiting up on the same day in Atlanta for the home team in both sports.
Sanders popularity was immediate and brought a new level of national attention to the ascendant Braves and locally loved Falcons. This also bodes well for a rising metro Atlanta, which was drawing people from all over the south especially big college football schools like only a few hours away like Florida State in Tallahassee.
As Primetime stepped on the field, so did the thousands of FSU alumni who began the tomahawk chop, since that moment, the chop has been a staple of the Atlanta Braves.
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The Tomahawk Chop
The school mascot…representative?…a Seminole warrior, Chief Osceola riding on his horse Renegade with a flaming spear. It must be noted none of this wasn’t even used by the football team until 1977, but only before reaching an agreement with the Seminole people of Florida.
And aspects such as the headdress, which was not worn by the Seminole tribe, that and the Tomahawk, were also not apart of the Seminole warrior culture. In addition, the infamous ‘tomahawk chop’, was invented in the 1980s by the Florida State University Marching Chiefs band.
By the time Sanders arrived in Atlanta, the tomahawk chop was already a staple of Florida State Football. And Atlanta, then like it is now is a magnet for transplants from all over the south, especially from large colleges with even larger bases of college football fans.
The moment Sanders put on his uniform, fans began doing the tomahawk chop and nothing was the same since.
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So what makes so Florida State different?
First, the university asked the tribe for permission, second, the university also has several courses on Native American history about the school, and third, the university has a special relationship that gives a free scholarship to any Native American student on a reservation to the university. Even with that several Native Americans still do not find it supportive.
The Atlanta Braves most controversial mascot — Chief Noc-a-homa
One of the more egregious things to come out of the history of the franchise was Chief Noc-a-Homa, a Native American inspired mascot who among other things had an actual teepee in the stands.
Chief Noc-a-Homa was eventually played by Native American Levi Walker Jr. of the Ottawa Tribe.
Chief Noc-o-Homa was the mascot from 1969 to 1985, ending in 1986. The franchise has since stopped selling images of the smiling happy chief as well as all other logos of Native Americans from its stores.
The Braves are on the hot seat
After the Braves sent out an email to season ticket holders as well as a statement to the media that they would not be changing the team name but evaluating the use of the tomahawk chop.
Why the Braves aren’t changing
On one end, blame the ongoing culture wars.
The demographics and political leanings of those fans to whom the Braves left the city limits for, are largely fine with it.
Specifically, the voter profile of those who feel aggrieved by phrases like ‘woke’, ‘pc culture’, and dog/American flag avatars on social media feel solace in things not changing also indexes well with a large portion of Braves ticket buyers.
If we’re being honest the Cobb County baseball team is just fine the way things are.
On the other end, no companies have stopped financial support…yet.
Native American mascots, logos, and other things
Native Americans (yes, actual people) have been used as decorations, souvenirs, and collectibles for centuries in the United States. Whether it be body parts, such as scalps, severed heads, and often full skeletal systems, the Native Americans represented a trophy of sport for various groups of European colonists.
Despite this, Native American mascots are still wildly popular.
It should be no surprise that sports teams, car and motorcycle companies, museums, not to mention hundreds of K-12 schools that use human beings as a symbol of sports superiority.
In 1972, Stanford University’s president changed the name of its sports teams from the Indians to the Cardinals to eventually just Cardinal named after the tree, (my favorite mascot btw).
In the process, several other universities over the next 25 years would do away with Native Americans as mascots except for Florida State and Illinois who have made their mascots tributes to Native Americans with buy-in from those communities. By 1997, Miami University in Ohio became the last Division I school to use “_______,” changing its name to the RedHawks.
The Cleveland Indians like the Washington _______ has also started to look internally at changing the name. The franchise has only in recent years has done away with their smiling ‘Indian’ mascot, Chief Wahoo.
Times change and holding on to negative tropes have to go for a better society.
It took decades of activism led by Native Americans to even get us here, but the Washington Football team is finally changing, hopefully, other franchises will wake up too.
-KJW
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