Shame on any Arkansas football fan who knows not the name of Bobby Mitchell, who died Sunday at age 84. Allow me to fill in some of the gaps.
A colleague from Fayetteville called last year for nominees to an impending book about the greatest Arkansas high school football players. Narrowing the scope to Hot Springs, I mentioned one player whom I never saw in person and scarcely remember from television but about whom I have learned much writing about sports in his hometown.
Robert Cornelius Mitchell.
Being black disqualified him at birth for playing college football at the University of Arkansas or many schools in the South. Starring in baseball, football and track at Langston High School, Mitchell received a baseball contract offer from the St. Louis Cardinals. He concentrated on football and track at the University of Illinois, where as a running back he was named first-team all-Big Ten as a sophomore in 1955 and second-team as a senior in 1957.
When the annual game meant something, Mitchell caught two touchdown passes in the College All-Stars' 35-19 victory over the 1957 NFL champion Detroit Lions. Running track for the school that produced football legend Red Grange, Mitchell set an indoor world record in 1958 in the 70-yard low hurdles and helped Illinois win the Big Ten title.
He played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns and Washington Redskins, starring in Cleveland alongside Jim Brown, the greatest pro player of his era and arguably of all time. Mitchell became the first black player in Washington when Cleveland, trading for the rights to Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner, envisioned an all-Syracuse University backfield. Leukemia intervened before Davis could play for the Browns, whose only NFL title with Jim Brown came in 1964, a year after Davis' death.
Arriving in 1962, Mitchell integrated the Redskins' roster just before the U.S. government was about to evict George Preston Marshall's all-white team from then-D.C. Stadium. For service on and off the field, Mitchell became a beloved figure in the nation's capital and ultimately the Redskins' assistant general manager. Two Redskin owners denied Mitchell a chance to become the NFL's first black general manager. It also seemed a little late when, in 1983, Mitchell went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
"The game lost a true legend," Hall of Fame President and CEO David Baker said in a statement. "Bobby was an incredible player, a talented executive and a real gentleman to everyone with whom he worked or competed against."
"His passion for the game of football was unmatched by anyone I have ever met," Redskins owner Daniel Snyder said. "Not only was he one of the most influential individuals in franchise history, but he was also one of the greatest men I have ever known. He was a true class act and will be sorely missed."
There was never a question about his credentials. Mitchell retired as a player following the 1968 season while ranking second in NFL history with 14,078 all-purpose yards, scoring 91 touchdowns and passing for another. Decades before their reincarnation under Joe Gibbs, the Redskins did one thing right with Mitchell -- converting him to a wide receiver and letting him streak downfield for rainbows thrown by Sonny Jurgensen. If he had stayed around another season, Mitchell could have played in Washington for Vince Lombardi, who considered Jurgensen a better passer than Bart Starr, with whom he won five world titles in Green Bay.
So why would Mitchell's name draw a blank in this most sports-centric society? People who can recite all six Arkansas starting quarterbacks under Chad Morris and tell you every last thing about Tom Brady might punt if you asked them about this Arkansas-born Hall of Famer.
For one thing, ESPN wasn't around when Mitchell played -- a generation of sports fans coming to believe that basketball didn't exist before Michael Jordan, baseball before Derek Jeter or football before Peyton Manning. Although watching him on TV on Sunday afternoons, I missed a lot not knowing more about Mitchell, whom as a sports editor in Hot Springs I would meet twice.
Mitchell was a college senior in 1957 when Little Rock made front-page news under a cloud. It took federal troops, ordered by President Dwight Eisenhower, to let court-ordered integration at Central High School proceed. It would be in the 1960s before Mitchell's alma mater, Langston, merged with Hot Springs in a more seamless transition.
As Jackie Robinson knew better than anyone, carrying a cross for one's race can be exhausting emotionally. Mitchell was not exempt from such comparisons.
Retiring after 41 years in the Redskins' organization in 2003, Mitchell said, "I have to live with people always talking me as the first black player against all my exploits. I've always been very upset that people always start with it. I don't want to hear that, and yet I have to hear it constantly, and it overshadows everything I've done in the game."
What came to be the Bobby Mitchell legend in his hometown began in the early 1950s, when illegal casino gambling flourished in Hot Springs. Some Spa City visitors then came to play the horses at Oaklawn Park or for services provided on Bathhouse Row, others when dodging a grand jury.
Black athletes of the time became identified with their high schools -- Wilt Chamberlain with Overbrook in Philadelphia, Oscar Robertson at Crispus Attucks in Indianapolis, Bobby Mitchell at Hot Springs Langston. Two decades before Jon Richardson broke the color barrier in Razorback football, Mitchell and his Langston teammates routinely played before larger home crowds than the Hot Springs Trojans. Checking IDs at the admission booth for some Langston games, it is said, might have turned up some people with unsavory reputations.
At a school reunion several years ago, a Langston man who later worked at Hot Springs High called by name a notorious Mafia figure who, while in town, heard about Mitchell and wanted to see him play. Moreover, the Langston man said, it was not uncommon for one or two of the team's star players to be treated to a new set of clothes at a store on Central Avenue. This individual did not live to see Mitchell play in the pros, being gunned down in 1957 while relaxing in a barber's chair in Midtown Manhattan.
I had lunch with Mitchell and his wife, Gwen, in 1997 before his induction to the Arkansas Walk of Fame in downtown Hot Springs. He did not deflect any questions about Jim Brown, his most celebrated teammate, but neither did he dish any dirt about Brown, a controversial figure then and now. Decades after they played together in Cleveland, Mitchell mentioned with reverence the name of Brown, who in February turned 84.
"I was fortunate to be in the backfield with the great Jim Brown," Mitchell said in his Hall of Fame speech in 1983. "My first four years therefore was very easy because it was Jim Brown up the middle, Jim Brown to the left, Jim Brown to the right and, occasionally, a pitchout to Bobby Mitchell."
Brown knew better, that nothing ever came easy for the man from Arkansas.
"Bobby was an individual ... thrown into the arena of being a victim for no reason," Brown said in a 2015 episode of Showtime's "60 Minutes Sports." "He had to suffer for being black more than any person I know that played football at the time I played. With that kind of ability, if he were white, everybody on this earth would know who he was."
We met again several years ago when Mitchell came home to receive an honor at Hot Springs High. If you only know of him as No. 49 in some old highlight reels, well and good. On or off the field, Robert Cornelius Mitchell was as good as advertised. We are blessed that he called Hot Springs home.
Sports on 04/07/2020