George Flippin (February 8, 1868 – May 15, 1929) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

left halfback and a doctor in Nebraska. He was the first star player of the

Nebraska Cornhuskers football The Nebraska Cornhuskers football team competes as part of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, representing the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the West Division of the Big Ten. Nebraska plays its home games at Memorial Stadium, ...

team, the first

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player on the team, and among the first Black players nationwide. He was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

Young life

Flippin's father, Charles, was a freed slave who fought in the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

on the Union side in the 14th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, then became a doctor. Charles and Mahala Flippin had their son George in Ohio in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War. When George's mother Mahala died in 1871, his father and brother moved away, first to Kansas, then to Henderson, Nebraska in 1888.

Football career

George Flippin attended the

University of Nebraska A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

from 1891 to 1894. Football was a young sport. A University of Nebraska football team had only existed for a few months at the time Flippin arrived on campus. He began to play for the 1891 Nebraska Old Gold Knights football team. Flippin's first game, against the Iowa Hawkeyes, was the fifth game in the university's history. He proved talented, and quickly become the star of the new team. Because of Flippin’s presence on the Nebraska team, the Missouri team refused to play a scheduled football game on November 5, 1892, forfeiting what would have been the first meeting between the two teams. Nebraska's student newspaper mocked the segregated Missouri team, saying that Missouri's anti-black bigotry would cause them to lose the football game just as they lost the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

. The paper claimed racial inclusion as a part of Nebraska's identity. Flippin experienced racism. He was denied entrance to an opera house after a game in

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, and he sued a bathhouse in Lincoln for refusing to admit him because of his race. A restaurant in Omaha relegated the football team to a private dining room rather than allow Flippin to be seen in the public area. His teammates elected him team captain after the 1894 season. Nebraska's football coach,

Frank Crawford Frank Crawford (March 12, 1870 – November 25, 1963) was an American college football coach, lawyer, and law professor. He served as the first full-time head football coach at both Michigan and Nebraska, and also coached Wisconsin, Baker, and T ...

, would not allow a Black man to be team captain. Flippin left Nebraska and studied medicine in Chicago. He paid for school by playing football for College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago at $75 per season. Flippin was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

Later life

After earning a medical degree in Chicago, he served as a doctor in Stromsburg, Nebraska until his death in 1929. He established the community's first hospital. In 1910 he married Stromsburg schoolteacher Mertina Larson; because

interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 1 ...

was unlawful in Nebraska, Flippin and the

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Larson were married in Iowa. He is the only Black person buried in the Stromsburg cemetery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flippin, George 1868 births 1929 deaths 19th-century players of American football American physicians African-American sportsmen