From Halftime to MVPs, Black History Is Part of the Super Bowl

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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February 10, 2023

by Claretta Bellamy, NBC News

The Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes matchup on Sunday is just one of many Super Bowl firsts.

Philadelphia Eagles’ Jalen Hurts and Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes are making history Sunday as the first Black quarterbacks to face-off in a Super Bowl.

Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs will make history Sunday when two Black quarterbacks face each other in a Super Bowl for the first time. If Hurts leads his team to victory, he will be the fourth Black quarterback to do so, following Washington’s Doug Williams in 1988, Mahomes in 2020 and the Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson in 2013.

Only eight Black quarterbacks have started a Super Bowl — with racial stigmas against Black quarterbacks dating to the 1950s that suggested they lacked the intelligence or the skills to successfully play the position.

The league has also had to grapple with the lack of Black coaches and figures in leadership positions, and its failure to institute policies to break these barriers. Last year former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL, the New York Giants and other teams alleging racial discrimination in hiring coaches. According to a 2022 Washington Post series called “Black Out” that examined the lack of Black head coaches in the NFL, while approximately 70% of players in the NFL were Black, only 11% of full-time head coaches since 1990 have been Black. The report also found that Black coaches were most likely to serve as interim coaches, with those teams usually being a bit disorganized before they join.

Here’s a timeline of historic Black firsts in the Super Bowl…

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