On Sundays, Colts running back Lenny Moore was adored by thousands who cheered his greatness on the field. But the rest of the week, he was an outcast, prohibited from entering many of the city’s restaurants, theaters and nightclubs.
Yes, even the future Hall-of-Famer wasn’t immune to the evils of segregation, even after he helped lead the Colts to a huge victory in the 1958 NFL championship game that still resonates 50 years later.
“I know when I first arrived in Baltimore, it was like two different sections,” Moore said. “It was one white and one black. Even after the championship game, it was pretty noticeable, from a sociological standpoint, that we really couldn’t get together.”
Moore was one of seven blacks on the 1958 Colts’ 35-man roster. Just four years after the Supreme Court desegregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, Moore still couldn’t stay in the same hotels as his white teammates on many road trips. Black players weren’t even welcome in parts of Westminster, where the Colts held their training camps, Moore said.
“We were a team,” Moore said. “Now after the game was over, the white players went one way and the black players went another way, because that’s how the social climate was during that time. There was no closer team than us on the field.”
But off the field was a different game.
Before his death in September, defensive back Milt Davis, who spent four seasons with the Colts (1957-’60) and forced a fumble in the 1958 NFL championship game, said his anger over the segregation led to his retirement after just four mostly stellar seasons. And defensive back Johnny Sample, who died in 2005, wrote about racial injustices in his 1970 book “Confessions of a Dirty Player.”
Moore said race relations at the time, including being denied access into theaters and certain restaurants in Westminster, led him to spend most of his time off the field with defensive tackle Gene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb. The pair spent many nights together at jazz clubs that served mainly blacks. Racial tensions were so high in Westminster that Moore said one year he and the other black players on the team boycotted the town’s Welcome Banquet.
“To see some of the racial issues we encountered through the years was embarrassing,” said Hall of Fame defensive end Gino Marchetti said. “We all got along because we didn’t make that much money.”
But the reason racial tensions never divided the Colts’ locker room was because players were unified by a common goal: winning a title.
“The only colors that mattered to me were blue and white,” Hall of Fame receiver Raymond Berry, who is white, said, referring to the Colts’ uniform colors.
“Thank God there were Raymond Berrys who showed us we’re together, we’re a team,” responded Moore. “It was a thing we could hold on to.”
More than a half century later, however, the 1958 Colts are remembered for changing the city’s perceptions of black athletes, said John Ziemann, deputy director of the Babe Ruth Museum/Sports Legends at Camden Yards.
“It didn’t happen overnight, but people slowly stopped looking at players in black or white terms,” said Ziemann, who was the longtime leader of the Colts’ marching band. “When the Colts beat the Giants, there were black people congratulating white people and vice versa. That team also proved tha,t no matter what your skin color, a group can accomplish any goal by working together.”
