Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,800
By This is the grave of Duke Slater.
Born in 1898 in Normal, Illinois, Fred Slater grew up in a religious household. His father was a Methodist minister. The family had a dog named Duke and for reasons unclear, they started calling Fred Duke too. At the age of 13, he moved to Clinton, Iowa, when his father became minister of the AME church there. Slater was a big athletic kid and he wanted to play football, still a pretty new sport at the high school level. His father was nervous about this, seeing it as a sport for rough boys. So Duke went on a hunger strike! Now that’s commitment! This went on for a few days until his father gave up. If the kid was that committed to football, I mean what are you going to do? But his father said that if he got hurt, he couldn’t play anymore. That led Slater to adopt the mantra of never mention injuries to anyone. Now, high school football still had a club aspect to it. All players had to pay for their own shoes and their own helmet. Slater couldn’t pay for both. He chose shoes and just played without a helmet. Now, combine that with not talking about injuries….
Well, Slater proved to be pretty great. And since was in the North, there was not legal segregation in at least some colleges, though very few had many Black players or students. Slater went to the University of Iowa, starting in 1918. Normally, freshmen could not play, but this was World War I and they needed freshmen to field a team, so those rules were waived. He played all four years, from 1918-21. Mostly, he played offensive tackle. Oh, he still chose not to wear a helmet either! But despite whatever brain damage he was receiving, he was such a giant that he could open huge holes. How big of a giant? 6’1″, 215! In other words, about my size. Let’s just say that Slater was a slightly better athlete than I am. He was completely dominant, a modern offensive tackle in an era of small men. He opened gigantic holes his whole four years at Iowa and became the first great Iowa Hawkeye. He was named first team Big Ten three straight years. Given the lack of Black players in college football, he was also only the third Black player to ever win all-conference honors in two different years. He was also a solid track and field athlete, finishing third in the hammer and fourth in the discus in the first ever NCAA Track and Field Championship in 1921. Iowa finished third in that tournament.
The NFL wasn’t exactly segregated in the early 20s, but it was almost segregated. Fritz Pollard had broken the color line in 1920, but most franchises had never employed a Black player. Slater became the first Black player for the Rock Island Independents in 1922 and was the first Black lineman in NFL history. He played there mostly for the next five seasons, minus a few games with the Milwaukee Badgers. When he joined the Chicago Cardinals in 1926, he became the first Black player for any NFL franchise that exists today. So that’s how segregated it was. The Cardinals also signed Harold Bradley to play left guard next to Slater’s left tackle, so they had two Black guys, remarkable for the time. But Bradley retired after two games and Slater was the only Black NFL player between 1927 and 1929. Slater dominated at offensive tackle in these years, but he also played most of the games at defensive line too and was great there too. Slater made the All Pro team seven times, the first offensive lineman to do so.
Slater retired in 1932. In 1934, the NFL officially segregated and remained so through the 1945 season. Slater spent his off time coaching Black semipro teams, often defeating NFL teams. But that wasn’t his primary job. See, he had spent his early offseasons at the University of Iowa Law School and then got passed the bar and practiced in Chicago in his later offseasons. In 1948, he ran for the Cook County Municipal Court, an elected position, and easily won his race. That made him the second Black judge in Chicago history. In 1960, he was promoted to the Cook County Superior Court and then in 1964 went to the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Slater’s other hobby was actively recruiting Black high school players to go play in Iowa, helping establish the Hawkeyes as a very good football team over the years. He also was elected to the inaugural class of the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951. The Pro Football Hall of Fame began in 1963 but Slater was unjustly ignored for a long time. There was talk, but it never happened. He was a finalist in 1970 and 1971 and didn’t get in. Then he wasn’t nominated again until 2020, when the Seniors Committee finally righted this wrong, during the enormous Centennial Class when the NFL celebrated its century mark by clearing the deck of a lot of long ago players who were unjustly not int he HOF. Of course by then, Slater was long gone.
Slater died in 1966, at the age of 67. Stomach cancer, yucky.
Duke Slater is buried in Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens South, Chicago, Illinois.
If you would like this series to visit other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Doug Atkins, who played defensive end mostly for the Bears in the 50s and 60s, is in Humboldt, Tennessee and Forrest Gregg, who was on the offensive line for the great Packers teams of the 60s, is in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.