Black Hockey Players in the NHL
According to league reports, only 18 black players reached the NHL between 1958 and 1991. ... 15% of all NHL players while Canada produces just ...www.factmonster.com/spot/bhmhockey1.html -
Boston Bruin Tommy Williams from Duluth, Minnesota.)
The Colored Hockey League
At the same time a Colored Hockey League was formed in Atlantic Canada, replicating the ***** Baseball Leagues in the United States. It is unclear whether players were forced to develop a separate institution because of racial exclusion or if they felt, like many other minorities in Canada, the need for their own association as a means of retaining a community identity.
Team Sites Anaheim Atlanta Boston Buffalo Calgary Carolina Chicago Colorado Columbus Dallas Detroit Edmonton Florida Los Angeles Minnesota Montréal Nashville New Jersey NY Islanders NY Rangers Ottawa Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh San Jose St Louis Tampa Bay Toronto Vancouver Washington . Affiliate SitesCBA News---------------AHLECHLUHLCHLELITE---------------USHL---------------NHL OfficialsNARCh---------------Aussie HockeyEishockey.com---------------flowers.nhl.comNHL AuctionsNHL AlumniPowerPlayBeckettHockey ArchiveStubHub! Tickets . NHL Player SitesSidney CrosbyEd BelfourRaffi TorresKevin Weekes . . . . .
Grant Fuhr was a mainstay on Edmonton's Stanley Cup dynasty.
An historical overview
By William Humber | Special to NHL.com Feb. 1, 2001
Jackie Robinson's debut with baseball's minor-league Montreal Royals in 1946 changed sports forever. Until then, athletes of black African descent had largely been banned from most mainstream sporting leagues in North America.
During the next decade the National Football League and its rival the All-American Conference, as well as the Canadian Football League, and the National Basketball Association integrated their lineups. The National Hockey League did not follow suit until 1958, but it alone of the big sporting leagues claimed that it never had any restrictions. It could point to the participation of black athletes in many levels of organized amateur and professional hockey since the past century.
Why, then, were there no blacks in the NHL until 1958? At first glance the answer was simple. Hockey players until the 1970s were drawn largely from Canada and that country's black population was tiny. Moreover, some suggested there might be cultural reasons that precluded even Canada's limited black population from playing the game. The NHL, strongly rooted in Canada, could claim that it shared the Canadian tradition of open-mindedness on matters of race so if there ever were black hockey players good enough to play in the NHL, they'd get their chance.
Any fair study of black hockey participation must begin with the national origins of its players. As noted, until recently they were almost overwhelmingly Canadian. In the mid 1960s, for instance, the six-team NHL had only one non-Canadian (Boston Bruin Tommy Williams from Duluth, Minnesota.) Statistically, until that time the odds had never favored a large number of black players. Canada's black population as late as the 1950s comprised just over one-tenth of one percent of the national total. There were only 120 NHL jobs, meaning that if all players were Canadian, the entire black population of Canada would have been a single candidate along with four other applicants for one statistical position.
The background of NHL players has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, but even this has not necessarily helped the chances of black athletes because it has been due to the influx of players from American colleges, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic and other European countries. Only in the United States has there been historically substantial black communities and these have hardly been hockey hotbeds. Other sports such as basketball, football and baseball offered better infrastructure and more apparent opportunities.
The early days of hockey
Hockey's initial era of mass fascination occurred in the 1890s when what was an almost folksy game suddenly attained organizational and promotional support.
At the same time, however, the number of blacks in Canada was plunging due to the return of many former slaves to the United States. A populace that numbered over 60,000 (nearly two percent of the national total) prior to the American Civil War had tumbled to just over 16,000 by 1911, a number that amounted to one-fifth of one percent of the country's total. Despite this, members of that remaining population played the game. It was an early indicator that they felt themselves to be a part of the emerging identity of the new country.
In 1899, Hipple "Hippo" Galloway, the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Galloway, long-time residents of Alder Street in Dunnville, Ontario, played for the Woodstock team in the Central Ontario Hockey Association.
Galloway was not alone. Charley Lightfoot of the Stratford team was a second black player in the league and accorded recognition as one of the better players in the Central Ontario Hockey Association. This was the darkest era of Jim Crow legislation and imposed segregation in the United States. Despite Canada's more liberal heritage, the shameful parroting of American models led to Galloway?s banishment that summer from an Ontario baseball league because an American import objected to his presence. Galloway left Canada to barnstorm with a black baseball team and a local sportswriter cried: "An effort should be made to keep Hippo in town. Our hockey team needs him."
The Colored Hockey League
At the same time a Colored Hockey League was formed in Atlantic Canada, replicating the ***** Baseball Leagues in the United States. It is unclear whether players were forced to develop a separate institution because of racial exclusion or if they felt, like many other minorities in Canada, the need for their own association as a means of retaining a community identity.
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes formed in 1900 included teams from Africville (the Seasides), Dartmouth (the Jubilees), Halifax (the Eurekas), Truro (the Victorias) and Amherst (the Royals). It was a Nova Scotia-based league but at least one other province, Prince Edward Island, had an all-black team featuring five members of the Mills family and two others that played all-white teams on the island and black teams in Nova Scotia.
Exhibitions by black hockey teams in Nova Scotia continued well into the 1920s and their playing innovations included a rule allowing the goalie to fall to the ice to block a shot before such legislation entered the NHL rule book.
Bud Kelly
Team Sites Anaheim Atlanta Boston Buffalo Calgary Carolina Chicago Colorado Columbus Dallas Detroit Edmonton Florida Los Angeles Minnesota Montréal Nashville New Jersey NY Islanders NY Rangers Ottawa Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh San Jose St Louis Tampa Bay Toronto Vancouver Washington . Affiliate SitesCBA News---------------AHLECHLUHLCHLELITE---------------USHL---------------NHL OfficialsNARCh---------------Aussie HockeyEishockey.com---------------flowers.nhl.comNHL AuctionsNHL AlumniPowerPlayBeckettHockey ArchiveStubHub! Tickets . NHL Player SitesSidney CrosbyEd BelfourRaffi TorresKevin Weekes . . . . .
Grant Fuhr was a mainstay on Edmonton's Stanley Cup dynasty.
An historical overview
By William Humber | Special to NHL.com Feb. 1, 2001
Jackie Robinson's debut with baseball's minor-league Montreal Royals in 1946 changed sports forever. Until then, athletes of black African descent had largely been banned from most mainstream sporting leagues in North America.
During the next decade the National Football League and its rival the All-American Conference, as well as the Canadian Football League, and the National Basketball Association integrated their lineups. The National Hockey League did not follow suit until 1958, but it alone of the big sporting leagues claimed that it never had any restrictions. It could point to the participation of black athletes in many levels of organized amateur and professional hockey since the past century.
Why, then, were there no blacks in the NHL until 1958? At first glance the answer was simple. Hockey players until the 1970s were drawn largely from Canada and that country's black population was tiny. Moreover, some suggested there might be cultural reasons that precluded even Canada's limited black population from playing the game. The NHL, strongly rooted in Canada, could claim that it shared the Canadian tradition of open-mindedness on matters of race so if there ever were black hockey players good enough to play in the NHL, they'd get their chance.
Any fair study of black hockey participation must begin with the national origins of its players. As noted, until recently they were almost overwhelmingly Canadian. In the mid 1960s, for instance, the six-team NHL had only one non-Canadian (Boston Bruin Tommy Williams from Duluth, Minnesota.) Statistically, until that time the odds had never favored a large number of black players. Canada's black population as late as the 1950s comprised just over one-tenth of one percent of the national total. There were only 120 NHL jobs, meaning that if all players were Canadian, the entire black population of Canada would have been a single candidate along with four other applicants for one statistical position.
The background of NHL players has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, but even this has not necessarily helped the chances of black athletes because it has been due to the influx of players from American colleges, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic and other European countries. Only in the United States has there been historically substantial black communities and these have hardly been hockey hotbeds. Other sports such as basketball, football and baseball offered better infrastructure and more apparent opportunities.
The early days of hockey
Hockey's initial era of mass fascination occurred in the 1890s when what was an almost folksy game suddenly attained organizational and promotional support.
At the same time, however, the number of blacks in Canada was plunging due to the return of many former slaves to the United States. A populace that numbered over 60,000 (nearly two percent of the national total) prior to the American Civil War had tumbled to just over 16,000 by 1911, a number that amounted to one-fifth of one percent of the country's total. Despite this, members of that remaining population played the game. It was an early indicator that they felt themselves to be a part of the emerging identity of the new country.
In 1899, Hipple "Hippo" Galloway, the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Galloway, long-time residents of Alder Street in Dunnville, Ontario, played for the Woodstock team in the Central Ontario Hockey Association.
Galloway was not alone. Charley Lightfoot of the Stratford team was a second black player in the league and accorded recognition as one of the better players in the Central Ontario Hockey Association. This was the darkest era of Jim Crow legislation and imposed segregation in the United States. Despite Canada's more liberal heritage, the shameful parroting of American models led to Galloway?s banishment that summer from an Ontario baseball league because an American import objected to his presence. Galloway left Canada to barnstorm with a black baseball team and a local sportswriter cried: "An effort should be made to keep Hippo in town. Our hockey team needs him."
The Colored Hockey League
At the same time a Colored Hockey League was formed in Atlantic Canada, replicating the ***** Baseball Leagues in the United States. It is unclear whether players were forced to develop a separate institution because of racial exclusion or if they felt, like many other minorities in Canada, the need for their own association as a means of retaining a community identity.
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes formed in 1900 included teams from Africville (the Seasides), Dartmouth (the Jubilees), Halifax (the Eurekas), Truro (the Victorias) and Amherst (the Royals). It was a Nova Scotia-based league but at least one other province, Prince Edward Island, had an all-black team featuring five members of the Mills family and two others that played all-white teams on the island and black teams in Nova Scotia.
Exhibitions by black hockey teams in Nova Scotia continued well into the 1920s and their playing innovations included a rule allowing the goalie to fall to the ice to block a shot before such legislation entered the NHL rule book.
Bud Kelly
No other part of Canada had the size and proximity of a black population to support the kind of league found in Nova Scotia. Yet so powerful was the metaphor of hockey to the Canadian experience that black children were determined to play the game.
In the first two decades of the 20th century Fred "Bud" Kelly was, according to Frank Selke, "the best ***** hockey player I ever saw." Kelly claimed that his first pair of skates were two whiskey flasks that he found on his father's Ingersoll farm and tied to a pair of shoes. Gliding across the snow gave him his first taste of skating.
In 1916 Kelly was a member of Selke's seven-man 118th Battalion hockey team based out of London, Ontario, which played at the intermediate level of the Ontario Hockey Association. While a member of Peterborough's OHA senior team, he was scouted by Bruce Redpath, manager of the NHL's Toronto St. Pats (later the Maple Leafs). In a game against Toronto Varsity, Kelly flubbed a breakaway opportunity deliberately set up to see if Kelly could put the puck in the net. "I was so flabbergasted by the fact that neither defenseman even laid a glove on me that I just stopped and let the puck roll off my stick," Kelly recalled. The St. Pats never contacted him.
Kelly believed that race did not play a part in his lost opportunity and in fact suggested that so-called amateur hockey held better rewards than the NHL. Small-town entrepreneurs would make payments under the table and find players jobs in the off-season. Kelly worked as a chauffeur for the McClary family in London, a position he held for a half-century.
Herbie Carnegie
Willie O'Ree
Mike Marson
2006-12-14 11:42:32
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answer #1
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answered by ridingthelondoneeye 2
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