Good Morning POU!
Happy Friday everyone! We continue to look at the stories of African American athletes who endured racial prejudice and violence while playing their sport of choice.
George Henry Jewett II (April 1870 – August 12, 1908) was an American athlete who became the first African-American football player at both the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, and in the Big Ten Conference. He played for the Michigan Wolverines as a fullback, halfback and field goal kicker in 1890 and 1892 and was considered one of Michigan’s greatest players in the pre-Fielding H. Yost era.
Michigan wouldn’t have another African American player until Willis Ward in 1932.”When (Fielding) Yost came along (1901) he put everything under glass,” said Ann Arbor native Coleman Jewett, George Jewett II’s grandson. “Yost wouldn’t let black athletes play football, even though there were some great ballplayers.”
The extent of George Jewett’s football accomplishments would remain buried until 1952 when they were revisited in a local news story. Coleman Jewett was a high school junior then; he’d grown up in Ann Arbor with no idea of his grandfather’s accomplishments.
“It was late in my football career—really late—that I found out about all of this,” said Coleman, who carried on the family tradition of academic and athletic excellence at Ann Arbor High two generations later. “I would probably have tried harder had I known.”
Early Life
Jewett grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of a successful blacksmith. At the time of the 1870 United States Census, he was listed as being one month old. His father was George Jewett, a blacksmith born in Kentucky in approximately 1845, and his mother was Letty Jewett, born in Michigan in approximately 1848. He had an older sister, Mary, born in approximately 1868. The family was residing in Ann Arbor at the time of both the 1870 and 1880 Censuses.
Jewett attended Ann Arbor High School where he was the class valedictorian in 1889. In high school, he was the captain of the debate, football and baseball teams. He was also the fastest sprinter in the Midwest, having won the Amateur Athletic Union 100-yard dash competition, and was fluent in German, Italian and French.
College Years
After his initial season at Michigan, Jewett sat out the following year but returned to the Wolverines for the 1892 campaign before transferring to Northwestern University. On several occasions while at Michigan, Jewett met vocal and physical harassment. The annual contest against Purdue provided an especially hostile atmosphere. For example, Boilermaker fans loudly chanted “Kill the coon!” and other racial epithets at Jewett during one game in West Lafayette. Opposing players also subjected Jewett to considerable rough play. On at least two occasions, he responded to repeated foul play and late tackles by slugging a particularly dirty opponent in the face.
In a 1955 letter to a friend, former Michigan end Roger Sherman recalled two specific incidents from Jewett’s playing days. One involved a hotel clerk in Indianapolis who refused let Jewett check in with the team on a trip. (He was ultimately allowed to stay after his teammates and some local alumni stepped in.) Another, Sherman said, happened during a game at Albion College.
“His presence was resented by both the Albion team and the spectators. Every effort was made to get him ruled off, and traps were set for him to bring this about. On one occasion he was charged with ‘slugging’ and the cry went up from the crowd to ‘Kill the nigger.’ The crowd surged out onto the field, blows were struck and a riot was in the making when the local police intervened and the game went on with Jewett still in the lineup.”
And though Sherman described Jewett as “modest and retiring,” a 1952 Ann Arbor News story recounting Jewett’s career suggests he also had a grittier side: “All accounts agreed that Jewett could not only take the grueling punishment of oldtime football, but he could dish it out, too. He could stand just so much kinetic unkindness—but no more. Such situations he handled without subtlety or secrecy. More than once, in plain view of players and crowd, he would knuckle the nearest nose to a neat knob and then march, with dignity, to the sidelines under the referee’s chaperonage.”
Jewett didn’t play football in 1891, but he showed up again on the 1892 Michigan team that tangled with college football legends Amos Alonzo Stagg and John Heisman.Stagg played for and coached the University of Chicago squad that Jewett and the Wolverines stung for three touchdowns in a 18-0 victory. Jewett scored two of them and set up the third by tossing a lateral to a teammate. (History credits Stagg with developing the lateral pass.)
Jewett scored three touchdowns in the first half against Heisman-coached Oberlin College, and though Heisman praised his play, neither school has ever conceded the game.The teams had agreed the game would end at 5 p.m., and Oberlin—leading 24-22 near the end of the game—claimed time was up. Michigan argued that there were still 10 minutes left.
While Heisman argued with the referee, Jewett quietly picked up the ball and walked into the end zone for a touchdown. The referee ruled in Michigan’s favor, but both schools still count the game as a victory.
A disagreement with medical school dean Victor Vaughan prompted Jewett to transfer to Northwestern University, where he finished his medical degree. He played football for Northwestern in 1893 and ’94, becoming the first African American player in that school’s history as well. Jewett was not only the first African-American football player at both Michigan and Northwestern, he was also the first African-American athlete to letter in football for any of the schools that formed the Big Ten Conference.
He practiced medicine briefly in Chicago, but returned to Ann Arbor in 1899, eventually seizing an opportunity in what was then the brand new field of cleaning and pressing.
Dashing in his derby hats and spats, and able to talk with his immigrant customers in their native tongues, Jewett built a successful business. His State Street shop, “The Valet,” delivered clean, pressed clothes by carriage behind matched teams of black and white horses.
“Medicine wasn’t as lucrative as it is today,” said Coleman Jewett. “In those days people didn’t clean and press their own clothing, so cleaning and pressing were the big thing of day, and he did quite well.”George Jewett married Lillian Zebbs in 1901. They had two children, George H. Jewett III (1902-77) and Richard Jewett (born 1908). Richard—Coleman’s father—was eight days old when George Jewett died of a heart attack while working in his shop at 38.