Black players on Green Bay Packers' 1960s championship teams lauded, but faced discrimination

Richard Ryman | Green Bay Press Gazette

Show Caption Hide Caption Dave Robinson: Black Packers players struggled to find housing in 1960s Former Green Bay Packers linebacker Dave Robinson recalls discrimination when looking for housing in the 1960s.

GREEN BAY – The Packers under Vince Lombardi might have been the best team in the NFL for black players, and Green Bay was a better-than-average place to live, but it offered challenges just the same.

When black players left the locker room, "they were often strangers in a generally friendly but strange land," Herb Adderley, Dave Robinson and Royce Boyles wrote in their book "Lombardi's Left Side."

"The situation wasn't necessarily menacing, but there was a constant racial tension all the same in the small, blue-collar, nearly all-white city."

Even small indignities — such as people wanting to touch their hair or guessing names of black players until they hit on the right one — still were indignities.

Lombardi broke any number of conventions where race was concerned, including breaking down barriers to quality housing.

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His teams had more black players than the accepted NFL quota, and he expected all his players to be treated the same, in and out of the locker room. The first black player he brought to Green Bay, Emlen Tunnell, was chosen for his experience, the respect other players had for him and the impression he would make in the community. In 1967, he would be the first black player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Housing was not a problem for Tunnell, who lived in Hotel Northland.

"It was pretty swank at that time," said Packers historian Cliff Christl. "People believed that Lombardi paid for his room there to keep him happy and keep him playing."

As Lombardi drafted and signed other black players, the community's housing shortcomings became obvious. Lack of options and landlords' unwillingness to rent to black players combined to force players into poor living conditions. Players lived where they could, often in places that did not compare to the homes they'd left to come to Green Bay.

In Adderley's rookie year, 1961, he, Elijah Pitts and Willie Davis shared a small apartment in the back of a pesticide company on Velp Avenue in Howard. Davis got the bed and Adderley and Pitts would flip a coin for the couch and an army cot in the kitchen.

Willie Wood told writer Frank Deford for a 1987 story in Sports Illustrated that he had to live in a room at the Y during his rookie year of 1960 because he could not find suitable housing.

Lombardi demands better housing

Lombardi approached team President Dominic Olejniczak and demanded that the African-American players be put up in suitable apartments in Green Bay, Adderley said in a 2012 interview.

"He said, 'Look, if the black players are going to help this team win, the city needs to understand that these players need good places to live and they need to live in the city.' He slowly integrated us into the city," Adderley said. "The players today don't know what we went through."

The next year, conditions improved.

A cluster of new apartment buildings built in the early 1960s on and near Lore Lane, not far from Lambeau Field, played a big role in that change.

The 1966 Wright's City Directory lists eight members of the team that won the First Super Bowl as living in those apartments: Marv Fleming, Willie Davis, Lionel Aldridge, Herb Adderley, Tom Brown, Bob Jeter, Junior Coffey and Bob Long. All but Brown and Long were black.

And there were likely more due to players sharing apartments and the arrival of others during the year.

Dave and Elaine Robinson and their two boys lived in a house on South Jackson Street in Allouez for two years before they moved to the Lore Lane apartments in 1966.

Today, the apartments, across the street from Franklin Middle School, are showing their age.

All are two stories and brick. Two of the buildings on Lore Lane are rectangular, almost dorm-like, with interior entrances and without the amenities or flourishes you see in modern complexes.

Two other buildings — one on Lore Lane and another at the other end of a shared parking lot on Western Avenue — have exterior entrances, up and down, with balconies running the length of the building.

In the mid 1960s, they were new and had the added advantage of being a mile and a half from Lambeau Field.

"They were very nice, two bedrooms," Robinson said. "We tried to get the ones downstairs. We didn't want the boys walking off the balcony."

Living with family was important

When Robinson arrived in Green Bay in 1963, he and Pitts rented the house on South Jackson Street in Allouez. Robinson said Pitts was a good roommate, but a bad cook, even though he'd been one in the Army.

"He could cook for 30 people, but he couldn't cook for two," Robinson said.

At any rate, Robinson wanted his family with him, as did other players.

"You had so many things on your mind, especially with Lombardi. Family problems were something you didn't need. When your family is with you, if a little problem comes up, you just correct it. When you are 1,200 miles away, you can't solve it," Robinson said.

Robinson's wife, Elaine, remained in New Jersey his rookie year with their newborn twins. But she also thought a wife's place was with her husband and was determined to come to Green Bay.

Pitts and Davis' wives had lived in Green Bay in previous years, but they didn't stay. It was too difficult being the only black wife in town, especially when their husbands were home only a couple hours a day.

Elaine Robinson and Ruth Pitts both arrived in Green Bay in 1964 and that helped. Dave Robinson said even their husbands didn't understand all that the wives endured.

"At last, my wife had somebody she could go around to the grocery stores with. They learned where to go and not to go," Robinson said. "Some people would jack the price up if you were a Packer. Some dropped the price down."

As pioneers, the women often had uncomfortable encounters with residents who were unaccustomed to black families in their midst. In the book, Robinson talked about people wanting to touch the children's hair and other things.

"People didn't mean it maliciously, half of them, but it would be very offensive. And having never dealt with black people, people didn't understand what it was like."

While the atmosphere in the locker room was as good as anywhere in the NFL — and better than in most locker rooms — the issue of race wasn't easily navigated on the outside. When Lionel Aldridge married Vicky Wankier, who was white, in 1966, it initially was hard for her to find acceptance by any of the wives, white or black.

Robinson said wives from the deep south, especially, had a difficult time accepting black players and their wives. When issues made their way back to Lombardi, he called on Willie Davis to be his liaison with black players.

As Robinson and Adderley observed in their book, assimilation and acceptance of black Packers players in Green Bay took time; it was a process, not an event.

Lombardi-era Packers lived in regular neighborhoods Green Bay Packers in the 1960s lived in regular neighborhoods and considered themselves just members of the community.











