George Flippin

George Flippin (February 8, 1868 – May 15, 1929) was an American football left halfback and a doctor in Nebraska. He was the first star player of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team, the first Black player on the team, and among the first Black players nationwide.^[3] He was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974.^[4]

Young life[]

Flippin's father, Charles, was a freed slave who fought in the Civil War on the Union side in the 14th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, then became a doctor. Charles and Mahala Flippin had their son George in Ohio in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War. When George's mother Mahala died in 1871, his father and brother moved away, first to Kansas, then to Henderson, Nebraska in 1888.^[4]

Football career[]

George Flippin attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln from 1891 to 1894.^[4]

Football was a young sport. A University of Nebraska football team had only existed for a few months at the time Flippin arrived on campus. He began to play for the 1891 Nebraska Old Gold Knights football team. Flippin's first game, against the Iowa Hawkeyes, was the fifth game in the university's history.^[3] He proved talented, and quickly become the star of the new team.

His teammates elected him team captain after the 1894 season. Nebraska's football coach, Frank Crawford, would not allow a Black man to be team captain.^[3]

Flippin left Nebraska and studied medicine in Chicago. He paid for school by playing football for College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago at $75 per season.^[2]

Later life[]

After earning a medical degree in Chicago, he served as a doctor Stromsburg, Nebraska until his death in 1929.^[3] He established the community's first hospital. In 1910 he married Stromsburg schoolteacher Mertina Larson; because interracial marriage was unlawful in Nebraska, Flippin and the white Larson were married in Iowa.^[2] He is the only Black person buried in the Stromsburg cemetery.^[4]

References[]