Limited Beginnings.

Teams began paying players to play football in the 1890s, but professional football remained a largely disorganized sport from 1900 to 1920, with most teams clustered in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the Chicago area of Illinois. The popularity of pro football was strictly local or regional as the teams of athletic clubs challenged each other for city or state supremacy. Unlike college football, early pro football was dominated by ethnic, Catholic, and working-class players.

African American Players.

Although both the professional and collegiate ranks were dominated by whites in the 1910s, black players participated in the professional game in this early period. Doc Baker played four seasons with the Akron Indians as halfback, the last in 1911; Henry McDonald played backfield for the Rochester Jeffersons (1911-1917); and Fritz Pollard, a Brown University star who was the first black to make Walter Camp's first-team All-American, played for...