TO THE CHAPTER INVISIBLE
George Taliaferro 1927–2018 IU Legend, College Football Hall of Fame, NFL Player, Past Grand Lt. Strategus By Aaron Williams
coach and requested a scrimmage game as a tune-up for the Illinois state cham- pionship. Playing in his first game against a top-level all-White team, Taliaferro was dominant. “That coach from Chicago told the coach at Indi- ana [University] about me. That’s how I wound up in Bloom- ington.” Taliaferro’s time as student was not easy even for a star football athlete. IU campus environment
changed, IU will declare the restaurant off-limits to all IU students. According to Taliaferro, other Bloomington restau- rants quickly followed suit. On the football field, he was a re- markable player leading IU to its only undefeated season and outright Big Ten championship in 1945. After a spec- tacular freshman season, Taliaferro was drafted into the United States Army where he spent one year prior to return- ing to Indiana University for 1947-1948 seasons. During his collegiate playing career, Taliaferro was named IU football team MVP, All-Big Ten and All-Ameri- can. In 1949, Taliaferro made pro football history when the Chicago Bears selected him in the thirteenth round of the NFL Draft making him the first Afri- can American to be drafted by an NFL team. He spurned the NFL Bears and signed with the Los Angeles Dons of the rival All-American Football Conference (AAFC). He was named 1949 AAFC Rookie of the Year. Taliaferro was not the first African American to play in the professional football as African Ameri- cans, including two noteworthy Kappas Fred Slater (Gamma 1918) and Solomon Butler (Chicago Alumni 1954), played in the 1920s prior to the NFL employing segregationist rules in the 1930s. Taliaferro was known as a great tail- back with speed and elusiveness but he was extremely proud that he could play six other positions well (quarterback, punter, punt returner, kick returner, defensive back, fullback). Taliaferro played for multiple teams in the AAFC and for the Baltimore Colts and Phila- delphia Eagles after the AAFC merged with the NFL. He was named to the NFL Pro Bowl two consecutive years. In post-World War II America, he was part of a wave of African-American ath- letes (Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella,
“The thing that I like most about foot- ball was hitting people. It allowed me to vent my frustrations with being dis- criminated against in the United States,” said Indiana University-Bloomington (IU) legend and football star George Taliaferro (Alpha 1948). He was a man of consequence who impacted IU and professional football but, more impor- tantly, helped remove discriminatory practices at IU and in the Bloomington community. Long associated with IU first as a student, then as an administra- tor and as an alumnus, Brother George Taliaferro entered the Chapter Invisible on October 8, 2018 at the age of 91 in Mason, OH. He served the fraternity as a Grand Lt. Strategus in the administra- tion of 14 th Grand Polemarch J. Ernest Wilkins, Sr. George Taliaferro was born on Jan 8, 1927 in Gates, TN to Robert and Vir- nater Taliaferro but grew up in Gary, IN. He was a high school football phenom at Gary’s Roosevelt High School. According to local legend, during his senior year, a coach of an all-White high school in Chicago reached out to the Roosevelt
and the town of Bloomington was rigidly segregated and discriminatory toward people of color. From race relations, equal access to facilities, and civil rights, Taliaferro faced the type of daily racial bigotry and exclusion the fraternity Founders experienced on the IU campus nearly 35 years prior to Taliaferro. Taliaferro reflected on his time on the Bloomington campus in a 2013 biographical documentary, “I felt like I didn’t belong here, because of the dis- crimination. And yet, lying in my bunk at night, I decided that being discriminated against because of my race was a small price to get a quality education, and I simply made up my mind that I could do that.” He could not understand why he could not live in the dormitories, patron- ize restaurants in town, eat in school cafeterias, or sit where he wanted in a downtown Bloomington movie theater. During his time as IU student, he was credited with desegregating businesses. When a local Bloomington restaurant refused to serve Taliaferro, the IU president intervened and informed the restaurant that unless the policy was
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Publishing achievement for 105 years
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