Walking Alone

The Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington

By: Dan Taylor

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Hardcover | 13 July 2022

At a Glance

Hardcover
248 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.8 x 16.0 x 2.5

Hardcover

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The inspirational story of African American trailblazer Kenny Washington, the first player to reintegrate the NFL.

On September 29, 1946, football star Kenny Washington made history. When he trotted onto the field for the Los Angeles Rams, Washington broke the color barrier in the NFL.

In Walking Alone: The Untold Journey of Football Pioneer Kenny Washington, Dan Taylor reveals Washington's immeasurable impact on his sport and beyond. Legends of the game hailed Washington as one of the greatest players in football history. He was also a baseball star, and Taylor recounts never-before-told details of the efforts to make Washington the first Black player in big league baseball along with Jackie Robinson. Taylor also delves into the heinous verbal and physical abuse Washington was subjected to, his refusal to play in the South, and how he positively impacted ignorant teammates and rivals through his character and talent.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, there was no more popular athlete in Los Angeles than Kenny Washington. Walking Alone chronicles for the first time the life story of this trailblazing football legend.

Industry Reviews

Taylor writes the first solo biography devoted to swivel-hipped tailback Kenny Washington (1918–71), who was the best known of the four Black athletes (the others being Woody Strode, Bill Willis, and Marion Motley) who broke the color barrier in American pro football in 1946. Washington was every bit the pioneer that his onetime UCLA baseball and football teammate Jackie Robinson was, but Washington’s legacy has been much more obscured, Taylor posits. (Though in recent years, Washington has been included in three group biographies that focused also on Strode, Willis, and Motley.) Washington was already 27 and hampered by bad knees by the time he was finally signed by the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, but teammate Bob Waterfield still called him the best player he ever saw. Based on archival research and the author’s interviews with Washington’s surviving family members, Taylor’s book is a fine read that elucidates Washington’s impacts on football and civil rights. A long-overdue thorough treatment of a largely forgotten giant in sports history; it should be widely read.

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