'He fought that racism': The University of Nebraska's first Black football player who went on to do much more
The University of Nebraska's first Black football player, George Flippin, also became a well-known doctor in the town of Stromsburg, Nebraska. His legacy in the town of less than 1,200 people, still lives on today.
You can learn a lot about Stromsburg in the town library.
"I just love history. And knowing about your family history and genealogy," said Library Director Lauran Ostberg.
And you can say Ostberg knows a thing or two about her genealogy. Her great-great aunt was the second wife of George.
"They had to get married in Logan Iowa because it was illegal at the time for interracial marriages in Nebraska," Ostberg said.
George joined the Nebraska football team in 1891, before they were the Huskers. Dr. Lawrence Chatters with the University's athletic department said George made a name for himself during his second season.
"The big first game of the year was Illinois and Illinois had won their state championship back then and Nebraska went in the underdog and the Bug Eaters prevailed, and George Flippin was a major part of that," Chatters said.
George's teammates embraced him.
"They would not allow him to be left out," Chatters said.
But not everyone was as welcoming. The University of Missouri refused to play a game against Nebraska because George was on the team.
"We have to learn from his success and all of the things that he went through, and we have to keep moving forward," Chatters said.
And George kept moving forward, finishing medical school at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
"So many people got his care. And were taken care by him as a doctor," Ostberg said.
George followed in his father, Dr. Charles Flippin's footsteps. Charles was a freed slave who fought for the Union in the Civil War. He also opened the first hospital in Stromsburg.
The former hospital now sits at 8th and Main streets, but people in the town say the hospital was moved from a different part of Stromsburg, an area next to the library.
One Stromsburg resident who knows that and a whole lot more is 78-year-old Kathy Nelson.
"This story needed to be told," Nelson said. "I went through all the old newspapers, and made copies of all the articles."
After 10 years of research, Nelson published her book in 2014 titled "More than Football: George Flippin's Stromsburg Years."
"And I have a chapter on that underlying sense of racial tension here," Nelson said.
She believes George may have filed the first civil rights lawsuit in Nebraska. In 1912, George sued a York cafe for telling him he would have to eat in their kitchen while his white friends could eat at their table.
"He fought that racism," Nelson said.
A lower court found the cafe guilty, but a higher court overturned it. Still, George kept advocating for racial equality.
"George Flippin spent some time as a speaker on the Negro Problem," Nelson said.
Decades before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words changed history, George had this to say at a church in Lincoln: "All we ask is the enforcement of the laws as they are. The right and opportunity to stand or fall as we deserve, and we would demand that public sentiment recognize the majesty of the mind and not the color of the face."
Kathy Nelson is receiving hospice care. She hopes to live to see the University of Nebraska make George Flippin an honorary graduate.