{"id":2973,"date":"2016-06-09T20:25:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T01:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sportspaper.info\/blog\/?p=2973"},"modified":"2016-06-09T20:25:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T01:25:06","slug":"cover-capsule-washington-redskins-1955-60","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/cover-capsule-washington-redskins-1955-60\/","title":{"rendered":"Cover Capsule: Washington Redskins, 1955-60"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t need to tell you about the often contentious debate surrounding the name and brand imagery of the Washington Redskins. And it’s not my intent to step into the middle of that debate, as I honestly don’t side with any faction. (i.e. I absolutely see why the name and branding offends many people, but I am not personally<\/em> offended by it.)<\/p>\n

What I want to show you in this post is a rather interesting period for Redskins game programs, covering the 1955 through 1960 NFL seasons. Starting in 1955\u00a0Washington ditched their years-old cover designs — featuring a diminutive cartoon (of dubious taste) Native American engaged in all sorts of hijinx against the team’s opponents — for a more arguably tasteful approach.<\/p>\n

(For some examples of the animated mascot in question, check out these programs from 1945<\/a>, 1947<\/a>, and 1953<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Washington published a preview of sorts for this new direction for the home opener against the Giants on October 10, 1954, on the cover of their program\/magazine aptly named The Redskin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

This is clearly a huge change from the animated covers, and shows that at least on their programs the team was no longer trying to use Native Americans for laughs. But that was it for the season, and the new illustrations didn’t take hold until the next campaign.<\/p>\n

With the exception of\u00a0the team’s standard holiday cover<\/a>\u00a0in December, then, all 1955 home programs were adorned by beautiful illustrations of famous figures in Native American history. The season’s designs featured Sitting Bull<\/a>, Chief Joseph<\/a>, Chief Crowfoot<\/a>, Geronimo<\/a>, and Chief Red Cloud<\/a>. Each was drawn\u00a0in a portrait style and, to my eye, was quite tasteful. Take the Sitting Bull cover from the October 9 game against the Chicago Cardinals as an example:<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s one from a 1958 game against the Steelers:<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

All of these fantastic drawing were by an artists I can only identify by last name — Coak. If anyone has more information on this artists please let me know!<\/p>\n

Washington continued using Coak-illustrated portraits on regular season home game covers for the next several years, with very little changing other than the subject. Starting with the 1961 season the team shifted to a motif that centered on the idea of Native American imagery such as art, costumes<\/a>, and totem poles. Oddly enough, the same season that saw the Native portraits left behind the Dallas Cowboys started a similar motif on their programs, but one that featured famous figures of the American West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But that’s a topic for another post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look at the wonderful Washington Redskins programs of the late ’50s, each featuring excellent illustrated portraits of Native Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[27,360,334,359,91,14,11,252],"class_list":["post-2973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-galleries","tag-1950s","tag-cover-capsule","tag-covers","tag-native-americans","tag-nfl","tag-programs","tag-series","tag-washington-redskins","wpcat-120-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2973"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2993,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions\/2993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportspaper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}