One hundred years after Westport’s segregated semi-pro football team took the field, systematic racism still exists in the sport
By Alexander Filippides
Westport Owls team photo, 1925. From the collection of the Westport Museum for History & Culture.
Did you know Westport had its own semi-professional football team? The team, known as the Westport Owls, competed locally starting in the 1920s. The team is not only notable for its regional relevance, but also for its sometimes-unbelievable stories, like in one 1927 article from the Bridgeport Telegram where Michael Cuseo, a wide receiver (or “end,” as the position was known at the time), was arrested on the field for inciting a gang fight at a dance in Easton. Incredibly enough, Cuseo would make bail in time to participate in the Owls game that evening against the Bridgeport Black Rock Pirates.
Looking at the team photo, something else is immediately clear about the Owls: The team was entirely White.
This is hardly surprising; like many aspects of American society before the Civil Rights Act of 1960, semi-professional and professional sports alike were usually segregated. But when looking at the current National Football League (NFL) teams we see a league that is still segregated.
Table showing a breakdown of NFL positions by race, 2023. Courtesy of the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University.
Historic policies of the NFL also shed light on the ways in which African American players have been sidelined: “Within-group score conversion,” better known as “race-norming” is the practice of adjusting a numeric value in a test to account for imagined differences between races. The practice violates civil rights and was outlawed as part of the 1991 Civil Rights Act. For a long time, the NFL officially made use of race-norming when conducting concussion testing on its players. It was an official stance of the NFL that Black players had a lower baseline cognitive function than White players and were tested as such. When do you think this explicitly racist practice was ended in the NFL?
It would not be until 2021, when the NFL made a statement officially bringing an end to the practice. The decision followed the payment of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by former NFL players. Race-norming made it impossible for generations of players who suffered brain damage from concussions to gain compensation for injuries. Worse yet, it was likely the reason that a myriad of serious brain injuries went untreated.
When discrimination is legitimized and propagated by an institution for so long, it can become embedded as part of the culture. Within the NFL, the systematic nature of this discrimination made it palatable for the thousands of people involved in the organization.
While the practice of race-norming may no longer be in effect, without meaningful reflection on why such practices were accepted for so long, nothing will fundamentally change.
Though there are no official rules and regulations codifying segregation or discrimination in the league, and even with laws that ban these practices outright, the cultural and societal conditions that allowed for them must be addressed if our goal is equity regardless of skin color.
This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to the NFL. In our society today, we continue to see a clear disparity between the economic well-being of People of Color and White People. Not necessarily because of any singular law, regulation, or attitude, but because the system that upheld the oppression of Black and Brown Americans has never been reformed in such a way that addresses the root issues that breed continued discrimination in our country. Singular laws and regulations cannot fundamentally change an inherently racist system.
While this clear and persistent inequity is disheartening, being aware of our own unconscious biases, recognizing and dismantling systems of oppression, and uplifting those from underrepresented communities can encourage the creation of a more equitable society.
Patrick Mahomes (right), quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, and Jalen Hurts (left), quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, at an interview together, 2025. Courtesy of Carolina Brehman, accessed via ESPN .
The 59th Superbowl will be the first to feature two Black starting quarterbacks. While still a position that is mostly White, trends show that more Black quarterbacks have been entering the league since the 1990s. There are real reasons to believe that change can happen, but it requires an active commitment by all of us to work towards a world where we are all equal.
The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration Following the Attacks on Pearl Harbor
By Alexander Filippides
Imagine, for a moment, the year is 1941, you’re an American citizen, as are your parents, but your grandparents, who have passed away, were born in the Japanese Empire more than half a century ago. Following the December 7th attacks on Pearl Harbor your life is flipped on its head. Neighbors who greeted you with kindness now refuse to look at you, the news and radio refer to you using racial slurs, and soon you’ll be forcibly imprisoned by the American government because of your race.
Over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, experienced this treatment after President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942. The infamous order authorized the forced removal of those who, in the eyes of the Secretary of War and later the War Relocation Authority, were a threat to national security. While this did include a limited number of Italians and Germans, the order was overwhelming used to prosecute those of Japanese ethnicity. Racism against the Japanese, and Asians at large, was nothing new for the United States; a myriad of ordinances had already been put in place to explicitly discriminate against Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asians; but this was something different. This wasn’t the government restricting immigration or enacting unjust employment, housing and education laws— instead the Federal government was imprisoning American citizens due to their ethnicity.
The reactions of those unjustly imprisoned varied widely. Some would never fully recover from the mental anguish; evidence suggests that those incarcerated would suffer disproportionately from a variety of mental health issues, including higher suicide and drug usage rates. Children and youth, who were early in their development, were likely also deeply impacted by the imprisonment. The average age of Nisei, or first generation of Japanese Americans born in the US, at the time of Executive Order 9066 was 18. Despite the extraordinarily oppressive, disruptive, and traumatic nature of the incarceration, some were able to overcome impossible odds and build incredible lives both during and after the Second World War.
Miné Okubo, Nisei greeting friends at a tea in her honor at the opening of an exhibit of her drawings and paintings of center life at the American Common, Mar. 6, 1945, New York, New York. Courtesy of the Online Archive of California, accessed via Densho.org.
Miné Okubo
One of the most celebrated figures in the Japanese American community to arise out of this period was Miné Okubo, an artist, activist, and author who would establish herself during incarceration as one of the greatest activist-artists of her era. Okubo continued to live in New York after incarceration and had a unique connection to Westport, designing annual Christmas cards for the Robert Duffus, a celebrated writer and editor who would call Westport home for many years.
Originally born in Riverside, California, in 1912, Okubo was seemingly destined for a career in illustration well-before Order 9066 was signed by FDR. In fact, Okubo was on an art fellowship in Europe when the Germans crossed the Polish border. At first, the artist fled to neutral Switzerland to await permission to gather her belongings in Paris, but upon being informed that her mother was seriously ill she took what she had on hand and boarded one of the last ships leaving Bordeaux, France.1
Once Japan attacked the United States in 1941, Okubo became acutely aware of the rising anti-Japanese racism that gripped newspapers, radio, and in the American public more broadly. Concerning fears of so-called “evacuation” to prison camps, Okubo would write:
Okubo with open newspaper, surrounded by anti-Japanese slogans, Berkeley, California, 1941. Courtesy of the Japanese American National Museum.
We had not believed at first that evacuation would affect the Nisei, American citizens of Japanese ancestry, but thought perhaps the Issei, Japanese-born mothers and fathers who were denied naturalization by American law, would be interned in case of war between Japan and the United States. It was a real blow when everyone, regardless of citizenship, was ordered to evacuate.
While detained at these camps, those of Japanese descent were not allowed to document their experiences using cameras or audio recordings. Undeterred, Okubo would produce around 200 line-drawings that depicted daily life during incarceration between 1942 and 1944. Okubo was granted permission to depart for New York in 1944 where she would go to work as an illustrator for Fortune magazine. The incarceration-era art created by Miné Okubo would be first published in 1946, when anti-Japanese sentiment remained high even after the recent nuclear bombings, and subsequent surrender, of Japan in August 1945. Citizen 13660, the book that would combine Okubo’s sketches with her musings, memories, and observations, remains perhaps the best firsthand account of life in an American concentration camp.
Daniel Rhodes assists Minnie Negoro with the pottery wheel at Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Courtesy of Department of the Interior, War Relocation Authority, accessed via Wikimedia Commons.
Minnie Negoro
Okubo, however, wasn’t the only notable artist who would settle in the Northeast after bearing witness to Japanese and Japanese American incarceration. Minnie Negoro was another Japanese American artist who would find her early career defined by imprisonment. A skilled ceramic artist who specialized in crafting pots, Negoro was a vital member of the artistic community in Connecticut. Her art would later be held in many major institutions, such as the Smithsonian. While interred, Negoro used her craft as an escape from camp conditions, created beauty and utility during a dark and desolate chapter of American history. Negoro remembered incarceration:
It was a frightening place, with guard towers and MPs who were told to shoot anyone going outside or over the gate. It was a concentration camp. I just wanted to get the heck out of there and to get as far away from the West Coast as possible.
Negoro didn’t only create pottery for her own sake, but helped teach classes to allow a reprieve for her fellow prisoners. In 1944, she was finally able to leave Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where she had been held, to attend Alfred University as a graduate student on the recommendation of her mentor Daniel Rhodes, a notable ceramic potter himself. Not only would Minne Negoro finish her education with a Master of Arts, but she would also go on to found her own ceramics program at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Gene Takahashi
No story of Japanese incarceration touches Westport more closely than that of Gene Takahashi. Raised in El Centro, California, Takahashi would call Westport home for many, many, years later in life. Takahashi was only fourteen at the time Order 9066 was issued. Despite his young age, Gene later recalled his emotions while entering Poston Relocation Center with clarity saying “It was quite a shock to us, getting off the two-and-a-half-ton truck to see there were actually guards, barbed wire, and we were actually in a prison.”
The young Gene Takahashi was, at last, permitted to leave camp with his family in 1944. Settling down in Cleveland, Ohio, the now-sixteen-year-old Takahashi could not escape the feeling of wanting to prove himself a “loyal American.” To this end, he enlisted in the American army, inspired by the all-Japanese American regiment the 442nd, at the ripe age of seventeen, requiring his parents’ permission to enlist.
Joining at the very tail-end of World War II, Takahashi would be stationed in Korea as part of the American force occupying Japan and former Japanese colonial territories. Despite the utility of speaking Japanese in Korea, a country which had suppressed the Korean language since Japanese entry in 1910, he felt unfairly targeted by his commanding officer due to his youth and Japanese ethnicity. However, Takahashi remembers this period fondly, stating that the intense scrutiny he was under contributed positively to his development at such a young age.
Gene J. Takahashi upon completion of Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia [10/31/1946]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
After completing his contract, Takahashi returned home but agreed to stay in the army reserve. Upon returning to Cleveland, he married his fiancé Violette and began a family before receiving an unexpected letter from President Truman, asking him to return to Korea to fight in the escalating Korean War. Now intimately familiar with Korea, Takahashi was a vital part of the slow desegregation of the American Armed Forces, being placed as the lieutenant of an all-black troop.
As the Chinese joined the conflict, Takahashi found himself narrowly evading capture, and likely execution, after his unit was overrun. The lieutenant would rally his troops again to slow the Chinese onslaught approaching Seoul, an action which would win Lt. Takahashi the Combat Infantry Badge and the Purple Heart. Soon after this, however, he would be shot by a Chinese machine gun and forced to return home. Takahashi would go on to have a large family and became a key figure in IBM’s litigation team, before finally settling in Westport as he approached the twilight of his career.
Could This Happen Again?
Takahashi’s legacy, like those of Negoro and Okubo, is profoundly influenced by the trials and tribulations presented by the unjust incarceration of so many Japanese and Japanese Americans. It is impossible to read the stories of these figures without wondering how different things may have been if, instead of spending multiple foundational years of life in a concertation camp, they had been permitted the same opportunities and rights of their non-Japanese counterparts. If these people, who undoubtably led exceptional lives, had been born White, would their names be more widely remembered? Its undeniable racism against Asians and Japanese Americans didn’t end with the end of incarceration, nor would it end with the Japanese surrender and occupation. Okubo would reflect in the intro of the 1983 edition of Citizen 13660:
I am often asked why I am not bitter and could this happen again? I am a realist with a creative mind, interested in people, so my thoughts are constructive. I am not bitter. I hope things can be learned from this tragic episode, for I believe it could happen again.
What is the legacy of Japanese and Japanese American incarceration? Is it the legacy the 442nd, the legendary Japanese American regiment that fought in Europe, and, later, Gene Takahashi? Is it the artists, like Okubo and Negoro, who’s art would capture this horrifying chapter of American history with powerful memories of oppression and elegant moments of escape? Perhaps, even, it is the tens of thousands whose stories remain untold; those who suffered not just in the camps but for a lifetime afterwards in silence.
The most sobering legacy must be the continual acceptance of anti-Asian racism in our country. One must look no further than the rise in anti-Asian hate crime that followed the outbreak of the COVID pandemic to see how, even with reparations and time, lessons are not learned if they are not remembered.
Offline materials:
Okubo, Miné. Citizen 13660 (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1946).
