Bobby Marshall

CTL-E-7030 · Person · other · 1880–1958

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07902 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-7030.

Robert 'Bobby' Marshall (March 12, 1880 – August 27, 1958) was a Minneapolis multi-sport star who became, in the National Football Foundation's words, the first African American to play football in the Big Nine, the conference that became the Big Ten. Playing end for the University of Minnesota from 1904 to 1906, he helped the Gophers to a 27–2 record while outscoring opponents 1,238–63, earned Walter Camp All-America honors, and in 1906 kicked the field goal that beat Chicago 4–2. Marshall also played first base for Minnesota's baseball team and lettered in track, hockey and boxing. After college he starred for Minneapolis professional teams, and in 1920 he and Fritz Pollard became the first two African American players in the new American Professional Football Association, the league renamed the NFL, Marshall playing for the Rock Island Independents and later Minneapolis and Duluth clubs into 1925. He was inducted posthumously into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971.

The record

• Also known as: Robert Wells Marshall, Robert Walls Marshall

Notes

Sports Encyclopedia roster CTL-SPE-0382. Firsts disposition: ASSERTED jointly and precisely — first African American to play football in the Big Nine/Big Ten (National Football Foundation and University of Minnesota agree), and, with Fritz Pollard, one of the first two African American players in the APFA/NFL in 1920. A stronger claim heard in a 2021 biography and Minnesota Public Radio interview — that Marshall alone was 'the NFL's first African American player' — is NOT adopted: the record's authoritative sources support the shared 1920 framing, and no bare 'first' is asserted. Field-goal distance is reported inconsistently across sources (48 yards in one Minnesota account, 60 yards in the College Football Hall of Fame account); the description therefore states only that his 1906 field goal beat Chicago 4–2, which all sources support. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): Marshall is the hinge between Black college stardom and the integrated founding of the pro league — a 40-year-old end still good enough to help found the NFL a decade and a half after his All-America seasons, and the clearest proof that the league's later color ban erased men, not absence. Photo: CLEARED — 'Bobby Marshall 1916.png,' Commons description names him in his Minneapolis Marines uniform, Public domain.

Sources

• National Football Foundation. "Bobby Marshall (1971) — College Football Hall of Fame." FootballFoundation.org. Accessed 2026-11-03. (primary source · build store)
• University of Minnesota Athletics. "Bobby Marshall: M Club Hall of Fame." GopherSports.com. Accessed 2026-11-03. (primary source · build store)
• Bill Johnson. "Bobby Marshall." Society for American Baseball Research (SABR BioProject). Accessed 2026-11-03. (build store)

More person records

• Marcus Louis Freeman
• Marcus Rashford
• Marcus Samuelsson
• Margaret Burroughs
• Margaret Hartigan
• Margaret Walker

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-7030 · Combined Graph record U-07902 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.