Judge Fred "Duke" Slater

Judge Fred “Duke” Slater (1898-1966), athlete and lawyer. Nicknamed “Duke” after the family dog, Frederick Wayman Slater grew up in Normal, Illinois and Clinton, Iowa. His father, an AME minister, stressed the importance of education and hard work; when Duke declared that he wanted to quit school, the elder Slater got him a job cutting ice on the Mississippi River, and he quickly changed his mind. Duke was so large that when he joined the high school football team, his cleats had to be ordered from Chicago, and since the family could not afford a helmet as well, he played without one. Starring at the offensive and defensive tackle positions, Slater led Clinton High School to the 1914 state championship. Several years later, he became one of the first African Americans in college football when he enrolled at the University of Iowa. He was named to the All-Big Ten and All-American teams in three consecutive years, and during his senior year the Hawkeyes went undefeated, including an upset of Notre Dame in which he enabled his teammate to score the winning touchdown by blocking three defenders at once. Newspapers referred to him as the “colored colossus,” while a competitor said “Duke Slater was the best tackle I ever played against. I tried to block him throughout my college career but never once did I impede his progress to the ball carrier.”

After graduating in 1922, he decided to play in the recently founded National Football League. During his ten-year professional career, he starred for the Milwaukee Badgers, Rock Island Independents, and Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals. As one of the only African Americans in the league, Slater faced numerous indignities; in 1924, for example, he sat out a game in Kansas City after objections by the home team. Despite these obstacles, he was named to the All-NFL team five times, and in 1929 his blocking enabled a teammate to set the all-time record with six touchdowns in a game against the Bears. He was also known for his sense of fair play even when the same was not extended to him. When asked why he did not hit a running back as hard as he could, for example, he replied “The little fellow was stopped – why should I hurt him?” Slater retired in 1932, just before the NFL expelled all of its black players; there would be no others until after World War II.

He had returned to Iowa after each season to work on a law degree, graduating in 1928, and he began practicing law full time after his football career ended. He also became active in local politics and was named an assistant district attorney in 1935. Thirteen years later, he ran for a Cook County municipal judgeship and was easily elected, receiving nearly a million votes. Slater was also active in Iowa alumni affairs, recruiting numerous other black student-athletes and speaking with the team before big games. In 1951, he was named an inaugural member of the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, becoming their first African American member. Many football historians have also advocated for his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame, although the lack of statistics for linemen has hindered this effort. After Slater’s death from stomach cancer in 1966, a new student residence building on the University of Iowa campus was named for him (he is the only former student-athlete so honored), as were the Judge Slater Apartments on Chicago’s South Side. One sportswriter memorialized him by stating “that Slater must have been raised to stand on his own two feet! Proud in the knowledge that in America, as in no other country, a man regardless of creed or color can advance by the sweat of his brow and the muscle of his mind!”

© David Brodnax, Sr.