This story originally appeared on Can I Kick It FC’s podcast blog
During the 1920s, New York was the center of Black sporting excellence. Boxing and baseball, in particular, were two of the most popular sports throughout Black communities, not only in New York City, but throughout the African diaspora.
Afro-Latino boxers, such as “Panama Cannonball” and “Kid Chocolate” traversed the region and made regular appearances in New York cultivating a vibrant Black sporting landscape (Putnam, 402). Similarly, the New York Cubans Negro League baseball team generated a mass following and reflected the diversity of Harlem’s Black communities.
Black New Yorkers deeply invested their time and resources into individual and team sports during the 1920s and 1930s and the Black sporting landscape revealed that Harlem’s communities were “not just African Americans but also Antiguans, Trinidadians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans” (Burgos, 126).
Afro-Caribbean New Yorker’s history with the game
Soccer was another popular sport amongst Afro-Caribbean New Yorkers. At the beginning of the 1924-25 season of the Empire State Soccer League, a new team, the Western Tigers, registered in the second division. According to one newspaper report, they were “the only colored team in the United States” (“Local Soccer Teams”).
The origins of the Western Tigers are unclear, as are most details of the team, but according to newspaper reports, they were organized by Thomas Lanceley, secretary of the Brooklyn Soccer League in 1924. The term “organized” may lend too much credit to Lanceley because two years prior to his involvement, the Western Tigers traveled to Africa, where they were “cleaning up in soccer…where the game is as popular as baseball here” (“Western Tigers Win”).
The 1924 season began in October, and the Western Tigers quickly proved that they belonged in the league. Within a month, they were tied with Germania FC for first place. Yet by the end of the season in March, they ended up in the bottom half of the table. Nevertheless, the Western Tigers exhibited a collective sense of purpose throughout the season, “working in splendid harmony, displaying convincing teamwork, in every game.” The team garnered significant attention throughout New York, the U.S., and across the wider Black world and even anticipated the “addition of four players from Africa” for the 1925 season (“Western Tigers Win”).
This sense of teamwork, and their earlier athletic exchanges with Africa may suggest that some of the players would have been sympathetic to the politics of Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican Black nationalist and pan-Africanist, that was omnipresent throughout New York at the time. Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the largest political and social movement of Black people throughout the world.
Their calls of ‘Africa for the Africans’ and their physical and cultural ‘Back to Africa’ movement was prominent during the 1920s, especially in New York, and would have been easily reflected in the early success of the Western Tigers. What is certain is that soccer was an early feature of the Black sporting landscape in New York and provided its residents with weekly displays of racial competition and opportunities for diasporic exchange.
The legend of José Leandro Andrade
Across the Atlantic, soccer’s position within the pantheon of Black diasporic sports benefited greatly from the 1924 Paris Olympics. Arguably the most popular athlete at the Olympics was a Black soccer player from Uruguay, José Leandro Andrade. Most of what is known about Andrade has been compiled into a sort of mythology about the player.
According to reports, he was born in Salto, Uruguay—near the Brazilian border—on October 1, 1901 to an Argentinian mother and Brazilian father, who was apparently ninety-eight years old when Andrade was born. According to Hans Gumbrecht, his father “probably came to Brazil in his youth as a slave from West Africa, and he later escaped from a farm in southern Brazil” (Gumbrecht 249).
Growing up in Uruguay, Andrade found many different ways to earn an income, including as a carnival musician, and shoe shiner. Some writers suggest that Andrade also worked as a male escort on the docks in Montevideo. What is known for sure, however, is that by 1923, only in his early twenties, he was the star footballer of the Uruguayan national team.
In fact, “Andrade, more than any other player during the first third of the twentieth century, put soccer on the map of international sports” (Gumbrecht 246). During the 1924 Olympics, Andrade and the Uruguay team embarrassed their European and American opponents.
When Uruguay played their second match against the United States, beating them 3-0 and knocking the U.S. out of the competition, reporters praised “the most brilliant soccer ever played on a European field.” Within the first ten minutes of the first half, “Uruguay launched a whirlwind attack at the American goal” and attempted “half a dozen shots.” By the end of the first half, Uruguay utterly embarrassed the United States and scored all three of their goals, the second of which was scored by Andrade (Skene 17). Uruguay won the gold medal in the 1924 Olympics, and established themselves as the most successful football team during the 1920s, having won the inaugural World Cup in 1930.
Andrade’s popularity exceeded the bounds of the Parisian football fields and seeped into the popular culture of France that was already accustomed to Black artists, intellectuals, and entertainers. According to Gumbrecht, Andrade’s reputation as a talented practitioner of the Argentinian and Uruguayan tangos lent credibility to the rumors that “he had received offers to appear on the stages of Parisian cabarets” (Gumbrecht 247).
Historians agree that Andrade was sexually promiscuous, adopted dandy aesthetics, and “wore his blackness with confidence.” Moreover, he was alleged to have partied with the novelist Collette, and had sexual relations with the most popular entertainer of the time, Josephine Baker (McDougall 112).
Andrade undoubtedly had an appeal to Black diasporic migrants and soccer fans alike. Leading up to the 1928 Olympics, football supporters agreed that Andrade was the best player they had ever seen. So, when the Uruguayan national team toured the United States in 1927 to play against the best teams of the American Soccer League, a large amount of fans showed up to witness the greatness of Andrade and his teammates.
Although soccer was not as popular of a sport with African Americans as was baseball, boxing, and basketball, the Black press was sure to welcome Andrade and his South American teammates. The Amsterdam News announced the tour of the “sensational South American team with Negro stars,” a reference to Andrade and Antonio Recoba, a defender whose actual name was Emilio Recoba. Nevertheless, prior to their arrival, considerable interest was shown by “Negroes of Harlem because of the fact that two of the star players…are colored” (“South American Soccer Team”). Andrade and the Uruguayans were victorious throughout the tour, and their exploits in New York, New Jersey, and as far west as Chicago, were sure to attract large crowds of Afro-Caribbean supporters of the game.
The story of the Western Tigers and Andrade are significant because they revealed the popularity of soccer within a global Black sporting landscape. While sport historians have rightfully highlighted the contributions and diasporic excursions of Black boxers like Jack Johnson, and the circulation of baseball throughout the Spanish speaking Caribbean, soccer was another sport that Black people gravitated towards and played with enthusiasm. Similar to the ways in which Black baseball signaled the overwhelming importance of the sport and virtues of Black ownership within African American and Afro-Caribbean communities, diasporic athletes and supporters invested social, political, and economic value into Black soccer.
Burgos, Adrian. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
“Empire State League.” The Brooklyn Standard Union. September 28, 1924.
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. In Praise of Athletic Beauty. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
“Local Soccer Teams Will Be Very Active Tomorrow.” The Brooklyn Citizen. November 22, 1924.
McDougall, Alan. Contested Fields: A Global History of Modern Football. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020.
“New Yorkers Take Lead In Soccer Race.” The Pittsburgh Courier. November 22, 1924.
Putnam, Lara. “The Panama Cannonball’s Transnational Ties: Migrants, Sport, and Belonging in the Interwar Greater Caribbean.” Journal of Sport History 41, no. 3 (2014): 401-424.
Skene, Donald. “Uruguay Soccer Men Put Yanks Out of Olympics.” The Chicago Tribune. May 30, 1924, 17.
“South American Soccer Team to Play Here Mar. 20.” The New York Age. March 12, 1927, 6.
“Western Tigers Win by Forfeit.” Afro-American. November 15, 1924.
The longer version of this article can be found in the Journal of African American History 106, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 196-219.
