Willie O’Ree is used to facing racism. He spent his entire career in professional and amateur hockey being taunted and ridiculed because he is black. O’Ree became the National Hockey League’s first Black player on Jan. 18, 1958, for the Boston Bruins.
It would be 15 years before another black man played professional hockey. O’Ree played just 45 games and totaled just 14 points, but he is now in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto for his impact on hockey everywhere.
O’Ree’s Story Begins on the Underground Railroad
O’Ree’s story begins in the late 1700s in the new United States. His great, great-grandfather was a slave gifted to a family in South Carolina after the Revolutionary War. Paris O’Ree escaped slavery and traveled to Quebec, in eastern Canada along the Underground Railroad.
Willie was a great athlete. At just 20 years old he traveled to Georgia to try out for a Major League Baseball farm team. Just a year earlier Emmett Till was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi. O’Ree was scared, but determined to be himself under pressure few of us can imagine.
He Had to be Tough to Survive in Pro Hockey
On the ice, O’Ree was tough, and, like all hockey players he needed to be. “Remember, hockey players love to get under each other’s skin.” O’Ree writes in his autobiography:
If I tell the whole league on national television that racial barbs really bother me, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll hear more of them.
Sitting in the penalty box one night it got very scary. O’Ree faced a racist crowd in a small city in Quebec when one fan jumped toward him. “I met him with one clean punch. He went flying backward. Now they (the fans) were screaming for blood…But my teammates came to the rescue.” He faced that kind of intimidation every night he was in the lineup.
Willie O’Ree Credits Family for All His Success
Willie O’Ree had his number 22 retired by the Boston Bruins two years ago. He has worked as the NHL’s director of youth development and diversity ambassador for the past 26 years. But, he remembers the lesson taught by his great-great-grandfather to explain his success:
…when I think of Paris O’Ree and what he went through, I’m reminded that whatever I’ve been able to do was possible only because of what he had the courage to do.
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Bradley Tachco is a career journalist. I spent 12+ years at CNN as a writer and producer. My sports: NHL, MLB, NFL. My goal: unique content. And my teams are the Buffalo Sabres, Buffalo Bills (yes, I’m a masochist), and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I have been a Dodgers fan since I was old enough to think. I have gone through decades of despair with all three franchises. You can follow Bradley at X @p09691.
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