By Mardeio Cannon | OBSERVER Columnist

I am old enough to remember the early 1970s when there were NO African-American Quarterbacks in the NFL. The racist theory was that Black quarterbacks didn’t have the intellectual capacity to lead a professional team. Then Joe Gilliam started the first six games of the 1974 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers. James Harris was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1969 and, from 1974-1977, started 36 games for the Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Chargers, making the Pro Bowl in ’74. He received racist threats and a ton of hate mail just for playing quarterback in the NFL.

A huge barrier was broken when Doug Williams, a product of Grambling State University, an HBCU, led the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) to a Super Bowl victory in January 1988 as the Starting quarterback.

Now we fast-forward to the present day where 14 NFL starting quarterbacks – almost half the league – are African American. In the second round of the NFL playoffs, four of the starting quarterbacks were African Americans (Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, C.J. Stroud and Jordan Love).

Now as the Super Bowl approaches, we are guaranteed to have at least one starting quarterback in the game, either Mahomes or Jackson.

In the upcoming NFL draft, the top two projected picks are African American Quarterbacks, Caleb Williams from USC and Jayden Daniels from LSU.

If you are a fan of college football, it seems all the major colleges and universities have African Americans starting at quarterback. If the trend continues of talented African American quarterbacks coming out of college, seeing a white quarterback starting in the NFL might become like seeing a starting white cornerback.

I thank God that race-based attitudes and perceptions about the capabilities of an athlete have changed. However, those attitudes and perceptions based on stereotypes remain prevalent in our society. They can be eliminated only by African Americans taking advantage of every opportunity that comes our way in sports, business, medicine and government. There still is a lot of work to do!

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