On March 25, 1918, on the Somme in France, a British second lieutenant named Walter Tull led his men in an assault on a German trench. He died in No Man's Land. "A machine-gun bullet pierced his neck and came out just beneath his right eye," a newspaper later reported.
Tull's men tried to bring his body back to the trenches, and one dragged it hundreds of yards, but finally had to leave him behind. The body was lost, and Tull has no marked grave. Today he stares out at us from beneath a peaked cap in an army photograph: an elegant light-skinned man with an Errol Flynn moustache. He was forgotten for nearly 80 years until being discovered by Phil Vasili, the historian of black football.
For Tull was not merely the first British-born black army officer. He also marked football, as Britain's - and possibly the world's - first black professional outfield player. (Arthur Wharton, a goalkeeper with Preston who held a world record for the hundred metres sprint, had been the first black pro.)
Certainly the press routinely called Tull a 'darkie'. On the other hand, in that lilywhite Britain he may have been perceived more as curiosity than threat.In recent years Tull has been rehabilitated. Various monuments to him have been proposed to add to the Walter Tull memorial garden outside Northampton Town's ground, and he is now taught in British schools. (A sample, half-witted question set for pupils: "How many matches did Walter Tull play for Northampton Football Club?")
He was born in Folkestone in 1888, the grandson of a slave, and son of a Barbadian carpenter and a white English mother. His mother died when was seven, his father two years later. Tull's stepmother, landed with six children, sent Walter and his brother Edward to a Methodist orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Edward left the orphanage after two years, adopted by a Scottish family. He would become a dentist.
Tottenham Hotspur, 1909
Tull's men tried to bring his body back to the trenches, and one dragged it hundreds of yards, but finally had to leave him behind. The body was lost, and Tull has no marked grave. Today he stares out at us from beneath a peaked cap in an army photograph: an elegant light-skinned man with an Errol Flynn moustache. He was forgotten for nearly 80 years until being discovered by Phil Vasili, the historian of black football.
For Tull was not merely the first British-born black army officer. He also marked football, as Britain's - and possibly the world's - first black professional outfield player. (Arthur Wharton, a goalkeeper with Preston who held a world record for the hundred metres sprint, had been the first black pro.)
Certainly the press routinely called Tull a 'darkie'. On the other hand, in that lilywhite Britain he may have been perceived more as curiosity than threat.In recent years Tull has been rehabilitated. Various monuments to him have been proposed to add to the Walter Tull memorial garden outside Northampton Town's ground, and he is now taught in British schools. (A sample, half-witted question set for pupils: "How many matches did Walter Tull play for Northampton Football Club?")
He was born in Folkestone in 1888, the grandson of a slave, and son of a Barbadian carpenter and a white English mother. His mother died when was seven, his father two years later. Tull's stepmother, landed with six children, sent Walter and his brother Edward to a Methodist orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Edward left the orphanage after two years, adopted by a Scottish family. He would become a dentist.
Tull's men tried to bring his body back to the trenches, and one dragged it hundreds of yards, but finally had to leave him behind. The body was lost, and Tull has no marked grave. Today he stares out at us from beneath a peaked cap in an army photograph: an elegant light-skinned man with an Errol Flynn moustache. He was forgotten for nearly 80 years until being discovered by Phil Vasili, the historian of black football.
For Tull was not merely the first British-born black army officer. He also marked football, as Britain's - and possibly the world's - first black professional outfield player. (Arthur Wharton, a goalkeeper with Preston who held a world record for the hundred metres sprint, had been the first black pro.)
Certainly the press routinely called Tull a 'darkie'. On the other hand, in that lilywhite Britain he may have been perceived more as curiosity than threat.In recent years Tull has been rehabilitated. Various monuments to him have been proposed to add to the Walter Tull memorial garden outside Northampton Town's ground, and he is now taught in British schools. (A sample, half-witted question set for pupils: "How many matches did Walter Tull play for Northampton Football Club?")
He was born in Folkestone in 1888, the grandson of a slave, and son of a Barbadian carpenter and a white English mother. His mother died when was seven, his father two years later. Tull's stepmother, landed with six children, sent Walter and his brother Edward to a Methodist orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Edward left the orphanage after two years, adopted by a Scottish family. He would become a dentist.
Tottenham Hotspur, 1909
Tull's men tried to bring his body back to the trenches, and one dragged it hundreds of yards, but finally had to leave him behind. The body was lost, and Tull has no marked grave. Today he stares out at us from beneath a peaked cap in an army photograph: an elegant light-skinned man with an Errol Flynn moustache. He was forgotten for nearly 80 years until being discovered by Phil Vasili, the historian of black football.
For Tull was not merely the first British-born black army officer. He also marked football, as Britain's - and possibly the world's - first black professional outfield player. (Arthur Wharton, a goalkeeper with Preston who held a world record for the hundred metres sprint, had been the first black pro.)
Certainly the press routinely called Tull a 'darkie'. On the other hand, in that lilywhite Britain he may have been perceived more as curiosity than threat.In recent years Tull has been rehabilitated. Various monuments to him have been proposed to add to the Walter Tull memorial garden outside Northampton Town's ground, and he is now taught in British schools. (A sample, half-witted question set for pupils: "How many matches did Walter Tull play for Northampton Football Club?")
He was born in Folkestone in 1888, the grandson of a slave, and son of a Barbadian carpenter and a white English mother. His mother died when was seven, his father two years later. Tull's stepmother, landed with six children, sent Walter and his brother Edward to a Methodist orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Edward left the orphanage after two years, adopted by a Scottish family. He would become a dentist.
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