Book Description

George Flippin was the first African American to play football for the University of Nebraska in the 1890s. "More Than Football: George Flippin's Stromsburg Years" tells the little-known story of Flippin's years as a doctor in Stromsburg, Nebraska. Flippin was born in Point Isabella, Ohio in 1868, the son of freed slaves. He came to Nebraska via Marion County, Kansas where his father, Charles, had come after his wife Mahala's death. George's father became an eclectic medical doctor and in 1888 the family came to Henderson, Nebraska and set up a clinic. After attending the University of Nebraska, George Flippin graduated from Chicago's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1899. He had a medical practice in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1907 Flippin's father, already in his 60s and recently divorced, asked his son to come and help him with his practice in Stromsburg, a small, mostly Swedish, community in Nebraska. Together they built the first hospital building where George developed his own practice. Four generations of Flippins lived in Stromsburg from 1900 to 1934. The family story included interracial marriages, divorces, and abortions which became the fodder for newspapers across the state. Civil Rights cases were decided in courtrooms. Being the only African American family in Stromsburg, race relations affected the Flippins even before the Ku Klux Klan came to town in the 1920s. Newspaper accounts, court records, legal documents, land and census records, maps and pictures break through the mythical legend of George Flippin. "More Than Football" is both a Nebraska story and an American story that recounts the determination, hard work, and courage of one African American family to not only survive its slave history, but to transcend its challenges and obstacles and pursue their American dream.