With the Bears set to debut this season’s throwback uniforms Sunday against the Vikings, they released a video with several players and chairman George McCaskey late Wednesday to address the controversy of celebrating an era when the NFL was segregated.
They have been marketing the jerseys since summer and will wear them for the first time against the Vikings. They are inspired by their 1936 uniforms, and black players were banned from 1934 through ’45. The Bears did not have a black player until 1952, Jack Silverstein wrote in an article detailing that chapter of NFL history last month.