George Flippin

Young life

Flippin's father, Charles, was a freed slave who fought in the Civil War on the Union side in the 14th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, then became a doctor. Charles and Mahala Flippin had their son George in Ohio in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War. When George's mother Mahala died in 1871, his father and brother moved away, first to Kansas, then to Henderson, Nebraska in 1888. He paid for his education by playing football for the school at $75 per season. This makes him among the earliest people to be paid to play football.

Flippin was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

Later life

After earning a medical degree in Chicago, he served as a doctor in Stromsburg, Nebraska until his death in 1929. He established the community's first hospital. In 1910 he married Stromsburg schoolteacher Mertina Larson; because interracial marriage was unlawful in Nebraska, Flippin and the white Larson were married in Iowa. He is the only Black person buried in the Stromsburg cemetery.