August 27 - The Packers

On this day in Labor History the year was 1921.  That was the day that Green Bay Packers football team received a charter from American Professional Football Association.  A year later this would become the National Football League. The Green Bay club had started up two years earlier.  Its original sponsor was the Indian Packing Company, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They packaged canned meat. Meat packing was a major industry in the Midwest during this era.  Packing plants in Chicago, Kansas City, Iowa and Wisconsin processed the cattle and pigs raised in the west as meat to feed the nation. Curly Lambeau was a shipping clerk for the company. He helped to organize a group of local players into a football team. Curly persuaded his boss to donate money for the uniforms. The name “Packers” was born. Then when Indian Packing fell on hard times, they were bought out by Acme, another packing company based in Chicago. So for a brief moment, the Green Bay Packers, one of the staunchest rivals of the Chicago Bears, was actually owned by a Chicago company.   Although Acme only owned the team for a year, the team nickname stuck. Lambeau was able to buy back the team.  He went on to become the Packers coach, leading the team to six championships. The Packers are not the only American sports franchise that’s name harkens back to a particular kind of labor.  Another Wisconsin team, the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, is a reference to that city’s proud beer brewing tradition.  In Big Ten Sports the Purdue Boilermakers and the Nebraska Cornhuskers take to the gridiron.  These names reflect the working traditions of the cities where the teams play ball.