The Cleveland Indians will remove their long-time logo, a Native American caricature called Chief Wahoo, from their uniforms in 2019, according to Major League Baseball.
The logo first appeared on the team’s uniforms in 1948 and since that time has caused an increasing amount of controversy. The decision to remove it comes after pressure on Cleveland from Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.
“We have consistently maintained that we are cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the discussion,” Cleveland Indians Chairman And CEO Paul Dolan said in a statement. “While we recognize many of our fans have a longstanding attachment to Chief Wahoo, I’m ultimately in agreement with Commissioner Manfred’s desire to remove the logo from our uniforms in 2019.”
Small gatherings of activists can be found at nearly any Indians game protesting the logo. Detractors say the image, featuring a broadly grinning face with a large nose, red skin and a headband with a feather in it, promotes racist stereotypes about America’s first peoples.
The logo has even been the subject of court battles, including a 2014 federal lawsuit by a group called People Not Mascots and a 2016 case in which a Canadian man sued the team seeking to keep the Indians from wearing the Chief Wahoo logo during games in Toronto. Canadian courts denied his request.
“The big smiling comic character — I’ve never seen an Indian that looked like that,” Dennis Limberhand of the Cheyenne tribe in Montana told attendees at a 2015 panel discussion on the logo and others like it at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
Defenders say the logo is beloved and isn’t meant to be hateful toward anyone. That argument held the day for years, but, at least for Cleveland Indians leadership, seems to have lost its persuasiveness.
Chief Wahoo will no longer appear on any Cleveland uniforms or on banners or other promotional materials at Cleveland’s Progressive Stadium. Fans in Northeast Ohio will still be able to get Wahoo-branded gear from retailers, though MLB will not carry that merchandise at its online outlet. The Cleveland Indians will keep the rights to the logo, meaning they will still receive licensing fees from merchandise featuring Wahoo.
The team’s name, also the source of ire for native rights advocates, will not change. Changing nomenclature for teams that reference Native Americans has been a focus of pressure from activists. In 1996, Miami University dropped the name “Redskins,” believed by activists to be a racist slur, from its sports programs. Teams from Miami now go by “Redhawks” instead.
Other teams, however, have held steadfast. The National Football League’s Washington Redskins have resisted decades of pressure to change their name and logo, which features a red-tinted Native American man in profile wearing a headdress.
For Cleveland, the move away from Wahoo comes after years of subtler distancing. In 2014, the team began using its alternate “Block C” logo to replace Wahoo’s visage in many situations, though the grinning face made high-profile appearances on uniforms during playoffs.
This article appears in Jan 24-31, 2018.
