One hundred years ago, Sol Butler’s name was well known throughout the sports world. A multi-sport athlete, Butler set records at the University of Dubuque, was a quarterback in the early days of the NFL, competed in track and field at the Olympics and played pitcher and shortstop in the Negro Leagues. His achievements came in the era of legal segregation, and shone a light on institutional racism in the Midwest, the U.S. more broadly, and internationally.
The African American Museum of Iowa (AAMI) in Cedar Rapids hopes to bring more recognition to Butler as they host Dr. Brian Hallstoos for a talk on his new book, Sol Butler: An Olympian’s Odyssey through Jim Crow America Thursday night.
Hallstoos, a professor of history at the University of Dubuque, found himself compelled to write about an athlete the institution still holds dear. “I came to realize that his story was a story about civil rights and about race relations in this country,” the author said. His book aims to go beyond Butler’s feats of athleticism, focusing on the human being and tracing the impact he had across race, class and community.
Solomon Wellings “Sol” Butler was born in 1895 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. His father, who had been born into slavery, joined the Union Army and fought in the Civil War. After the war, he changed his name from the one he was given by his enslaver to Benjamin Butler, inspired by a Union general of the same name, who had become famous as the first Union general to refuse to return formerly enslaved people to the enslavers.
Sol’s family moved to Hutchinson, Kansas in 1909, and he quickly began to excel in school athletics. By his senior year, he followed his coach to Rock Island High School, where he became a regional track star. Butler then moved on to the University of Dubuque, earning 12 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. In 1919, he set the university’s long jump record of 7.56 m (24 feet, 9 3/4 inches), a mark that still stands today.
Butler joined the Army after the U.S. entered World War I. He represented the Army at the 1919 Inter-Allied Games in Paris, where he won the long jump by a considerable margin. His performance solidified him as the best long jumper in the world.
The following year, he was picked to represent the United States at the Olympics, and it was expected he would dominate the competition in the long jump. But what should have been a defining moment was shattered.
After his first jump in the long jump preliminaries, Butler injured a tendon, ending his Olympic run. He had likely been under pressure to push beyond what his body could bear. Hallstoos points to the harmful expectations placed on Black athletes by coaches and officials who lacked empathy and, as he put it, leaned into “stereotypes that black people don’t feel pain.” It was that kind of thinking, Hallstoos argues, that helped cost Butler his best chance at Olympic greatness.
In 1923, Butler signed a contract to play in the then-three-year-old NFL, joining the Rock Island Independents. Although his stint with the Independents was short-lived, it included a standout moment: a game in which his play helped Rock Island defeat the Chicago Bears by outscoring their entire team.
He went on to play for other teams in the league and even played baseball briefly in 1925 with the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues.
In 1926, Butler signed with another football team, the Canton Bulldogs, where he played alongside one of the greatest figures in American sports history, Jim Thorpe. The team played in front of large crowds, but it also drew the era’s hard racial lines into sharp focus.
At times, teams and spectators openly balked at the presence of a Black player. In one contest during the season, the all-white New York Giants refused to play the Independents unless a white player started at quarterback. At the end of that season, Butler moved to Chicago, got married and began the next chapter of his life.
The University of Dubuque continues to honor Butler’s legacy. Each year it hosts the “Sol Butler Classic,” a collegiate track and field meet that draws teams from across the region. The university also awards the Solomon Butler Character and Courage Award to former UD athletes who demonstrate outstanding contributions to society. That emphasis on character is fitting, because Butler’s impact stretches far beyond the years when he was fastest or strongest.
After leaving professional sports, he worked as a coach, journalist, and entrepreneur. He used his reputation to build relationships, create opportunities, and keep pushing against the limits placed on Black life in America. As Hallstoos put it, “Sports is kind of his tool for opening doors and pushing back against segregated society.”
AAMI sees Butler’s story as vital not only because of who he was, but because of where his story lives. Museum education manager Joshua Wilson notes that visiting teachers often tell him, “All my students hate Iowa. They all say nothing goes on here… then you go through our museum and you have people like Sol Butler. There’s so many unique, cool individuals to talk about.”
For Wilson and the museum, stories like Butler’s are a way to build community and broaden understanding of what Iowa history contains.
That same sense of community is something Butler seemed to value in practice, even when the world around him did not. Whether he was forging friendships at UD, mentoring youth later in life, or simply refusing to tolerate harassment in the spaces he worked, Butler’s life consistently reflected a strong moral center. Even his untimely death in 1954 underscored that. In his final moments, he was trying to protect two women from a drunk customer’s harassment at a tavern in Chicago, an act Hallstoos describes as “kind of a heroic, but bloody … ending.”
Those who want to learn more can attend Hallstoos’ hour-long talk at the African American Museum of Iowa on Thursday, Feb. 26 at 6:30 p.m. Hallstoos will discuss his book and sign copies for attendees.
