They don’t celebrate “Black History Month” in Scotland or Ireland, but if they did, they’d have to include an acknowledgement of Gil Heron.
The Jamaican-born Heron is perhaps best known in the U.S. — if not the world — for being the father of legendary singer/poet/activist Gil Scott-Heron, whose well-known songs chronicling the struggle for Civil Rights and justice included “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” “We Almost Lost Detroit” and “Winter in America.”
The elder Heron, a professional soccer player, is hardly a footnote to history himself, as he became the first black player to don the green and white Hoops of Celtic, a Scotland-based club with links to Irish history as well.
The soccer-playing Heron emigrated from Kingston as a youth, first landing in Canada before settling in the U.S. In the 1940s, he began playing soccer professionally, first with Detroit Corinthians and then with Detroit Wolverines, both of the now long-defunct North American Soccer Football League. It was during his time with the Wolverines that he was spotted by a scout from Celtic, in 1951, while the Glasgow club were on a North American tour.
Soccer player Gil Heron (left) and his more famous son, singer Gil Scott-Heron (right). Photo: @iamzog | Twitter
Heron went to Glasgow on trial, and then was signed by Celtic. When he made the first of a total of five appearances with the first-team squad, later in 1951, he broke the color barrier in the Scottish game by becoming the first black player to ever play professionally for Celtic as well as in the Scottish league. In effect, he was the sport’s Jackie Robinson, just four years after the athlete from California broke down barriers in professional baseball in America.
The Hoops released Heron, however, that same season, and he went to play briefly for another Scottish team, Third Lanark, and then in England before returning to Detroit.
Heron and his son were not particularly close. The elder Heron left the singer’s mother (Bobbi Scott) to move to Scotland when his son was just two. The two men reportedly did not see one another again until the Scott-Heron was in his twenties.
Yet, if this photo is any indication, the singer had a soft spot for the Hoops, just like his dad, likely because of Celtic’s history: the club was founded in 1887 as part of an effort to alleviate poverty among Irish immigrants in Glasgow’s East End and to help them integrate into British society, which viewed them then — and to some extent even now — as second-class citizens.
Gil Scott-Heron: Celtic mad, just like Dad :-) Paradise 1985 https://t.co/iyfDddES9O pic.twitter.com/0SfbbRHCK9
— The Shamrock (@TheShamrock1888) September 16, 2015
