At Nebraska, George was a football player, wrestler, track and field athlete and baseball player. Nebraska's official list of football letterwinners shows Flippin earning three in 1892, '93 and '94. He also played on Nebraska's 1891 team, a year when no letterwinners were historically documented. He was the fifth black athlete nationally at a predominantly white university.
The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Flippin became a successful running back for the Huskers. Lincoln Star Sports Editor Cy Sherman described Flippin as a “charged bull, into which was bred the tenacity of the bulldog, the ferocity of a tiger and the gameness of the man who knows no fear.”
In fact, Flippin was so intergral to Nebraska's early teams that the first victory against an out-of-state opponent came when he led Nebraska past Illinois at Lincoln in 1892. The score was 6-0.
Because of Flippin's presence on the roster, Missouri refused to play a scheduled game with Nebraska at Omaha in 1892. The result was a 1-0 forfeit.
He Followed His Doctor/Dad’s Footsteps
George’s parents, Charles and Mahala Flippin, struggled through captivity and slavery for years. When Charles became a free man, he fought for the Union side in the Civil War with the 14th US Colored Troops Co. A. George’s mother died when he was 3-years-old, so his father moved the family to Kansas. George married Georgia Smith in 1895. Georgia, from Des Moines, Iowa, was a piano student at the Nebraska Conservatory of Music in Lincoln prior to their marriage. They had two children, Dorothy May (Jeffers) and Robert Browning Flippin.
In 1907 George moved to Stromsburg, Nebraska, where his father and stepmother had established a medical practice in 1900. He built the first hospital in Stromsburg which is now the local Bed and Breakfast. George was part of an early civil rights case in Nebraska when he was denied service at a York restaurant. Contrary to local legend, George did not own one of the first automobiles in Stromsburg. That honor belonged to his father, Charles. In 1910 George endured the scandal of a divorce and subsequent marriage to Mertina Larson.
George was a respected physician and surgeon known across the county and state for his willingness to make house calls regardless of the distance or the ability of the family to pay. George Flippin died May 15, 1929 and is the only African-American buried in the Stromsburg Cemetery.
