page_title: Washington Football Team
section_title: Redskins name and logo controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Washington Football Team / Logos and uniforms / Redskins name and logo controversy
caption_attribution_description: Pro Football Hall of Fame
context_page_description: The Washington Football Team, formerly known as the Washington Redskins, is a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The team competes in the National Football League as a member of the NFC East division. The club plays its home games at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, with its headquarters and training facility located in Ashburn, Virginia. The team has played more than 1,000 games and are one of only five in the NFL to record over 600 total wins. The team was the first NFL franchise with an official marching band and a fight song, "Hail to the Redskins".
  The team was founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves before changing its name to the Redskins the following year. The franchise then relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1937, where they have been based since. Washington won the 1937 and 1942 NFL championship games as well as Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI. Washington has finished a season as league runner-up six times, losing the 1936, 1940, 1943, and 1945 title games and Super Bowls VII and XVIII. With 14 division titles and 24 postseason appearances, they have an overall postseason record of 23–18.
context_section_description: The team's former Redskins branding, used from 1933 until 2019, was one of the leading examples of Native American mascot controversy as the term redskin has been defined as offensive, disparaging, and taboo. Various people and groups, such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), considered the name a racial slur and attempted to get the team to change it for decades.  Supporters of the name countered both the dictionary definition of the term and the testimony of Native Americans by asserting that their use of the name was intended respectfully, and referred only to the football team and its history. 
  In a 2013 letter "To the Washington Redskins Nation", team owner Daniel Snyder stated that while respecting those that say they are offended, a poll conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2004 found that 90% of Native Americans were not offended by the name and logo. This poll was essentially replicated in 2016 by the Washington Post with near identical results. However, public opinion polling, which places the question about the Redskins within a longer telephone survey on other topics, was deemed scientifically questionable by academic researchers. As an alternative, social scientists from the University of Michigan and University of California at Berkeley performed a study in 2020 that measured Native American opinion in detail, finding that 49% had responded that the name was offensive, with the level of offense increasing to 67% for those with a stronger involvement in Native American culture.
  Following renewed attention to questions of racial justice in wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020, a letter signed by 87 shareholders and investors was sent to team and league sponsors Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo urging them to cut their ties unless the name was changed. Around the same time, several retail companies had begun removing Redskins merchandise from their stores. In response, the team underwent a review in July 2020 and announced they would be retiring the name, with a new name and logo to be chosen at a later date. As a team rebranding process usually takes over a year, the team will be temporarily playing as the Washington Football Team for the 2020 season. The team kept the burgundy and gold colors for its uniforms but replaced the logo and striping on the helmet with the player's jersey number in gold, with the new logo being a simple "W" that was taken from the redesigned "Washington" wordmark.
caption: The depiction of a Native American as a team logo was introduced in 1937 and was used in various forms until it was retired in 2020.
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