Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune, via Associated Press
Activists have spent decades pressuring professional sports leagues, college programs and high schools to abandon Native American names and imagery for their teams.
The first domino fell in 1970, when the University of Oklahoma retired its mascot, a Native American named “Little Red.” Over the ensuing years, Division I schools like Stanford, Dartmouth and Syracuse — and thousands of high schools — dropped their mascots or changed their names.
But the biggest lightning rod was always Washington’s N.F.L. team, the “Redskins.” Its owner has been recalcitrant about changing the name of one of football’s oldest and most valuable franchises, and its name does not just appropriate Native American imagery, as do the N.