Doug Williams

Your editorial “Breaking Down Another Barrier” (Feb. 2) was most appropriate and telling. You rightly noted that what the Redskins’ Doug Williams and company did at Jack Murphy Stadium on Jan. 31 is likely to have a sociological impact on American society as a whole--bringing closer the day that Williams apparently wishes was already here--when such physical characteristics as skin color and hair texture are unimportant in this racially diverse nation. Williams not only got into the history books from an anthropological standpoint, but statistically as well.

His achievement is analogous to that of the late Jackie Robinson. Robinson was not only the first black person to play baseball in the major leagues, but he excelled at it--and had a greater impact on race relations in the United States than anything else in this century, prior to the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision relative to school segregation, and the subsequent civil rights movement. Doug Williams has passed himself into the annals of American folk heroes, as well as football history.

SHELBY SANKORE

Phillips Ranch