The Top 9 Times Politically Conscious Black Athletes Challenged America
Like other celebrities, Black athletes have the command of an audience. Throughout history, athletes – from Olympic track stars and professional boxers to pro football players have taken a stand on social justice issues.
The most recent history of athlete protest would be that of National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose quiet kneeling protests during the singing of the national anthem essentially ended his professional football career. Kaepernick knelt to protest police violence against Black people. The first time he did so was as a San Francisco 49er on Sept. 1, 2016, in San Diego, with teammate Eric Reid. Prior to this he would sit during the anthem. He played his final game with the 49ers on Jan. 1, 2017.
Civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “I wish that I had a lot more time for sports. You people in sports have done a great job giving the Negro equal rights, and you have achieved that without bloodshed.”
Here are nine times politically conscious Black athletes challenged America.
1.1961: Bill Russell, Celtics Boycott Game in Kentucky
Bill Russell is considered one of the greatest Basketball players. He led the Boston Celtics to an unprecedented 11 championships in 13 seasons. He is also known for being one of the smartest players–on and off the court. He was known for speaking out and speaking his mind. One of those incidents happened in Kentucky. His refusal to stay and play in a city that would not let the Black players eat at a local restaurant led to the Boston Celtics boycott game.
The Hall of Famer made a decision that caused waves throughout the National Basketball League.
Russell’s team, the Celtics, was in Lexington, Kentucky, for a game when his teammates Satch Sanders and Sam Jones were refused service at the hotel coffee shop. Another played also tried and he too was turned away. When told Russell he announced to coach Red Auerbach he was leaving, surely not staying to play.
“When I heard that, I called the airline and booked a ticket to leave,” said Russell, who added he knew he just had to get out of that town. Auerbach tried to smooth over the incident by arranging a dinner between the players and the hotel owner. Russell declines. “Who the hell is he,” he asked of the hotel owner. Russell and the other players flew out, abandoning the game.
Bill Russell received Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama
Bill Russell on receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom
2.1995: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf’s National Anthem Stance
Long before Kaepernick’s anthem protests, NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf conducted his own in 1995.
A former professional basketball player, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf played in the NBA for nine years with the Denver Nuggets, Sacramento Kings, and Vancouver Grizzlies.
During the 1995-96 NBA season, Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem because doing so would be a violation of his Muslim faith. The American flag was “a symbol of oppression, of tyranny,” he later told reporters.
The act got him suspended for one game by the NBA. After talks, he and the NBA come up with a solution. Abdul-Rauf would stand and pray during the anthem. Still, Abdul-Rauf was punished in another way. He was traded to Sacramento after the season, and his NBA career was over by age 29.
Despite the shortening of his career, years later the ex-baller said he did not regret his actions.
“It’s priceless to know that I can go to sleep knowing that I stood to my principles,” Abdul-Rauf told The Undefeated. “Whether I go broke, whether they take my life, whatever it is, I stood on principles. To me, that is worth more than wealth and fame.”
Abdul-Rauf decided to study Islam after reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”
“His life fascinated me,” Abdul-Rauf said of Malcolm X. “Just the mind that he was, how he articulated his views, how moral he seemed to be…The truth meant more to him than what you thought or what people thought of him. And that was something that really touched me, fascinated me. It was something that I didn’t really have. You know, you have things you want to say, you have things you’re thinking, but you feel apprehensive and hesitant about communicating.”
By 1993 he changed his name from Chris Jackson to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
As Malcolm X once said, “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
3. 1965: Athletes United, The AFL Moves All-Star Game After Players Protest
The American Football League All-Star Game was an annual game featuring each year’s best performers in the American Football League. It was played from 1961 to 1969.
In 1965, the annual event took a turn for the worse for the Black All-Stars. The game this year was played in New Orleans. Nightclubs on the city’s famed Bourbon Street were still segregated, and a bouncer pulled a gun on player Ernie Ladd, The Undefeated reported. After this incident, the players refused to play.
The protest helped push forward the desegregation of New Orleans, as business owners worried about the financial losses from missing out on major sports events.
4.1969: Wyoming Bans 14 Black Athletes for Planned Protest
Have you ever heard of the Black 14? Not many have. It is the story of 14 Black student-athletes from the 1969 University of Wyoming (UW) football team who were unfairly kicked off the team for requesting to participate in a peaceful protest planned by the Black Students’ Alliance (BSA) during an upcoming game versus Brigham Young University (BYU), Black14.net reported.
This protest was in response to a tenet held by the Mormon church that owns BYU, stating that African-Americans could not ascend to the priesthood.
Later, four Black track athletes at Wyoming quit in solidarity with the football players. In 2019, the university apologized to the “Black 14.”
5. 1970: Syracuse Players Sit Out Season
The Syracuse Eight were actually nine college football players who were pushing for an end to discrimination against African-American football players at Syracuse University. They boycotted the 1969 season.
The nine students were Gregory Allen, Richard Bulls, Dana Harrell, John Godbolt, John Lobon, Clarence “Bucky” McGill, A. Alif Muhammad (then known as Al Newton), Duane Walker, and Ron Womack.
The students later reflected on the boycott in an interview with ABC. The students presented the school and their coach with a list of changes they wanted to see to promote diversity in the program. But, said Allen, the school labeled them as “militant” and not team players. But, he noted, we were looking for fair equitable treatment.” Instead, they found themselves blackballed, but their story was picked up across the nation. Some say the students sacrificed potential professional careers to stand up for their rights.
6. Olympic Athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos: Black Power salute
Among the most recognized athlete protests is the Black power fist in the air salute by Olympic track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos.
Both were track and field stars at San Jose State in the 1960s. And it was in college where the seeds of protest were implanted.
During their time there, Harry Edwards, a professor in the department of Sociology, founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) in 1967. He also formed the Olympic Committee for Human Rights (OCHR). The groups protested against apartheid in South Africa, racism in the United States, and racism in sports.
Smith and Carlos became members of the OPHR, as were other prominent athletes of the time. While the OPHR decided to organize a boycott of the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, many Black athletes felt torn about the OPHR boycott because they didn’t want to abandon the opportunity to compete, which they saw as a way to promote Black excellence worldwide.
Smith and Carlos, integral members of the OPHR, went on to Mexico City as part of the U.S. Olympic Team. They competed, with Smith finishing first in the 200-meter dash, setting a new world record. Carlos finished third.
They decided to each wear one black glove, and when they stood on the podium to accept their medals, they raised their gloved fist into the air as the American National Anthem played. They also wore no shoes, just black socks, to symbolize the poverty in Black America.
Their silent protest did not go unpunished. The International Olympic Committee kicked them out of the Olympic Village. They faced criticism and even death threats when they returned home, according to the Arthur Ashe Legacy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
7. Muhammad Ali, Athlete Among Athletes
There was no one like boxing champ Muhammad Ali, and there will probably be none like him in the future. From the beginning of his career, he stood out, but once he was tuned into the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and was befriended by Malcolm X, his focus and tongue were laser sharp.
When drafted for the Vietnam War, he stood by his principles and became a conscientious objector–even if it meant he risked prison during the prime of his career.
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” asked Ali, as reported by The Washington Post. “No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.”
Due to his religious beliefs and moral opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali refused to be drafted in 1966. As a result, the federal government was found guilty of draft evasion and stripped him of boxing titles. Although he stayed out of prison while appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, he could not fight until his case was overturned in 1971.
Martin Luther King, who also opposed the war, said of Ali, “He is giving up even fame. He is giving up millions of dollars in order to stand up for what his conscience tells him is right.”
Vietnam stance
8. Paul Robeson
There didn’t seem to be much Paul Robeson couldn’t excel at. As a college student, he played football player for Rutgers University, where he was named valedictorian of his graduating class. He went on to become a world-renowned star and film actor, a singer, an athlete, and an activist. His fight against racism and his bent toward a communist political philosophy led to him being blacklisted during the paranoia of McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Paul Robeson at Rutgers University
“From an early age I had come to accept and follow a certain protective tactic of Negro life in America, and I did not fully break with the pattern until many years later. Even while demonstrating that he is really an equal (and, strangely, the proof must be superior performance!) the Negro must never appear to be challenging white superiority,” he wrote in his memoir, “Here I Stand.”
He continued, “Climb up if you can — but don’t act ‘uppity.’ Always show that you are grateful. (Even if what you have gained has been wrested from unwilling powers, be sure to be grateful lest ‘they’ take it all away.) Above all, do nothing to give them cause to fear you, for then the oppressing hand, which might at times ease up a little, will surely become a fist to knock you down again!”
This didn’t stop him for continuing to speak out.
Robeson once said, “The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic, but to end the injustice.”
When On June 12, 1956, Robeson, who had travel to Russia in 1949, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) after he refused to sign an affidavit affirming that he was not a Communist. When House Committee member Gordon H. Scherer, asked Robeson, “Why do you not stay in Russia?”Robeson answered, “Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.”
Paul Robeson on racism and colonialism
9. Craig Hodges
Many would agree that Craig Hodges’s career in the NBA was cut short because he was “too political” for the league and the times. His career lasted from 1982 to 1998. He was known as much for his champion playing as he was for his activism.
There was the time he tried to convince Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson to stage a boycott. It was June 1991 and right before the first game of the NBA finals between the Bulls and the LA Lakers. He wanted the teams to protest the Los Angeles Police Department police beating of Black motorist Rodney King three months earlier.
According to the book Hodges wrote, “Longshot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter,” Jordan told him he was “crazy,” and Johnson said: “That’s too extreme, man.”
Hodges wrote they he replied, “What’s happening to our people in this country is extreme.”
This was just one example of Hodges’ pushbacks against injustice.
Photo: Singer-athlete Paul Robeson, 1963 (AP Photo) / Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell at a news conference, May 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds) / Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali tours the new Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Phoenix, Dec. 3, 2009 (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)