For all his athletic prowess, all of the heft he delivered to his social activism, Jim Brown’s energy sprang from his unyielding resistance to the slim definitions imposed by American society on its Black residents and, in his case, Black male athletes.
The resounding energy of no. That’s what Jim Brown embodied.
Brown, who died Thursday at 87, lived a life that turned an ode to self-determination within the face of stinging racism. He refused to be restricted by what others mentioned he might grow to be. He demanded to be seen in his fullness, as a whole human being, with all sides of himself acknowledged. Consistent with that want, paying homage to his achievements can’t be adequately completed with out noting his deep faults.
However we begin right here with Brown’s life in sports activities, for his profession as an athlete was actually distinctive.
In school at Syracuse, Brown dominated on the soccer subject as few ever have. However that’s not all. He lettered in observe and basketball. And in lacrosse, he turned an all-American and was thought-about one of many best to ever play the game.
As a working again for the Cleveland Browns, he racked up mind-bending statistics. In his 9 seasons, Brown by no means missed a sport. He gained three league M.V.P. awards and an N.F.L. title. His common of 104.3 dashing yards a sport remains to be a file.
Statistics inform solely a part of his story. His model of play — aggressive, hard-nosed and canny — made a singular demand on defenses. He was not going to do the job for them. As a substitute of stepping out of bounds when veering close to the sidelines, he turned upfield and dared defenders to convey him down, forcing the opposition to take care of each little bit of his power, pace and 230-pound physique.
He made comparable calls for on America, refusing to be boxed in, resisting society’s impulse to flatten his humanity. Such boldness ended his soccer profession.
In 1966, as he pursued a budding profession as a Hollywood actor in the course of the low season, he was filming “The Soiled Dozen” in England when poor climate slowed manufacturing.
This was an period through which staff homeowners in skilled sports activities repeatedly sought to exert dominance over gamers. That such aggression so typically fell on Black gamers with further drive was a part of the explanation that the majority didn’t push for his or her rights. However Brown was not like most gamers. When Artwork Modell, Cleveland’s proprietor, came upon that the movie delays would trigger Brown to be late to coaching camp, he threatened to dole out fines to his staff’s star working again for on daily basis missed.
Brown didn’t take properly to that menace. He thought-about it an insult so extreme that he determined he wouldn’t enable Modell to learn any longer from his providers. He was nonetheless properly within the prime of his profession at age 30, coming off an M.V.P. season through which he had rushed for 1,544 yards and 17 touchdowns. However he refused to be handled like simply one other cog within the equipment of the N.F.L., which was rising within the mid-Sixties into a brand new period of recognition. He known as a information convention and retired. He was not going to be pushed round or disrespected.
Brown’s insistence on resisting energy prolonged far past making calls for merely for himself. He was on the forefront within the wave of athlete activism that helped outline sports activities within the Sixties.
There Brown was, within the winter of 1964, on the night Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title, assembly after the battle with Malcolm X, the singer Sam Cooke and Clay, who later turned often called Muhammad Ali. The 4 males spent the evening discussing the methods they might greatest battle racism.
There he was, in the summertime of 1967, summoning Ali, Invoice Russell, Lew Alcindor (the longer term Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and different outstanding Black athletes to Cleveland. Ali had misplaced his heavyweight title and confronted imprisonment for protesting the Vietnam Conflict by refusing to be drafted into the navy. Brown and the others listened to Ali clarify his intentions, after which bathed the boxing champion in assist.
Brown turned a widely known spokesman for Black uplift. He based a company selling Black financial mobility, which he noticed as a extra highly effective technique to make change than avenue protests. He began the Amer-I-Can Basis, which helps individuals in gangs and in prisons straighten out their lives.
What a life. And what an announcement made with that life. However there aren’t any excellent heroes. For all of the instances he refused to bend to energy and all of his athletic conquest, Brown was additionally a flawed man. From the Sixties to the Nineteen Nineties, he was arrested a number of instances for violent habits, with a few of these circumstances involving allegations that he battered ladies.
He was by no means convicted of a serious crime, however the accusations pointed to issues that shadowed him. “I can positively get indignant, and I’ve taken that anger out inappropriately up to now,” he advised Sports activities Illustrated in 2002, earlier than including to the admission in a method that solely underscored his faults. “However I’ve completed so with each women and men.”
Amid the hosannas, the troubling features of his life shouldn’t be glossed over. By way of his resistance, he demanded to be seen as absolutely human, all elements of himself acknowledged, and that’s how we should view him in loss of life.
