IN YOUR OPINION, WHO IS THE MOST POLITICAL BLACK ATHLETE OF ALL TIME?

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  • KNiGHTS
    KNiGHTS Members Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JIM BROWN
    Jim Brown the first name that came to me when I saw the title. Honestly, he saw the bigger picture a looooooooooooooong time ago along with Kareem.
  • playmaker88
    playmaker88 Members Posts: 67,905 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2013
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    I'm sorry. I can't give Jack Johnson "political" props just for smashing cave bishes. He wasn't no hero for that, he was just a typical cave-bish loving, thirsty ass nikka that wanted some white trophy ? to go along with the rest of his "expensive" ? .

    Cosign.. i knew ? was gonna come and dap him up for that frivolous ?


    He was his own man in a time.. He was confident and braggadocios in a time where ? was getting killed based off of rumors.. and maimed in the wake of his fights.. among other things..

  • S.jR.
    S.jR. Members Posts: 4,507 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JESSE OWENS
    S.jR. wrote: »
    Why the nosign @undergroundraplegend ?

    My bad.

    @S.jR. I mostly am on my phone when Im on this forum I accidently sometimes hit reactions sometimes.

    Fyi..You can click the Nosign again and it goes away.
  • unspoken_respect
    unspoken_respect Members Posts: 9,821 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    unfiltered
  • blackrain
    blackrain Members, Moderators Posts: 27,269 Regulator
    RAPH wrote: »
    props to Craig Hodges for rocking a dashiki to the white house & writing a letter to Bush Sr. about the ills in the hood after the Bulls won the championship...

    & for also being in Jordan's ear about kids killing each other over his shoes (but of course Michael "No ? " Jordan didn't listen...

    Also shot out to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf for not standing during the national anthem in defense of his religious beliefs...

    both of them were blackballed from the league... & thats why the greater majority of these sell out black athletes today hold their tongue on issues...

    The bold was more about what he said in that interview with Bryant Gumbel on HBO's Real Sports. Even Abdul-Rauf has said that much
  • moyo
    moyo Members Posts: 1,766 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    RAPH wrote: »
    props to Craig Hodges for rocking a dashiki to the white house & writing a letter to Bush Sr. about the ills in the hood after the Bulls won the championship...

    & for also being in Jordan's ear about kids killing each other over his shoes (but of course Michael "No ? " Jordan didn't listen...

    Also shot out to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf for not standing during the national anthem in defense of his religious beliefs...

    both of them were blackballed from the league... & thats why the greater majority of these sell out black athletes today hold their tongue on issues...

    Or if they do say some ? , they backpedal and apologize for it. ? hold up for what u say!!! A couple of years ago Rashard Mendenhall said some real ? about Bin Laden, and backpedaled & still got his sponsorships taken. ? shoulda just held up for the ? . If u say something be man enough to stand by that ? or don't say it at all.
  • TheBossman
    TheBossman Members Posts: 19,796 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    "cornball brotha"
  • Cymicaldane
    Cymicaldane Members Posts: 2,109 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JOHN CARLOS and TOMMIE SMITH
    @A$AP_A$TON nailed my view perfectly. Cheers
  • Mister B.
    Mister B. Members, Writer Posts: 16,172 ✭✭✭✭✭
    KAREEM ABDUL-JABAR
    Kareem said ? them saltines...he just did his on the low.
  • MR.CJ
    MR.CJ Members Posts: 64,689 ✭✭✭✭✭
    jackie robinson testified against paul robeson
  • T. Sanford
    T. Sanford Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 25,291 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JACK JOHNSON
    Real ?
  • 216atlran
    216atlran Members Posts: 708 ✭✭✭✭
    JIM BROWN
    I'm from Cleveland so I might be a lil bias...
  • plocc
    plocc Members Posts: 921 ✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    Tough choice to make but I gotta go with Ali because he kicked it off in a real volatile time. He and Jim Brown are 1a and 1b. Gotta give Jack Johnson big props. As far as stuntin and stylin on white folks. It don't get no grander. Everytime he fought his life was at risk. Literally. Beating the breaks off white men, getting paid for it and smahing their broads. ? had major juevos.
  • marc123
    marc123 Members Posts: 16,999 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JIM BROWN
    EPIC thread!
  • Say What
    Say What Members Posts: 1,477 ✭✭✭✭
    KAREEM ABDUL-JABAR
    KAJ didn't have the pitfalls others did to cloud his message
  • lion_heart
    lion_heart Members Posts: 1,498 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MR.CJ wrote: »
    jackie robinson testified against paul robeson

    If true that should be an automatic disqualification
  • TheBossman
    TheBossman Members Posts: 19,796 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    http://hammermag.tripod.com/withrene/id12.html
    An Open Letter to Jackie Robinson

    "Here's My Story," Freedom, April 1953

    I notice in a recent issue of "Our World" magazine that some folks think you're too outspoken.' Certainly not many of our folks share that view. They think like you that the Yankees, making many a "buck" oil Harlem, might have had a few of our ball players just like Brooklyn. In fact I know you've seen where a couple of real brave fellows, the Turgerson brothers, think it's about time we continued our breaking into the Southern leagues‑Arkansas and Mississippi included.

    I am happy, Jackie, to have been in the fight for real democracy in sports years ago. I was proud to stand with Judge Landis in 1946 and, at his invitation, address the major league owners, demanding that the bars against Negroes in baseball be dropped. I knew from my experi­ences as a pro football player that the fans would not only take us‑but like us. That's now been proven many times over.

    Maybe these protests around you, Jackie, explain a lot of things about people trying to shut up those of us who speak out in many other fields.

    You read in the paper every day about "doings" in Africa. These things are very important to us. A free Africa‑a continent of 200 millions of folks like us and related to us‑can do a lot to change things here.

    In South Africa black folks are challenging Malan, a kind of super Ku Kluxer. These Africans are refusing to obey Jim Crow laws. They want some freedom like we do, and they're willing to suffer and sacrifice for it. Malan and a lot of powerful American investors would like to shut them up and lock them up.

    Well, I'm very proud that these African brothers and sisters of ours play my records as they march in their parades. A good part of my time is spent in the work of the Council on African Affairs, supervised by Dr. Alphaeus Hunton, an expert on Africa and son of a great YMCA leader, the late William Hunton. Co‑chairman of the Council is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. We raise funds for Africans and bring information to Americans about the conditions in Africa—conditions to be compared with, but worse than, those in Mississippi and Alabama.

    We bring the truth about Kenya, for example‑about a man like Kenyatta, leader of the Kikiyu, a proud African people of centuries of culture. I know Kenyatta. He's a highly educated man, with many more degrees than we have, Jackie. He's getting seven years in jail because he wants his people to be free. And there are Americans of African descent who are today on trial, in jail, fugitives, or dead (!) because they fought in their own way for their people to be free. Kenyatta's sentence calls to mind Ben Davis, Henry Winston, James Jackson, Claudia Jones, Pettis Perry and, yes, Harry Moore.

    What goes here, Jackie? Well, I'll tell you. The same kind of people who don't want you to point up injustices to your folks, the same people who think you ought to stay in your "place," the same people who want to shut you up‑want to shut up any one of us who speaks out for our full equality, for all of our rights.

    Thats the heart of what I said in Paris in 1949, for example. As a matter of fact the night before I got to Paris 2,000 representatives of colored colonial peoples from all over the world (most of them students in English universities) asked me and Dr. Dadoo, leader of the Indian population in South Africa, to greet the Congress of Peace in Paris in their name.

    These future leaders of their countries were from Nigeria, Gold Coast, South Africa, Kenya, Java, Indonesia, India, Jamaica, Trini­dad, Barbadoes, the Philippines, Japan, Burma, and other lands. They were the shapers of the future in the Eastern and colonial world and they asked us to say to this Congress representing about 800 million of the world's 2,000 million that they and their countries wanted peace, no war with anybody. They said they certainly did not want war with the Soviet Union and China because these countries had come out of conditions similar to their own. But the Soviet Union and China were now free of the so‑called "free western" imperialist powers. They were countries which had proved that colonial countries could get free, that colored peoples were as good as any other.

    All these students made it clear that they felt that the nations who wanted war wanted it in order to head off struggles of colonial peoples, as in Indo‑China, Malaya, Africa and Korea, for freedom. For example, if you could start a war in Africa the authorities could clamp down completely with war measures. (It's bad enough now!)

    The students felt that peace was absolutely needed in order for their peoples to progress. And certainly, they said they saw no need to die for foreign firms which had come in and taken their land, rubber, cocoa, gold, diamonds, copper and other riches.

    And I had to agree that it seemed to me that the same held good in these United States. There was and is no need to talk of war against any nation. We Afro‑Americans need peace to continue the struggle for our full rights. And there is no need for any of our American youth to be used as cannon and bomb fodder anywhere in the world.

    So I was and am for an immediate cease‑fire in Korea and for peace. And it seemed and still seems unthinkable to me that colored or working folk anywhere would continue to rush to die for these who own most of the stocks and bonds, under the guise of false patriotism.

    I was born and raised in America, Jackie—on the East Coast as you were on the West. I'm a product of American institutions, as you. My father was a slave and my folks worked cotton and tobacco, and still do in Eastern North Carolina. I'll always have the right to speak out, yes, shout at the top of my voice for full freedom for my people here, in the West Indies, in Africa‑and for our real allies, actual and potential, millions of poor white workers who will never be free until we are free.

    And, Jackie, the success of a few of us is no final answer. It helps, but this alone can't free all of us. Your child, my grandchildren, won't be free until our millions, especially in the South, have full opportunity and full human dignity.

    We fight in many ways. From my experience, I think it's got to be a militant fight. One has to square off with the enemy once in a while.

    Thanks for the recognition that I am a great ex‑athlete. In the recent record books the All‑American team of 1918 and the nationally‑picked team of 1917 have only ten players‑my name is omitted.

    And also thanks for the expression of your opinion that I'm certainly a great singer and actor. A lot of people in the world think so and would like to hear me. But I can't get a passport. And here in my own America millions of Americans would like to hear me. But I can't get auditoriums to sing or act in. And I'm sometimes picketed by the American Legion and other Jim Crow outfits. I have some records on the market but have difficulty getting shops to take them.

    People who "beef" at those of us who speak out, Jackie, are afraid of us. Well, let them be afraid. I'm continuing to speak out, and I hope you will, too. And our folks and many others like them all over the world will make it‑and soon!

    Believe me, Jackie.
  • TheBossman
    TheBossman Members Posts: 19,796 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2013
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    http://jeffwinbush.com/2013/04/17/was-jackie-robinson-a-hero-or-a-sell-out/
    This is not a review of 42, the new film about Jackie Robinson. I haven’t seen it. Neither has Your Black World columnist, Yvette Carnell, but that didn’t slow her down from ripping Robinson as a snitch and sell-out.

    For those who don’t know, Jackie Robinson testified against black activist and artist Paul Robeson before the House Un-American Activities Committee, backed Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy, backed the Vietnam War, and even questioned the patriotism of Dr. Martin Luther King when he announced his opposition to the war. This is who Jackie Robinson was. For him, it was the white man’s way or no way.

    For some, celebrating Jackie Robinson’s integration into baseball boils down to the idea that blacks needed to be liked by even the most racist whites in order to have any real shot at the American dream. So to them, it was acceptable for Robinson to do whatever it took, even if it meant going so far as to unleash the Congressional hounds on Robeson, as long as it ensured that the doors to white baseball were opened to Robinson.

    I don’t buy into the notion that black people must be redeemed in the eyes of whites in order to progress, mostly because it places far too much power in the hands of racist whites and leaves blacks in a tenuous position, both psychologically and economically.

    Saddest of all though is the idea that many black folk who went to see ’42′ will not only view Jackie Robinson’s integration as a grand success, without ever bothering to consider the human consequence, but that they will undoubtedly view the movie’s box office success as some sort of win. How is that possible? How is it possible to consider the movie’s box office success a win for anyone except those who benefit from the movie’s revenue? Simple: Since there is no real black movement or black leadership in this country, black people latch onto whatever symbolism they can as a way of giving themselves an emotional victory, even if it’s largely a product of their own imagination.
  • Matt-
    Matt- Members Posts: 21,585 ✭✭✭✭✭
    lion_heart wrote: »
    MR.CJ wrote: »
    jackie robinson testified against paul robeson

    If true that should be an automatic disqualification

    lol just because he testified against someone doesn't make him any more or less political
  • TheBossman
    TheBossman Members Posts: 19,796 ✭✭✭✭✭
    MUHAMMAD ALI
    Matt- wrote: »
    lion_heart wrote: »
    MR.CJ wrote: »
    jackie robinson testified against paul robeson

    If true that should be an automatic disqualification

    lol just because he testified against someone doesn't make him any more or less political

    see above
  • Matt-
    Matt- Members Posts: 21,585 ✭✭✭✭✭
    TheBossman wrote: »
    Matt- wrote: »
    lion_heart wrote: »
    MR.CJ wrote: »
    jackie robinson testified against paul robeson

    If true that should be an automatic disqualification

    lol just because he testified against someone doesn't make him any more or less political

    see above

    that's my post
  • greenwood1921
    greenwood1921 Members Posts: 47,115 ✭✭✭✭✭
    All of that just makes Jackie Robinson even MORE political.



























    It's just not the brand of "politics" that most of us prefer. *shrug*
  • MARIO_DRO
    MARIO_DRO Members Posts: 14,425 ✭✭✭✭✭
    JACKIE ROBINSON
    I WENT ON A CHOSE JACKIE ROBINSON...

    SIMPLY FOR THE FACT THAT HE LITERALLY HAD THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD ON HIS SHOULDERS TO BE ABLE TO PERFORM AT A LEVEL THAT HE DID.. TO HAVE DAM NEAR A WHOLE NATION ROUTIN AGAINST YOU AND FOR YOU TO BE ALBE TO KEEP YOUR COOL IS AMAZIN...

    IF HE HADDA ? UP, THERE IS NO TELLING HOW LONG IT WOULD HAVE TOOK FOR BLACKS TO BE ABLE TO PLAY BASEBALL... AND WITH THAT ALSO, HANK AARON PROBLY WOULD HAVE NEVER GOTTEN THAT RECORD... NO LATINO PLAYERS OR NOTHING...
  • greenwood1921
    greenwood1921 Members Posts: 47,115 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2013
    Props to Jackie breaking the barrier, but if he would've failed another would've got a chance within the following 10 years or so.

    Baseball scouts NEVER doubted our abilities. Just the politics of it. Right after Jackie, alot of ? changed in the country as far as race is concerned.