NBA’s GOAT Bill Russell left huge Civil Rights shoes to fill!
8th August 2022 · 0 Comments
“Today, we lost a giant,” former President Barack Obama said of Bill Russell’s passing. “On the court, he was the greatest champion in basketball history. Off of it, he was a civil rights trailblazer.”
Boston Celtics Legend William Felton “Bill” Russell, who won 11 NBA titles as a player and two as a player-coach, died “peacefully” with his wife, Jeannine, at his side. “…Bill’s wife, Jeannine, and his many friends and family thank you for keeping Bill in your prayers. Perhaps you’ll relive one or two of the golden moments he gave us…,” the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) wrote. The NNPA represents Black Press owners.
The NBA Superstar’s death on July 31, 2022, saddened the world. Russell is considered by many to be the NBA’s GOAT (Greatest of All Time) and the winningest player in the NBA. Russell broke not only NBA records but also shattered the league’s glass ceiling.
Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton became the first Black players in the NBA in 1950. However, Russell, recruited in 1956, was the organization’s first Black superstar, first Black champion, and first Black coach.
While Russell’s legendary NBA career and record will probably remain unmatched, “11 Rings Russell,” a Monroe, La., native, is revered and appreciated among Black Americans for his unparalleled civil rights activism.
For the majority of his 88 years, Russell fought against racial injustice, demanded respect, and was outspoken (true to his Louisiana roots) whenever he saw bigotry and hatred. Bill Russell was a civil and human rights advocate on and off the court.
Russell’s experience growing up in segregated Louisiana and, later, confronting racism in professional sports set him on the civil rights path.
Bill Russell was born to Charles and Katie Russell on February 12, 1934, in West Monroe, Louisiana, where his family was often subjected to rampant acts of racism.
According to one report, Russell’s father was refused service at a gas station until the staff had taken care of all the white customers. When he tried to leave, the attendant stuck a shotgun in his face and threatened to kill him if he did not stay and wait his turn. In another incident, Russell’s mother was walking outside in a fancy dress when a white policeman accosted her. He told her to go home and remove the dress, which he described as “white women’s clothing.”
After WWII, Russell’s family left Louisiana for Oakland, Calif., during The Great Migration. Russell was 8 years old. He lost his mother when he was just 12 years old. Although he grew up in poverty, in public housing, California offered him the opportunity to play basketball unfettered by the chains of racism.
Black pride and self-knowledge were hallmarks of Russell’s persona.
In 1959, as the decolonization movement was spreading across Africa, Russell traveled to the continent, stopping in Libya, Ethiopia – where he chatted in the back of a car with Emperor Haile Selassie – and Liberia, according to The Bleacher Report.
“In a classroom in Liberia,” Russell said, “I came here because I am drawn here, like any man, drawn to seek the land of my ancestors.” The superstar was so enamored with Liberia that he bought a small rubber plantation there, author Doug Merlino wrote in “The Crossover: A Brief History of Basketball and Race,” from James Naismith to LeBron James.
Russell confronted racism on and off the court early in his career. In “Go Up for Glory,” his 1966 autobiography, Russell recalled seeing a culture of police brutality in Oakland and racist fans who called him “baboon,” and the Boston press praising white Celtic stars while ignoring the accomplishments of the team’s Black athletes.
The basketball champion fought segregation early in his professional career. Russell refused to accept segregated accommodations on road trips. After the 1962 season, while driving back to his native Louisiana, he and his two young sons had to sleep one night in their car because no hotels would accommodate Black people.
In 1961, a Lexington, Ky., restaurant wouldn’t seat Russell and his Black Celtics teammates before an exhibition game. They boycotted the game, a ground-breaking action that set the stage for future athletes’ refusal to tolerate segregation and racist treatment.
According to the Basketball Network, it was the first boycotting of a game over a civil rights protest. When the players landed back in Boston, they were welcomed by a predominantly white crowd that supported their decision.
Russell told reporters the following day, per Bodanza: “We’ve got to show our disapproval of this kind of treatment or else the status quo will prevail. We have the same rights and privileges as anyone else and deserve to be treated accordingly. I hope we never have to go through this abuse again. But if it happens, we won’t hesitate to take the same action again.”
After the 1963 assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., Russell flew down to lead the city’s first integrated basketball camps and sat on the stage with Martin Luther King Jr. The latter delivered the famous “I Have A Dream Speech” during the March on Washington in 1963.
Russell and his fellow players’ boycott inspired other athletes to use their platforms to do the same. As a deep south state, whites in Louisiana, like in former Confederate states, clung to segregation and racism more than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education overturned America’s legal apartheid system (Jim Crow is too obfuscating a term for the legal apart-hate society that spanned 50 years post-Reconstruction).
“In 1965, the Black players answered prejudice by voting to leave the city,” Neil Graves wrote in “When racism drove the AFL All-Star game out of New Orleans.”
White cab drivers refused to drive Black players into the city from the airport, Bourbon Street nightclubs refused to let them in, and when the men sat down in a French Quarter restaurant, “…They digested a steaming dose of homegrown racism.”
The men tried to hang their coats on the coat rack, but a white person would throw the garments on the floor every time they did.
The players left New Orleans, and the game was held in Houston instead of New Orleans.
Bill Russell supported all athletes who stood against injustice. He is pictured sitting next to Muhammad Ali, who refused to participate in the Vietnam War on June 4, 1967, as a matter of his Islamic faith.
Russell stood up for Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists on the podium at the 1968 Olympics. Russell later took a knee in support of NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2017. Kaepernick’s kneeling during the playing of America’s National Anthem in 2016 focused attention on police killing unarmed Black people.
In February 2011, President Barack Obama presented Russell with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Obama spoke about Russell’s NBA career but also about Russell marching with Martin Luther King Jr.; standing up for Muhammad Ali; and boycotting a game in Kentucky after his Black teammates were refused service in a coffee shop. President Obama also said he hoped there would be a statue of Bill Russell in Boston someday to inspire schoolchildren to follow Russell’s example.
Indeed, in 2013, Bill Russell’s statue was unveiled in Boston City Plaza.
In 2017, Russell posted a photo of himself – wearing his Presidential Medal of Freedom – taking a knee as a sign of solidarity with protesters within the NFL.
For those who don’t know, Black Louisianans have always been outspoken, brutally honest, and fearless in the face of injustice. We could fill our entire newspaper with the names of our courageous freedom fighters. But here are a few: The Rev. Claude Clifford McLain; John Burell Garner; The Rev. T. J. Jemison Sr.; Willis V. Reed; Martha White; Adolph Wiggins Sr.; Acie J. Belton; The Rev. Edward Billups; Dr. George Butler; Johnnie A. Jones; Theodore Smith Sr.; Raymond Scott; Doretha Combre; Oretha Castle Haley; Jerome Smith; Rudy Lombard; Cecil Carter Jr.; Doris Castle Haley; Ruby Bridges; The Rev. A.L. Davis; Charles “Chuck” Siler; AZ Young; Robert Hicks and Gayle Jenkins; Leona Tate; Tessie Prevost; Gail Etienne; Dorothy “Dodie” Smith-Simmons; and Dave Dennis, Sr.
This article originally published in the August 8, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
