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African American culture through sports
African American culture through sports
Post world war 2 on african americans sports essay
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In 1957, a man who could be argued as the best football player of all time started his NFL career. He played his whole career for the team nobody wanted to play for, the Cleveland Browns. Jim Brown brought the Browns out of nothing and made them Champions throughout his career. Brown was known for his size, speed and explosiveness. Defenders did not know how to bring him down. Adrian Peterson is considered the modern-day Jim Brown. One thing some people do not know about the great Jim Brown is that he is a great activist for civil rights. Many young kids and students looked up to Jim Brown because he was such a great football player, but also because he always fought for equal rights. Whether one is a sports fan or not, he/she can appreciate …show more content…
and respect how much Jim Brown has done for African Americans and the community. On February 17, 1936, Jim Brown was born on St.
Simons Island in Georgia. He had a tough early childhood. His father, the famous pro boxer Swinton Brown, left him and his mother when Jim was two weeks old. His mother left him with his great-grandmother soon afterwards. When Jim was eight, his mother called for him to come live with her in Manhasset, New York. Brown attended Manhasset High School where the school was mostly white. While he dominated on the football field, Jim Brown was also a stellar lacrosse player, basketball player, and track star. He later will credit his success to his upbringing in school, saying, “I came from Long Island, so I had a lot of experience at the stick. I played in junior high school, then I played in high school. The technical aspect of the game was my forte. I had all that experience, then I had strength and I was in good condition.” Because of his talent, Brown caught the eyes of many college scouts. They loved him so much, he got a scholarship to Syracuse university where he continued to play all his favorite sports. During his three years at Syracuse, Jim Brown continued to turn heads. He is the only person to ever be inducted into both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Lacrosse Hall of Fame. He later added the Pro Football Hall of Fame to his regime. Jim Brown ran for 14 touchdowns and almost 1,000 yards in his senior year for the Orange. Brown excelled in college football so much it gave him a chance at professional football …show more content…
in the NFL. In the 1957 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns selected Jim Brown with the third overall pick.
He was 20 years old when drafted into the NFL. This is where most people remember Jim Brown. During his time in Cleveland, Jim Brown broke the all-time rushing record with 12,312. That record was eventually broken by Walter Payton in 1984. Brown now ranks 10th all time in rushing. Jim Brown played nine years in the NFL. He led the Browns to an NFL Championship in 1964. The Browns went to two more NFL Championships with Brown as their running back but lost both. “Yardage isn’t the big thing. Having your team win the championship is… That’s what I work for, winning the Championship, and this requires a certain standard of performance.” said Brown when asked about his fantastic statistics. The Super Bowl was created in 1967, the year after Jim Brown retired. The Browns are one of twelve teams that have never won a Super Bowl in their team’s franchise. Jim Brown was selected to the Pro Bowl every year he was in the NFL. The Pro Bowl is the All-Star Game of the NFL where all the best players in the league come together and play against each other in a game. Jim Brown played football in the NFL until 1966. He then went to pursue another career: acting. Brown has been in over 40 movies since he started his acting career in 1964. His first feature film was titled Rio Conchos. It was about an ex-Confederate soldier who wanted revenge on an Indian family who murdered his family. He got his
first lead role in the movie Dark of the Sun. He played Captain Bruce Curry, a mercenary who is hired to rescue citizens of a town that is about to be attacked. Jim Brown won an Image Award in 1970 for his film El Condor. Although that was his only award that he won in his acting career, Jim Brown was nominated for three more awards. These awards included Golden Laurel Awards for “Male Supporting Actor” in The Dirty Dozen and “Male New Face” in 1968, along with an MTV Movie Award for “Best Fight” in Mars Attacks! No matter what Jim Brown was doing, he was sure to excell. When he was not on the football field or in front of the camera, Jim Brown was doing anything he could to fight for African American rights. In 1968, he founded the Black Economic Union. According to their website, the BEU has developed “635 affordable multi-family units, 320 elderly units, 85 single-family homes, and nearly 721,000 square feet of office, commercial and business development to date.” He then founded the Amer-I-Can Program in 1988 to prepare African Americans to do well in school and succeed in life. One of the biggest sports news source in the world, Bleacher Report, ranked Jim Brown as the fourth most influential African American athlete who changed sports with his help for civil rights.
With the three Super Bowl wins Jerry Rice was one of the best Wide Receivers in the world. In the 1988 season Jerry led the 49ers to the Super Bowl. He caught 11 passes in the game and was named Super Bowl MVP. Jerry also played with other teams such as the Oakland Raiders and the Seattle Seahawks. In 2010 Jerry Rice was inducted in the Pro Hall of Fame.
Bobby Brown is a singer, songwriter, dancer, and rapper. His net worth is $2 million.
In March of 1946, a man named Kenny Washington made a very important contribution for the NFL (Britannica). Kenny Washington became the first African American to ever play in a professional sports league (Amaral). Since he was colored in the 1940 draft class, none of the teams wanted to draft him (Bowen). Even though Kenny was doubted and treated differently than others, he was able to play on a smaller league team near the Pacific coast (Bowen). Then the day finally came when Kenny was allowed to play in the NFL after World War II had ended. This essay will discuss the story of Kenny Washington’s life before he became the first African American football player, what he went through to get there, and why he is important to the NFL.
...orts. He set firsts for some things and re-iterated others. He is still a very large contributing influence in the football world today. He is currently a NFL analyzer. He is very smart and knowledgeable. But he didn't get to where he is now without struggle. Power and fame almost ruined him. Yet he was able to bounce back and use his experience to learn from and shape his future and create a positive outcome. He made it positive not only for himself but for others as well. He set his goals and was determined. One thing
To determine what factors Brown had to overcome to become a success, we must look at what was against him. He was a black man in a white dominant society. The only factor that could have made Brown being black any worse was if he grew up in the South. He shows us this through his parents they moved from the South to Harlem to escape its prejudices. Like many black families Brown’s parents wanted to be the first Northern urban generation of Negro’s. He showed the kind of Southern black mentality his parents had with the jobs they took and the way they reacted to his quitting of what they called good paying jobs....
Frederick “Fritz” Pollard, the first African American to ever play in the Rose Bowl and the first African American to ever coach an NFL team, changed the history of football and America while enduring different racial criticism. Pollard faced many difficulties throughout his childhood and adulthood. Pollard was not like the typical “black star” of the 1890-1910 time period. Pollard was raised in a nice home, instead of the “ghetto”, and was able to acquire higher education than that of the average African-American child of his time period. Pollard was racially criticized throughout his amateur and professional life. One incident being the time Pollard got into an argument with a child on whether or not he was a football player, “There I was,
Jackie Robinson’s ability to successfully integrate his sport set the stage for many others to advocate for an end to segregation in their respective environments. His period of trials and triumphs were significant to changing American perception of the Civil Rights revolution. By becoming the first African-American baseball player to play in the major leagues, he brought down an old misconception that black athletes were inferior to white athletes. Successively, his example would inspire those advocating for their civil rights, he lived out a message of nonviolence similar to the one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived out. Despite the constant prejudice he faced in his sport, he was able to keep himself composed and never retaliate.
People do not acknowledge the struggles that African Americans had to endure for them to be treated equally, the way a true American is supposed to be treated. One of the ways they were not treated equally was by not being able to participate in sports with whites. From the beginning of our nation, colored people were highly disrespected and treated as if they were some type of animals, which have no say in what happens to them. They were not given any opportunities and were treated harshly because their skin color was different. Whites were able to practically do anything they wanted, unlike blacks, who were racially discriminated or beaten for no apparent reason. African Americans were among the worst treated races in the US; however, this did not stop them from fighting for the rights that so many had died for. It seemed as if black people would never be treated respectfully, but just like in comic books, there is always a hero that will fight for his people. This hero soon came to the scene and he was fierce enough to change the lives of many people. Most importantly, he broke the color barrier and created a path that would allow others to follow. However, something that was inevitable was the threats and racial remarks they had to face.
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.
Jesse Owens, also known as “The Buckeye Bullet,” was known for being one of the greatest track and field, African American runners in the 20th century. Jesse was sick a lot when he was a child, but he still had to work to help his family. When Jesse was 9 years old, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and found out there was a difference between how he was being treated in Ohio and how he was treated where he lived down south. Jesse attended the Ohio State University and went on to break many
...eaven for many blacks as their performances proved they are no different from their white counterparts. Not only did they rally white troops from their athletic performances, they were able to do so from their voices and personal life. They began to voice their displeasure through various media outlets. Their public outcry to end social injustice and race based discrimination came started to become a popular topic of discussion all over the country. They took a stand and were rewarded for their actions as race based discrimination is abolished and blacks have the same status as whites. Black athletes are becoming more and more recognizable all over the world as some become the faces of their sports. Sports came as a form of entertainment for many, but for black athletes it ended up being the most treasured source to reconstructing their race’s lives in America.
During the Great Depression, while the competitors were cutting costs and reusing outdated designs, Kress was expanding and building more elaborate stores than their previous ones. The architecture was referred to as an “emporium” evoking an elegant atmosphere more suited to a fine cloth or furniture store in New York rather than the five & dime stores dotting small town America. Many wonder what the driving force was behind these design decisions, especially during a national time of economic recession. Perhaps simply to outpace the competition, but perhaps more importantly Samuel Kress was an avid art collector and a proponent of public art enhancing a community. In this way the Kress legacy of the brand became more than a retail business, it became a symbol of small town civic pride.
Abraham Lincoln was an important figure who rose from being an uneducated man, to becoming the 16th president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln is also known for his determination towards ending slavery. One of Abraham Lincoln’s political accomplishments was issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Before his presidency, Lincoln was not that knowledgeable about the military because he never really had a proper education when he was small. However, Lincoln’s entire presidency basically took place during the war.
Racism is something that is a problem in the world today, but in the early 1900s it was extremely worse. The way African Americans were treated was almost inconceivable. The comparison between a caucasian and an African American was like a human to a street rat. When the only major difference between the two was the color of their skin, but this stood and still stands to be a problem between people. There were many things done to help enforce the separation between whites and colored. Two main things that had a huge impact on racism, were the Jim Crow Laws and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
The scholars expounds that Black athletes were commodities on the playing field to help win games and bring in revenue to their respected schools. However, the schools were just as eager and willing to leave their Black players behind and dishonoring the player as a part of the team. Therefore, not compromising the team’s winning and bring in profits for the school. Sadly, Black athletes at predominately White institutions (PWIs) who believed that they were bettering the live of themselves and their families members by going to college and playing collegiate sports to increase their post secondary careers. However, these athletes were only “show ponies” for their schools. Unfortunately, Black athletes had allegiance to their school; however, the school turned their backs on the athletes to protect the profit and notoriety of the school and the programs. Money and respect from White fans and spectators were more important to the PWIs than standing up for the respect of their Black players. Racial bigotry in sports was rampant and it was only going to get worse.