It was perceived as a battle of wills. Modell was usually characterized as a boss always operating in the best interests of his team or (though this was rarer in those days) a classically uncompromising, deeply entitled Big Whitey plantation owner. And Brown was either seen as a defiant Black man, ungrateful for his celebrity and money, or like Ali, as a warrior prince of Black manhood. As in the heavyweight champion's case, the reality was, of course, far more complex.
On Raquel's Team
At the time, Brown was conflicted about his choices. In May 1966, as a sportswriter for the New York Times, I happened to be in London covering an Ali fight and had been invited to the Dirty Dozen movie set. Brown confided to me that the film was far behind schedule and there was no way they'd finish shooting his part so he could make pre-season practice in a timely fashion. He had, in fact, hoped to play one more season, his tenth, but couldn't imagine bailing on the production before the film was wrapped. There were just too many people dependent on him, he told me, and so the Browns would have to wait. After all, it wasn't as if he were going to miss regular-season games.
But Modell's insistence that he return immediately (echoed by the media) eventually pushed him into a corner. And Hollywood simply seemed like the better choice -- a potentially longer career, more money, and less physical damage. Indeed, Brown would go on to succeed as the first Black action hero in mainstream movies. His on-screen interracial sex scene with Welch in the 1969 film 100 Rifles would also be considered a Hollywood first.
His football retirement, which began as expedience, would only enhance his macho aura, which, for better or worse, was all too real. That same year, in Toronto (also to cover an Ali fight), I found myself having dinner at a Chinese restaurant with Brown, Carl Stokes, soon to be the first Black mayor of Cleveland, and comedian and activist Dick Gregory, whose autobiography I had written.
It was a lively, friendly meal until the check arrived. The waiter, an elderly Chinese man, set it in front of me. Stokes and Gregory burst out laughing and began bantering about the racism implicit in the poorest of the four of us getting the bill. But Brown suddenly leaped up, yelling at the waiter and grabbing for him. The other two managed to push him back into his chair, where he then sat, muttering to himself. Eventually, he did manage to see the humor in the situation, but initially he had been deeply offended, and that simmering rage of his (always a potential prelude to violence) seemed ever ready to boil over.
He was in his eighties the last time I saw him, moving slowly on a cane, and yet he still seemed like one of the two scariest athletes I had ever covered, men whose baleful glares rose so much more quickly than their smiles. (The other was former heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston.)
It should be no surprise that Brown's contributions to advancing Black equality were of a piece with his complex life. After all, he often derided civil rights marches as nothing more than "parades" and his best efforts were directed toward lending a hand to the economic advancement of Black small businesses and marginalized former gang members.
What always seemed like a paradoxical conservative streak in him was, in fact, essential Brown, the mood of a man who believed that Black progress would never come from protests or demonstrations -- they always seemed like a form of begging to him -- but from the power of money, of muscling your way into the marketplace and buying into the system. He believed, in other words, in economic power above all else and, for what must have seemed to him like short-term pragmatic reasons, would end up allying briefly with two otherwise unlikely presidential figures -- that football ultra-fan Richard Nixon and then former football franchise owner Donald Trump. Brown even went so far as to defend Trump when iconic civil-rights activist Congressman John Lewis called him an illegitimate president.
Forebears and Descendants
Brown's unyielding rage evoked the earliest celebrity Black athlete who rattled white folks: Jack Johnson. Although that boxer's style was different from Brown's -- living in the Jim Crow era, he flamboyantly derided his opponents and flaunted white girlfriends and wives -- Johnson also offered a version of intimidating masculinity that led all too many white men to call for a "great white hope" to defeat him. It took the self-effacing, self-destructive Joe Louis, who carefully concealed his affairs with white movie stars, to calm their insecurities and become an acceptable hero for whites.
In recent years, the only athlete who's come close to Brown's steadfast individualism in the face of racism was Colin Kaepernick, whose insistence on kneeling during the pledge of allegiance before National Football League games got a distinctly mixed response from Brown. He liked the young quarterback, he said, but as an American couldn't abide the desecration of the flag (another instance of Brown's late-in-life cluelessness).
As Zirin aptly put it in his biography Jim Brown: Last Man Standing, his seeming paradoxes were those of a "flawed" figure who was "heroic but not a hero."
LeBron and Brittany
LeBron James, Brown's current successor as the model of a modern Black athlete, has proven a far more consistent figure. Already marked as the future of basketball in high school, he's orchestrated his career in a remarkable fashion, moving to better teams and dictating his own terms in the process. Along the way, he's also built up his business interests -- always with a core of hometown friends -- and expressed his opinions openly. While at the Miami Heat, he led his teammates in a protest against the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager, Trayvon Martin.
Not since the days of Muhammad Ali had such a big star been so willing to take such a controversial stand. The basketball superstar with whom LeBron is most often compared as a player, Michael Jordan, was known for avoiding anything that might harm the sale of his sneaker brand. LeBron on the other hand even called President Trump a "bum."
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