The Power of Sport

nice the real power of sports and j mcintyre and today and kbr prisons how sports can change the world we live in its the power of sports a conversation on race gender and sports the keynote speaker for this event was dave's iran sports editor for the magazine the nation later this hour we'll also hear from former university of kansas athletes when simeon lisa brady and ernie shelby and how race and gender affected their own sports careers but first days iran writes extensively about the politics of sports his latest book is brazil's dance with the devil the world cup the olympics and the fight for democracy he was the keynote speaker february eighteenth two thousand sixteen at the power of sports sponsored by the university of kansas will and business is langston hughes center and kansas athletics

so thank you so much for having me on this are freezing february day here in kansas son and the book before i start also you know there's been a loud it out on the wide on aj hawk talks here is it true that this in kansas state people here can you make yourself known my lover can't escape the mind as i've often that you're here it's fantastic thank you so much for coming and still just have it on this side so i mean it gives you like three hundred people do a side eye at the same time it was like a new moon kansas they are with all good reference and so first thoughts quick question for the crowd it helps me when i'd speak how deeply consider yourselves like a diehard sports fans like this is this is your thing dr bob an enzyme please help people consider such a casual sports fan you know

what's happening but you know it has its place and how many people would rather shave your head with a cheese grater than hear somebody talk about sports for half an hour excellent what what's your name ma'am please no please share with us what happened the difficult conversations from what was her name that's what it is ok so the idea for this talk is to do something in that that the success or failure of that should be judged on this something that appeals to die hard sports fan casual sports than an atom if we can do that will be ok you said that that's a lot and i'll just say yes i grew up an absolute die hard sports fan playing sports reading about sports loving sports eye in new york city in the nineteen eighties as the starting center for my high school basketball team i we stopped and not all did notice that i was the starting center the fightin

quakers which is not a scary name by any stretch that does not strike fear into the hearts of people the tigers versus the fighting quakers i would still be on some quakers it's not a good vibe when you get out there and i drop houses drop my number one team without question and i was even wondering whether mention this but like i grew up a mets fan something fierce so let's just move on from that arm immediately just to the lights in the royal staff on site ptsd it's like oh wow it's october again isn't it and my room growing up was like a shrine to the great mets players of the nineteen eighties and it just also ahead a person if you've personally so sometimes i wonder if they're forgotten does these were i mean these were dogs to meet people like keith hernandez darryl strawberry and dwight gooden i mean you know at the time that they offered serious cocaine problems by my room seriously was like you is on he was like the escobar

all stars tom i was like and i love those guys i didn't care about a year that stuff but they made me just believe in anything that i was it was amazing experience for me and i i never thought about the politics of sports on when he was play sports played every sport except for golf which is not a sport on end and i really do believe that's a mild personal template is that anything you can either gaining weight or smoke cigarettes while doing is not a sport it's a very basic things so it's a good way to think that his like softball actually a sport a beer league softball when there's a gag and every day it's not a sport it's excuse to drink not that that's a bad thing but so so i didn't hear about politics at all it was all about sports and that change for me art in college in nineteen ninety six there was a basketball player for the denver nuggets name of mood abdul rauf and ralph made the private decision that he wasn't going to come out for the national anthem before games and that actually happened for several games

before anyone even noticed and a reporter for the denver nuggets another beat reporter that word of it and went to the locker room and ask rare move they said hey doing and i don't you realize that flag is a symbol of freedom and democracy throughout the world and if you can find a video tape is you should see it because rove has this look on his face like should i say something i think i'm gonna say something and where i was said was he said well it may be a symbol of freedom and democracy this song but it's a symbol of oppression and tyranny to others now when he said that it was like you can like what we were like gathering around the tv and there was no piano like woody cutting the internet there was none of that sos like seven pm here in the dorm you're watching sports center to find out the latest with royals and the coverage was like reynolds puts on the flagpole yeah dna dna and were just like what is happening in and i'll never forget there was one other talking heads said well rove's morsi himself in the tradition of these activist

athletes i remember hearing that like it was yesterday and thinking myself an activist athlete what the hell is that i thought i knew everything about sports i thought i knew every stat i thought i knew all this stuff what's an activist athlete and so i started to dig as in the library as in the crates house looking up like okay where were periods where people did stuff thirties sixties ok what were athletes doing and i learned that all the sports history that i thought i knew that i'd been taught by the mainstream media and by you know a certain four letter network that rhymes with hsu espn analysts say what it is i learned a lot of what they said was a very very sanitized version of what the truth was but for example i thought i knew the story about jackie robinson and jackie robinson from new york you know from brooklyn forgiveness and jackie robinson's brooklyn died go broke with its own center nicely done nicely done

nicely done again they're getting attention all night so i thought i knew the story of jackie robinson jackie robinson broke the color line in nineteen forty seven and through his own sort of like individual initiative and courage was able to make a change before the civil rights movement what an amazing thing to do that in nineteen forty seven years before the montgomery bus boycott state years before dr king comes on the national scene but i didn't know was that in the nineteen thirties there was a movement to integrate baseball movement that was led by both the black press and by the communists and socialists press the people that my grandfather raised me to think of as you know those dane counties that these were people in the nineteen thirties were fighting to integrate baseball for young people that's coming isn't socialism is is that running for president whose into that ted cruz i am not just an end so it was it was this is the sort of thing where as a learning that there was this

alternative history and in the nineteen thirties there was a sports editor for a newspaper called the daily worker his name was lester rodney and he turned the sports page into a kind of activists center where people could read about the struggle to integrate major league baseball and could read about movements that people could be involved in to integrate major league baseball and so there would be marchers down the streets that and jim crow in baseball it was the sort of thing that they tried to push in terms of the popular pressure on the majors to integrate and actually got to interview lester rodney before he passed away it was ninety four years old sharpest attack are living in oakland california and his hearing these amazing stories from and about how uv be in the yankees a locker room and i know that there are that there's because young ricky there named joe dimaggio or you might've heard of then and showed him and they asked joe dimaggio like the us on jackass sportswriter question like a job was the toughest pitcher you ever faced and joe dimaggio was not being political he's an eighteen year old kid he just says well i guess i'll have the satchel paige

decided in your pin drop and the next day it's not in any of the new york newspapers that joe dimaggio said that satchel paige who was black was the best and yet lester rodney and his page would be like dimaggio so satchel was the last big exclamation point it's in all these amazing stories and doing things like that i'll never forget it he he looked at me as a real sweetheart of a guy he looked at me and he said why do you care about the stuff we care i think they're great stories he was he had a great surviving care though an icicle honestly i care because i feel like it's a hidden history and history that people don't know and i would just wanna go around the country and tell people your stories does people should know that and he looked at me and their family said it at again and i love that and their last hurrah so that got a tremendous window into the life of jackie robinson himself and this is another example of myth reality because like i said before i thought jackie

robinson was the person who just sort of like scott is now quiet and did his thing and i think the movie forty two which has some value without question sort of backs up though that idea of the sort of like a lone fighter out there we don't hear and we don't worry about is that jackie robinson is actually a barnstorming speaker for civil rights i mean he did talks throughout the nineteen fifties throughout the south and he would always and his talks the same way he would say if i had to choose between the baseball hall of fame in full citizenship for my people i would choose full citizenship time and again and it's if you look at the records i did the deep dig a bmw see peas own records and the southern christian leadership his own records about requested speakers in the south of the united states during the nineteen fifties and the number one most requested speaker was jackie robinson's number two is the sky you might've heard of the martin luther king and that was just always whole areas to meet i imagine people like shawn sitting around like planning a conference and being like jackie robinson he's busy with that dr king

me we gotta get dr king but that that's jackie was and that's been erased from history i certainly thought i knew the story of muhammad ali as we all think we know the story of muhammad ali there's your the charming braggadocio is you know are hospitalized a rock by beautiful brick and so bad i make medicine sick in you're like it rhymes and there's that and then there's the awful part about we were you know he's involved in something civil rights related black freedom related but what you don't learn in what you still i think we don't learn is just not how big not just how dangerous he was to the powers that be but how influential he was i want to read this quote if i could of something that only one said just gives you an idea what we know about him saying things like maybe i ain't got no quarrel with them vietcong that might be the sort of phrase that people might know when he said he wasn't in a fight in the vietnam war and that's a pretty radical statement for the time is nineteen sixty four but put ain't got no quarrel with the media caught up against this another thing on the set why should they ask me to put on a uniform

and go ten thousand miles from home and dropped bombs and bullets and brown people in vietnam or so called negro people in louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights this is the day when such evils must come to an end in order to take such a standard costing millions of dollars but i said it once not say it again the real enemy of my people is here i'll go to jail so what we'd been in jail for four hundred years they are you know are you think anything can was hated i mean the stuff that palliative makes the state that cam newton's been dealing with me like that i wouldn't denigrate his he's been dealing with a lab yes but it's like a foot massage compared the way i really had to get out we had to deal with not just like crazy ransom terms of letters sent to his house he did you of crazy rants by the most esteemed ecologists in the united states the most disliked but jim murray is very famous esteem to a surprising promise he called muhammad ali he said his very existence is the new white man's burden and about that you know as jimmy

cannon who's one of the big sportswriters of his day at usc which is a switch in general are starting again called him clay not mohamad ali because that's what a lot of sportswriters that they refuse to acknowledge the fact that he had changed his name the new york times or to force people associate with being a liberal publication actually had it as their editorial policy that they could not call him clay hunnicutt was it could not call him ahmed ali until nineteen seventy six years after said my name's nominally the paper of record so called him cash as clay and the switch jimmy cannon wrote wrote clay fits in with the famous singers no one can hear and the pumps riding motorcycles and batman i don't get i said that and that's the strange to me and the boys with their long dirty hair and the girls with that unwashed look in the college kids dancing naked at secret prompts hagel acknowledged our dances like i was invited to the naked drama home

and the painters who copied the label's off of soup cans like somewhere in the war was like what i do now and the whole pampered cult of the board young i mean that's it's like a trump speech that it's crazy that is crazy stuff but this is the stuff that we had to do with what the power of him can not be overstated and i don't say this again the power her of his influence cannot be overstated and there's been books written in recent years to say that his power is in fact overstated people are blowing up muhammad ali and of some sort of liberal guilt because of today's title was taken away from him in and that he's suffered so much and it faced prison in all the sub know his power cannot be over secular couple of examples written a history of the first is people may be familiar with dr martin luther king's reverse i'd speech from nineteen sixty seven actually famous speech where dr king comes out against the war in vietnam well earlier that day are dr king was pestered by reporters

about why you coming out against the war in vietnam all things advisors told him no stick to domestic politics do not talk about vietnam it puts you at risk don't do it don't do it and when dr king was a huge deal for the anti war movement when dr king turned and connected the civil rights struggle at home with fighting the war abroad and when dr king was asked why you doing this he said well it's like muhammad ali teaches us it's all connected or another example nelson mandela for goodness sakes he said every time that muhammad ali won a fight the prison walls around me became more thing and i felt like i could see the outside nelson mandela give another example to his people might be familiar that there was a black panthers documentary on pbs earlier this week to huge acclaim critically praised one thing that i thought i was brother brilliantly done but do things that it didn't say which are worth saying is that huey newton one of the co founders of the black panther party we have the impetus to try to do that after seeing muhammad ali speak onstage with malcolm x and huey p newton

was how it was done with as he said later he sells i'm done with religion sought not going to join the organization or in the nation of islam but hearing that made me realize i had to do something that's one thing the second thing that was in the documentary is that the use of the panther as a symbol was not first in oakland california was the previous year snakes used in lowndes county alabama last time a city with simon was right was right that is right so it was the pet there was use allowance county and so they're scared that was their symbol was the silhouette of a black panther but they're in their slogan under the silhouette was we are the greatest set of mama lee's i am the greatest and they made a plural that was his influence and his actually remarkable and he inspired people i would give one example right here on this campus of sewing inspire arguably and people do make this case the

greatest star running back who ever lived went to kansas and his name is worth gale sayers in it i think there's a very compelling case to be made that if you're talking about best at their peak but gayle sayers is the greatest first never carry a football are gale sayers i'm in nineteen sixty five lead was inspired by alleyway sittin on this campus ought to and segregated in nineteen sixty five on this campus thousand housing segregated why people the dorms black people into nineteen sixty five and gale sayers was part of the city and to change that and according to one of your local historians who i spoke to today everybody would like their city and having all the place that everybody wanted to be the gale sayers sit in because they're like ok if we get a resolute gale says will ease get out really soon so as a pack and a love that story on another example art the people right behind you right here and i mean i think everyone's

hands and incorporated if you've seen this image you know what this is yeah this is the nineteen sixty olympics and tommy smyth that's john carlos iii did a book with john carlos sets out to build on the back but like his story is unbelievable and it's given me like traveling with him talking to mike and a lot of knowledge of what went into that moment nineteen sixty eight mexico city and what people don't know about this is people know this moment that don't realize it was the movement's popular big project for human rights not a moment but a movement that had been going on for several years and it was a movement that threatened to boycott the olympics unless four basic demands were met and the first of those demands was restore mama always tired and they've called mama i'll leave the warriors saints of the black athletes revolt that was the man number one in a number two was they wanted avery brundage to resign as head of the international olympic committee if you're not a big fan of adolf hitler you're not gonna be big fan of avery brundage let's just leave it at that new

idea his nickname among athletes was slavery avery no one calls you that if you're a nice guy so it's slavery avery they wanted him to leave the third one was they wanted more black head coaches are hired an assistant coaches as well i think there are two one us track team i actually all track and field at that time and their last demand was they wanted south africa and rhodesia parmelee disinvited from the olympics because of their apartheid policies now these demands vague some of them were actually met like south africa was disinvited from sixty eight it took some of the wind out of the sails some people were threatened so they went ahead with going to the olympics they didn't go ahead with the boycott all the one person did go ahead with the boycott ioc was last in their eye you might know i'm better as kareem abdul jabbar another thing that isn't usually discussed when people talk about korean am so these guys come to the olympics and they're like ok we're not doing the bleep that we got to do something so they drop gloves that they would wear on the platform and raise them high they brought beats that they were going

to wear around their necks and the beats or to represent the history of lynching it in the united states either also wearing that on olympic project for human rights buttons and they made a plan that they were going to take off their shoes if you look at that those other sites that they're wearing and i was going to be a symbol of poverty i'm not just black poverty the poverty throughout the united states and the need to address poverty in the parts imported says john carlos always said to me said we did raise our face for black power reserved this to say power to the people and when people try to make it about black power instead about human rights also away to this what john said to me to make white people let you know people feel like that this movement isn't for them too when human rights should be a movement for everybody it's a beautiful thing but it's distorted rather dramatically and so they brought all these things they had this big ramble whether they have to do first that what would a socket they come unlike night right and they're like oh man we brought these beats what we do in an and this is where i

we talk about this in shawn's class today that this is why people that go youtube like after this and check out the actual footage of the race because this is where i think you have one of the most amazing acts of athletic derring do ever so what you see the races you see john carlos get a huge lead any buttons a sprinter knows that the number one rule of hundred meter two hundred meter sprint thing is that the eyes are always forward always stalwart and john carlos is running he's constantly looking back to tammy smith like where is it where is it doesn't work unless they're both out there and they were so confidently come in first and second but he's looking for tiny tiny city was her before the race says out where is the where's he's john said to me he said one of things he just here's few was malcolm says come on time he stopped as they're running and supports they run tommy gets we call this tiny legs which is a big cake at the end john keats looking at knowing noticed at the very end the cat nip at the last second for the silver it's worth saying

something about this that as you might look at him and think like oh that's forrest gump you know just like this guy who's standing there and it's like oh wow history how fascinating not by his name was peter norton his australian runner and he felt this in his bones he felt this deeply and he is also wearing a button that says olympic project for human rights it passed away way too young at the age sixty six and you could go online if you google and you'll see an odd to lead pall bearers at his funeral in australia tommie smith and john carlos both at the front with the coffin and as dry as john says his pmi my brother for life his they live through this together and that's part of the story but in those even a bigger part of the story which is that afterwards because then what are they gonna do now is the moment when they got into their things and they're walking to the medal stand and tommy looks at john and he says what happens if we get shot on the medals and that might sound a little like all that's yellow fantastical to think about the year this is nineteen sixty eight dr kay

murdered by an assassin's bullet robert kennedy murdered by an assassin's bullet before these olympics even happened days before they happen hundreds of mexican students and workers killed in what's known in mexico as the massacre of clapped a local square and they're aware of all of this as they're going up to the medal stands and looks chinese as what happens if we get shot and john looks at him he says well you know we're trained to listen for the gun and then you know we're fast so let's give it a track so they get up there they raise their fares and it just john said to me he said we got the resources it was so quiet and there these are his words he said you could hurt frogs piss on cotton that's out why worse and then the boos started people started throwing garbage at them and that led to a long period in exile for a long period of playing that decades before they're

eventually re embraced by the sports community in they would also argue that they haven't been fully embrace by any stretch but the other thing that they'll say and just a job losses here he would say this with his hand on his heart he says i had no regrets that people ever grass or the people were there with us and mexico city and chose to do nothing those are the people of regrets and you have to meet jason when he says that for the audience people are like ah that's us now obviously one of the things i'm trying to get across is that out of many people here are teachers or wannabe teachers everybody should i think consider themselves a teacher whether you are not is i think sports are an incredible way to tell the story of race racism in the society and its history of it and a way to connect with people in a way we're maybe they would otherwise to now not listen that certainly goes for for women in sports too and i could do whole talk about whether that's how women are lgbt people and the ways in which like efforts to be included in the world of

sports has had a ricochet effect on the broader society that's utterly profound i l b so are mystified and say something about women's sports because it is so important now people i'm sure where the early after americans would support her first professional ice for african american men reality was segregation you played in negro only leaks for women it was not allowed to play at all and this was something that was absolutely wild because baldwin and roll type situation women are always mindful girls boys playing all over the place it with sports become professionalized it starts being put in the collegiate ranks the only sports that were really available for women were i mean really more upper class sports there was horse riding odd there was golf which as we discussed not a sport and there and there was tennis but even tennis was ridiculously screwed up at this time i just to give people a sense about tennis i could ever wondered why women's tennis is best of three sets in men's tennis is best of five like the root of that is women's tennis was a best of

five sets of the late nineteenth early twentieth century but they had the plane course it's actual courses and women were passing out on the court and so the people were in charge of wimbledon which was the crown jewel toward him if they get together and they say okay what we gonna do about this when i'm passing out to celine dion center court sure get rid of course it's no let's keep the course it's less naked best of three sets instead of best of five that way there's less chance that they'll die and that's why this appears at and there was actually it was that way until it was like the nineteen twenties were a fifteen year old name wadi died who got a course exemption because of her age and tearfully bag the organizers and said my opponent's would've been so much more able if like me they had been at the capacity to breathe it's a pre it breathing it's a script i think true but the thing was that everything was lined up against women playing the meantime a church politics the journal of american medicine all this and it's crazy when you look at its like this absolutely

twisted sense of female sexuality judged by men as women play sports with them happens you where again dr hawker are you going to be a lesbian one of those things is going to happen if you play sports it's like ok i'll say it's just this idea of fear about what last words can actually unleash the sexuality of women and just to give an idea that i would read these things was in the very popular publication in the late nineteenth century called the american christian review and a diagram the twelve step downfall of any woman who dared engage in a sinful world of croquet and it's really it's a slippery slope so goes like this one social party to social and play partly three croquet party for picnic and croquet party five picnic croquet and dance six absence from church i'm not going to say it's sorry seven immoral conduct the exclusion from the

church nine this one's my favorite more croquet as i think it's a lot more time to get to george tenet is poverty that's a leader alleging shame and disgrace twelve ruling and you thought was just wrote a now but then an invention took place that actually change the entire relationship of women's sports and that was the bicycle that you can't exactly ride a bicycle and of course if you're a hoop skirt it provides freedom of movement it provides exercise and it was so significant at its time but people there put like susan b anthony saying the invention of the bicycle did more than i ever could for women's liberation or elizabeth cady stanton who said i when we finally when the votes were going to go to the booths riding bicycles and so this like this whole sense that like oh my god or liberation because of this bicycle so appreciate your

bicycle if you're riding it please enter but when the journal american medicine responded her role plea to this to defend the honor of women by saying that if women could ride bicycles they'd be subject to a malady called the bicycle face israeli doctors wrote this they said for women who ride bicycles they will be afflicted with quote approach shooting jaw wild staring eyes and a strange expression says he ride a bike or dick cheney it's a terrible thing sorry boys little comments and any get the history of the twentieth century when it's fascinating when you look at women's sports because it's always a social question so like there are ways in which women were actually more advanced in sports in the early seventies then they are today by certain metrics like coverage and participation and that has to do first both title nine legislation which i changed the number of women who play sports from roughly one out of thirty three to

one out of three young girls had access to sports business legislation and thailand was completely a product of the fact that he had amassed women's liberation movement in this country you can't separate one from the other or the nineteen forties or you had people might see a league of their own the all american girls baseball league cannot be separate from the fact that women work in the factories rosie the rigor and all the rest of it so these things are actually connected in the nineteen fifties annette disappear it's backlash with that women back in the home economies expanding wannabe society based on consumption with that you have things like it elimination of women's sports the elimination of the all american girls baseball league and even like the pudding for by people in india are likely to be internationally the committee about banning all women's track and field eliminating it from the olympics altogether or other things that would get kylie racial eyes are having separate events for black women because they would classify them as hermaphroditic and we get these are people the internationally between we kept hold discussions about trans people

in sports and how this has also on the frontier that's actually shaping the way people think about our friends and neighbors and that's i think the true true value of sports and the other thing that's a true value is that it's absolutely positively a living history you'll faulkner said the past isn't dead it's not even past and we're at a time right now where you have this new generation of athletes who are trying to use their hyper exalted brought you by nike platform to actually do something about the world and that's what's happening in missouri it's something that is both very exciting and also really pisses me off i am pissed off that missouri and not just saying that as i'm in kansas and him and at out my hose were so gray i would say is very a million times i'm pissed off in this area because last night they did a had there was like this live streaming other thing in the missouri state house where the the chancellor over at missouri the interim chancellor he talked about their former coach gary people who stood with the players when they decided to go on strike abc they agreed to go on

strike against racism on their campus and the guy people stood with them than getting the city had hodgkin's lymphoma and they bought out the rest of his contract that this week seemed embarrassed gary people by saying you'll basically basically said well we fired him and we fired him because he used to type with the players on that strike thing and by leaders now a no strike clause there are scholarship agreement any agreements of the coaches sort talking talking to be expected i think the total backlash so why the backlash been so hard and why's the missouri thing resonate so much not just with me but people who care about these issues around the country because missouri the black population on campuses that seven point seven percent and i know every campus has issues that are strong that you erased i also think that we should be clear that different but their greater and lesser evils light at different campuses like it's better at this campus are black students than this campus because people do actual movement work to make it better on those campuses and i but i was i went to missouri as i interviewed people are talking about missouri is really bad and you were talking about decades

adversary of black students trying to be heard and not being heard as a joke at missouri which is how does an administrator say you the answer thank you for your input and it's this idea that you say something and you're trying to be heard and people just sort of a bitch said wow that's really interesting and no one cares if you have to say and when you're seven point seven percent of the school's population that's not necessarily the kind of social we can get things done if there are people in the administration don't want here you have to say seven point seven percent remember that number now that the football team sixty nine percent african american sixty nine percent so in the football team said we're not in a play all the sudden thank you fear into it doesn't work and it doesn't work because they don't play against byu that week schools to forfeit one million dollars and gets out of school president makes a year for june fifteenth thousand dollars often his job didn't want to go and they got rid of him and the players are celebrated for their courage and yet at the same time they're now been a phase i think

a withering backlash on that campus and what's so sad about that is that it says to me that the people in charge at school and the lawmakers who deserve a tremendous amount of power on the missouri university system haven't learned a damn thing because of orbital learned anything we have to learn that once again that the past is not past it's not even past it is not history and if we don't actually deal with things as they happen if we don't deal with our history we're never going to be able to move forward that's why knowing the history is so important one of the things after missouri that upset me like a few things was seeing the mainstream news nbc news say things like what missouri is doing is absolutely unprecedented it's never happened before players refusing to play it's like are you kidding me you know back in the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies and howard university the football team once had up bonfire of their athletic jackets in the middle of the field to force their coach out that this was not a usually at syracuse the players refused to play because all of them together because they said they felt

like black students black football players that inferior treatment from the medical staff and they just like they didn't like but this is one of those mixed consciousness things but they didn't like the fact that all the cheerleaders were white so when a black cheerleaders to a very reasonable request that then you're really like to be i'd say you see a local conflict but the point is is that it was not uncommon for players to actually go on strike to exercise their voice and i think in the current i think you heard this and some of of wayne simeon's comments like like we talk about like this i get your kid but you're also a professional and so if you are a professional in terms of what you bring in you have to have a seat at the table but the northwestern players were mentioned about china go on like voting turf for union china for union the thing that spurred kain colter who i interviewed the quarterback there was when the nc the police said we need to solve a student athlete issue they held this big conference and did not invite one student athlete i think kain colter was like we're just never going to be heard and so we new voice of

the idea that student athletes are disposed to shut up and play when the school sends that message that's what actually breeds like the guy in the airport he says what a waste oh you're not actually were always know what that's what breeds that it's a message sent from the top down about are the students valued his human beings are they died between your ears are the only value for what they can contribute adult athletically and monetary legal program and were i think we're actually at a breaking point where if we don't get student athletes at the table i think there is the risk of the entire system collapsing because i mean for lack of a better term there's just too many too much too many schools and it's talked about among student athletes themselves and there needs to be a voice that's me not weighing in on issues of compensation that's me weighing in on issues of control in this idea of feeling like you have some control over your life when you're a student athlete at a big school and i got to tell you like being here in busy ness led we're talking people they actually do believe icann says special and i'm not just saying that as i'm here i'm i can just even just on the court is actually one of the

crown jewels of podcast on this country when there's a holy trinity its dealers in north carolina it's ucla and it's kansas yes you are so so it's like that's the trinity is history but it's like the old spider man expression you know with great power comes great responsibility if you're in that holy trinity and you treat student athletes believe me based on what i saw today with farm i just saw this in like just walk around how so far more respect and consideration that i've seen at other schools where it's actually her ethic and i can tell people stories about what it looks like what the tutorial centers and things like that like if you're a school that does it better than other schools i think you also have an obligation to speak out against the anc double way and how they operate on a national basis and actually be a leader in the fight for change and not content just to say we do it better here r n and i think if we know the history of this kind of struggle actually makes it so much easier to take these kinds of fights for their realize that riser were not just creating the wheel we're actually standing on the

shoulders of giants because i really do stand with the phrase of where the great historian to this country howard zinn who said i study history not because i wanna know more about the past but because i wanted change the future so thank you very much i appreciate it and kansas public radio that was dave's iran who writes extensively on the politics of sports he was the keynote speaker february eighteenth two thousand sixteen ad the power of sport an event that also featured several former university of kansas athletes talking about their own experiences with race gender and sports first up you fit me and who played basketball for k u from two thousand one to two thousand five and went on to play for the miami heat of the things about basketball experiences athlete both here at the university of kansas have been also off campus confidence about the power of the importance of being a part of a team the power of discipline the power of sacrifice the power elite of the new

coaching and these are things that the benefit of being able to experience and learn a great deal from was an athlete but even now that i'm no longer an active participant not still benefit from the state says is a father and a husband and as a professional in one is they've also think that sport has the power to do is to uphold explosive address a different social injustices that we had but come to know so much about through the day for me here today and the stores that were here whether it's race or gender equality economics of different things like that and so it's really for that we acknowledge its power to do so as well in a much different generation some the stores here share that doesn't mean that i wasn't exempt from any type of racial tensions iranians was ousted after year actually had a great privilege of having a mother grew up right here in lawrence kansas the markets and in ants i remembered as many

stories as you would tell me experiences that i'll ask her as he was growing up here in lawrence you know one of the things that this city in the state prides itself on is being a free state of being a apart of apple is abolitionist movement and things so why muscle for it but that does not mean that this community is there has been exempt from many different racial injustices and you know think about sport and my mother's experience one of the places you really enjoyable swimming are those who are to excel as we have all of our choir that will carry us through what's known as she wasn't afforded the privilege to swim a grown up in the sixties because people of color we're allowed to swim in the pool zero in the city of lawrence actually that's tickets ran ride always they want to swim or they can swim in some lakes and positive a place like that on farms in iraq can believe that and so bill because of that worldwide aloft out on the great swimmers that could have been the best and in a comeback and this

may be would have been my mom and i remember just here not too long ago as a wife katie whose wife and our five kids who are beautiful makes kids were walking hand the handout mastery and my mother's with this ever gone in about sports really decide to join a great day on mastering join laurence and my mother leans over and whispers to me seems like she's a little bits here says pretty mostly choked up as she remembers i remember a day when this would not impossible and is reviewing the gravity defying that not having to grow pinot myself but knowing that my mother had experienced it and having her share these stories with me not in a way that would that would involve bitterness or negative emotion in it but i really appreciate it because i'll fill up her car behind sharing their stories with me was to make sure that she understood that i was the beneficiary and you know it's a lot different

no fights ahead take place for me to be able to experience and also you can experience it here more to believe in to make his mark harmon residents and so noble says things are they like remember say the racial tensions that i experienced as assistant natalie here they weren't direct in the sense that racial slurs are being thrown out there on a regular basis but it's more so and direct and you know one of the things that and i really felt the weight of obvious to natalie i hear during the early two thousands was the stigma that my contribution to the community it will slowly regulated to what i can produce on the basketball court it's always you know really athletic sport of olive who calculate rebalance getting ways in a historic building over there really that's all he could contribute to the society and our mayor wants the moment and i just got back into town and it was a real late night it was actually it can sit ins were airport and i was waiting for

my luggage is it having athletic attire on that was just really want to get home up the lively conversations or anything and there's a gentleman at at the lettuce carousel ad came up to me says hey you play basketball fan in an attempt to avoid any conversation or this type of human interaction again i just want to get home i said no i know i'm just a student and i'm just trying to go back towards and gentlemen set at that time what a waste water waste ends he picked up his bag and his third opera which is probably good that he did awesome and i really sticking with me and the sense that wow you mean to tell me and whether the man had a malicious intent or use a sinecure comment that you made and that really stick with me in the sense that man i want to make a point to make sure that i have more to offer the community and the people around me more than just some

entertainment for two hours on television or some basketball records and a reduction or less firmly on to study hard you know to be a better student to be able to be involved in the community more to embrace more civic responsibilities and so that was one of my most vivid experiences with racial tension with alice soon happen former k u basketball star wayne see me and who helped lead kansas to three big twelve championships and four nc double a turn him in appearances he was part of a panel on the power of sports passed was ernie shelby who was one of the world's greatest long jumpers during his days a k u selby recalled a nineteen fifty seven meeting with chancellor frank murphy and k u athletes wilt chamberlain homer floyd and charlie todd well wilt and challenges will surely was the world record holder nine yard dash comma floyd was a little conference football player and myself i was an all american track and field at the time we

we called chancellor murphy and told him that we wanted to have a meeting with him and we we told him that we were all going to leave campus and less the refusal of service talked in lawrence kansas and he was very receptive and he said that he would take care of it and that down he didn't he didn't specify what his plans were but he said that he was going to get in touch with all the regional organizations and declare the city of lawrence off limits to two students if they didn't open up and he got back in touch with us within twenty four hours and told us that the city was open we can believe in second it gives a break cause we couldn't go to movie theaters we can go to restaurants you could go to barbershops can go anywhere and so we all jumped and carson went down dillard's and checked it out and believe it or not we walk in restaurants they welcomed us walk into bars they welcomed us in and they just say you know and then they told us a

couple of stories that i have never been able to verify but there were rumors a way around that he said that he was going to open a theater on campus and he was going to show the same movie is that they showed me around town and that he's gonna find out what the media the most popular dishes were in the restaurants and he was going off of those dishes in hand we don't really know what he said but it happened and the city of arts whose desegregation i think we just have to jump in every second i think it's important thing to think about that you know a lot of the press in the last twelve months especially behind missouri that missouri was on president that athletes are standing up for desegregation are some some events like this and you know threatening to to not play on but of course we're talking nineteen fifty seven here we're talking old history and as you were saying it has happened many times in the past but it was before social

media you see and calm the whole incident was kind of swept under the rug om i met jeff chester murphy is not indian it i i was in touch with him put it tougher than to campus and he when he told the story of his uncle's desegregation of marching never mentioned the business about this and he was very proud of his role that he played in my god he played an instrumental role but you know those girls those parts of the story is going to get swept under the rug which is a very sad thing again and we have to reflect on the fact that this is nineteen fifty seven this is three years after brown v board it's the same years little rock arkansas on the desegregation of central on the more clearly republicans that kansas is not considered a body a southern state is that it's considered a place of segregation of course romney workers were five cases here because kansas as a place of segregation that is a

piece that of the history that we need to acknowledge that that segregation and discrimination all of that is not a southern gentleman's actually a national phenomenon in kansas for the state and of course the interest in kansas for better or worse was i was part of it and part of history and menuhin your court's standing up has an amazing story to remember and i've ever given correctly it's also the first time that in ncaa history that all of the three major sports were actually kept in by black captains at the same time well you can say at the same time because football and basketball and track and contiguous years so was the first time that old wilt was a captain of a trek up the basketball team owner flora was the captain of the football team and i became the captain of the track team and became the first time in the history of the ncaa number one with the wouldn't classify in division one

day the division one schools in an america where the captains of all three teams won three us ports major sport were there were african american and the last thing i'll say is that to show you the impact of this is in nineteen fifty eight the thurgood marshall comes to cave in fort lauderdale i at the law school and who does jeff merkley choose to have a sitar come meet thurgood marshall but we'll just let one that time was going by then but he had homer and i and there's this picture now that's somebody explained it to me today is that it was a famous picture but as an information on a wooden so i like the person that's attorney selby recalling his days as a student athlete at the university of kansas in the late nineteen fifties he was part of a panel on the power of sport moderated by kay you professor shaun

alexander finally a female perspective on the power of sports lisa brady led bake at women's basketball team to back to back big a tournament championships in nineteen eighty seven and nineteen eighty eight the story is a little bit different i think it's based on the difference between the women's basketball team in the men's basketball team and what i learned as a as a senior in high school and now's thousand and one player coming out and i went in the university and my choice and i chose the university of kansas because of mary washington who is a phenomenal one in iran shoot she came to my home my first college coach visit and that was august twenty six and they're fitted excess coaches birthday and my mother is a day after so i'll always do you remember that day and we she walked in into my home and puts it near her in the neck you

come to my games in that things like that that come into my host wholly different and they'll maybe even reprogram now my uncle is a little bit just look at a set in my mind and if you you know went in the top five in an identical useful you know and those are human mind and when we seek a man wheeling top basketball you know and we talked about life and what i can do that after that's the limelight she can teach me do a mine using k u n a i still was in silk us the parents were right out but they let me make the decision to wear a way to go disco so albino analysts a couple times a few times i really do need to take a home visitor lawrence i want to go talk to other other places in and the recruiting in which is wholly different now the back and manners amazingly our area get treated like world use of air in my mind i was going a latte and that's that's why was going

and then i signed on november the eleventh in selling any body louse it would not him up parents until that day man and i remembered on the ten am ira want to bear whatever as mr roman i heard my parents talk in your topic how great coach washington was and how they really wanted me to go there and no different things like that and a is still a mining still upset me and so that morning and when i walk out on those votes touch me in my dream or what have you but i decide to come to university of kansas and to me that's the best decision i've made well i got to the sullen but prior to that there was the best decision i made in my life have a half ago not because the basketball at all and you know when i wore here when i played here you know coach was the dean of the big a ray allen and they are

the ones we want but we wasn't twenty and you know in our first two years we won the big a conference and then the big a home time and out which was great that we still took a backseat to the man sitting around our locker room try to finish hours the price still could take a shower in and move around and and so you white coats incomes cut kept us are close and it was it was a family atmosphere and whether you you're black or why you saw one of us you saw all twelve or fifteen of those and that's the way she wanted to delay this join a sorority because basketball is our sisters end the things i learned from harbin african american woman you know has carried out you know in the four years that played under but throughout my life and life choices that i made and to see and though the

progress that the women's team their locker rooms just amazing i wrote you know walking into the house like oh my god i can you believe this acting to coach at some to do it then and she paved the way at that point car near i don't think they're precise vivian stringer bell i don't think there's another african american female coach there is an accomplice of things that she has accomplished and that i am so grateful for and that's pretty much my story as it so different a note as danny manning's hear it and in the miracles know when i'm eighty eight and so and so you know just the fall behind him because you know we're worse worse job were stopped close air would you know what the bass watch a video while nasa wanted the males in there in the field say we we hung out we did things together that just you know basically how you know the university treated the mainstream versus the

females staying on now only from the shoes an emmy they could come out and have you know bomb upright notify parishes where we predicted and if you're lucky and if you're starting private delighted you're sticking with that one player to the practice tears to the facilities where we stay and a way was totally different so that's why i think you know already announced of ways and that includes boston had to do it you've just heard the power of sports a conversation on race gender and sports with former university of kansas athletes lisa brady ernie shelby and when simeon moderated by shaun alexander the keynote speaker for the power of sport was dave's iran this event was recorded february eighteenth two thousand sixteen by k pr as chuck smith and kate mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas