East Side Story: Jim Brown again creates controversy by speaking his mind
Published: Friday, September 17, 2010, 9:21 AM
There was a civil rights rally in Cleveland sometime in the 1960s and a speaker (memory tells me it was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, but I can’t find proof) dealt with someone’s contention that Cleveland was actually a pretty good place for blacks to live.
King (or whoever) scoffed at the notion that blacks had it made in Cleveland, despite some progress that would eventually result in the 1967 election of Carl B. Stokes as the first black mayor of a major U.S. city.
“Cleveland is not yet heaven,” he said.
But there were times when Cleveland was heaven for some, specifically for football fans on Sunday afternoons who had the pleasure of watching Jim Brown on the gridiron.
That was as close to heaven as any sports fan in this region has ever come (with the exception of watching Robbie Alomar and Omar Vizquel turn a double play), at least for those who are baby boomers or younger. Brown was the greatest football player ever.
But our love for Brown was always mitigated by his turbulent, often anti-social, sometimes criminal, personal life. Oh, and there was that other conception, you know, “the way he didn’t know his place, the way he spoke out of turn,” how he dared to point out — in so many words — that Cleveland, in fact, the entire country, was, for blacks, not yet heaven. Dare we say “uppity?”
On Sunday, the Cleveland Browns will unveil a “ring of honor” that will include the names of football heroes from the team who are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Brown included. But he may not be at the ceremony. Brown, it seems, is put out at the way he has been treated since Mike Holmgren was named president of the Cleveland Browns.
And, boy are we offended by Brown’s refusal to take part. Never mind that there are few, if any, of us who would not have reacted in the same way as did Brown to a new boss coming between us and our old boss, changing our duties and treating us in a way that we deemed disrespectful of our abilities and our past contributions.
Others may say Holmgren was not disrespectful of Brown, but that matters not a bit. All that matters is Brown’s perception of Holmgren’s action.
It’s granted here that Brown was clumsy in the way he refused to take part. It was also bothersome as to the way he injected race into his refusal, but bothersome only in the sense that he struck a nerve: Indeed, Cleveland is still not heaven.
When Jim Brown joined the Cleveland Browns there was still at least one team in the league (the Washington Redskins, playing in the nation’s capital, of all places) that by design did not have a single black player on its roster.
But one need not go back half a century to find racism. Yesterday will be just fine to find it, if you’re a black man walking into a fine restaurant, or a convenience store in a white neighborhood, or perhaps filling out a job application for an executive position, to give just three examples where some take note of, and have concern about, a visitor’s skin color.
But why should Jim Brown have any complaints? Look what Cleveland and football did for him. OK, sure, do that, but don’t forget at the same time to look at what he did for Cleveland and football.
Brown succeeded in football, succeeded on the silver screen, and then set about doing what he could to find employment for black men. Specifically, he wanted them to have opportunities to attain fair wages, let’s say wages already being paid to whites for the same work.
Whoa there, Jimmy. Where’s your gratitude?
There are far too many still willing to pigeonhole blacks into specific roles, not the least of which are liberal deep thinkers who can’t understand why Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas can’t act like real blacks.
Now there are those who want Jim Brown to behave himself, to get in line and be properly appreciative of the opportunities he was given here, or, at the very least to not make noise, to not make us uncomfortable by again pointing out an undeniable fact:
Cleveland is not yet heaven.
Robert Nozar can be reached at rnozar@sunnews.com
Greatest of All Times
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment