by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson) According to hollywoodreporter.com, Nike unveiled the face of its campaign celebrating 30 years of its “Just do…

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NFL Star Khalil Mack Pays Off $80K in Walmart Layaways in his Florida Hometown

December 11, 2019, 2:18 pm

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NFL star Khalil Mack delivered holiday cheer for several customers at a Walmart in his Florida hometown over the weekend,…

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Colin Kaepernick Receives 2017 Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award

November 30, 2017, 6:11 pm

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by Michael Rosenberg via si.com

“If I was walking down the highway with a quarter in my pocket and a briefcase full of truth, I’d be so happy.” – Muhammad Ali, Sports Illustrated, Feb. 19, 1968
Colin Kaepernick made his truth known when he first decided not to stand for the national anthem. He had a lot of football left to play and a lot more money to make when he made his decision. It was late August, 2016. People who were anonymous in life had become famous in death. Philando Castile. Eric Garner. Alton Sterling. Freddie Gray. They were tragic symbols of a society that had taken a terribly wrong turn. As the anthem played ahead of the 49ers’ preseason game against the Texans, Kaepernick, San Francisco’s 28-year-old quarterback at the time, quietly took a seat on the bench.
It took two weeks for anyone from the media to ask him about it. Kaepernick explained that he was making a statement about inequality and social justice, about the ways this country “oppresses black people and people of color.”
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” he added. “There are bodies in the street,” he said then, “and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
In the last 16 months, Kaepernick’s truth has been twisted, distorted and used for political gain. It has cost him at least a year of his NFL career and the income that should have come with it. But still, it is his truth. He has not wavered from it. He does not regret speaking it. He has caused millions of people to examine it. And, quietly, he has donated nearly a million dollars to support it.
For all those reasons—for his steadfastness in the fight for social justice, for his adherence to his beliefs no matter the cost—Colin Kaepernick is the recipient of the 2017 Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. Each year SI and the Ali family honor a figure who embodies the ideals of sportsmanship, leadership and philanthropy and has used sports as a platform for changing the world. “I am proud to be able to present this to Colin for his passionate defense of social justice and civil rights for all people,” says Lonnie Ali, Muhammad’s widow. “Like Muhammad, Colin is a man who stands on his convictions with confidence and courage, undaunted by the personal sacrifices he has had to make to have his message heard. And he has used his celebrity and philanthropy to the benefit of some of our most vulnerable community members.”
Previous Legacy winners—including Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Jack Nicklaus and Magic Johnson—were deserving. But no winner has been more fitting than Kaepernick. Ali lost more than three years of his career for his refusal to serve in the military in opposition to the Vietnam War. Kaepernick has lost one year, so far, for his pursuit of social justice.
When Kaepernick first protested during the national anthem, he could not have envisioned the size and duration of the ensuing firestorm. But he knew there would be fallout. So much has changed in America since the summer of 2016, and so many words have been used to describe Kaepernick. But his words from his first explanation remain his truth:
“This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. … If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”
Kaepernick kept his job for a season before being blackballed by the NFL—and yes, he has been blackballed. This should be obvious by now. Scott Tolzien, Cody Kessler, Tom Savage and Matt Cassel have thrown passes in the league this year, yet nobody has tried to sign Kaepernick, who is fifth in NFL history in touchdown-to-interception ratio. Kaepernick has been called a distraction, which is laughable— his coach last year, Chip Kelly, says there was “zero distraction,” and his 49ers teammates said the same. Most NFL players would rather be “distracted” by Kaepernick than try to tackle the guy who just intercepted Brock Osweiler.
Kaepernick has paid a price beyond missing games and losing paychecks. He has been battered by critics who don’t want to understand him. Some say Kaepernick hates America; he says he is trying to make it better. Others say he hates the military, but on Sept. 1, 2016, as the then-San Diego Chargers played a tribute to the military on the stadium videoboard, Kaepernick applauded.
Nobody claims Kaepernick is perfect. Reasonable, woke people can be upset that he did not vote in the 2016 election. But the Ali Legacy Award does not honor perfection, and the criticisms of Kaepernick are misguided in one fundamental way: They make this story a referendum on Kaepernick. It was never supposed to be about him. It is about Tamir Rice and the world’s highest incarceration rate and a country that devalues education and slides too easily into violence.
When Ali was drafted into the military in 1967 and refused to report, much of the country disapproved. Ali explained his refusal by saying: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam after so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
Time ultimately shined a softer light on Ali. For the last 40 years of his life, Ali was arguably the most popular athlete in American history. But in the late 1960s, he was deeply unpopular and his future was uncertain.
Ali was 25 when he was banned from boxing and 28 when he returned to the sport. Boxing historians sometimes wonder what he would have done in those prime years. But Ali did not look at it that way. Instead of focusing on the piece of his career that he lost, he talked about what he had gained: a sense of self, and of purpose, greater than he could ever find in the ring. He risked prison time. He did not know if he would ever be allowed to fight again. But he knew he was clinging to his truth. As Ali later told SI’s George Plimpton: “Every man wonders what he is going to do when he is put on the chopping block, when he’s going to be tested.”
Someday, America may well be a better place because of Colin Kaepernick. This is hard to see now— history is not meant to be analyzed in real time. But we are having conversations we need to have, and this should eventually lead to changes we need to make. Police officers, politicians and citizens can work together to create a safer, fairer, more civil society. Kaepernick did not want to sacrifice his football career for this. But he did it anyway. It is a rare person who gives up what he loves in exchange for what he believes.
To read full article, go to: https://www.si.com/sportsperson/2017/11/30/colin-kaepernick-muhammad-ali-legacy-award

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Former Running Back Jason Wright Named President of NFL’s Washington Football Team

August 20, 2020, 11:10 am

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Former National Football League running back Jason Wright was named the first Black president of an NFL team on Monday, according to The Washington Post. He will be heading up the Washington Football Team.

The hiring by team owner Daniel Snyder of the 38-year-old Wright, who rose quickly in the business world after getting an MBA at the University of Chicago and became a partner at McKinsey & Company, comes at a difficult time for a franchise that in past years was one league’s strongest.

Congratulations Jason Wright! @michaelstrahan talks one-on-one with the first-ever black @NFL team president who will lead @WashingtonNFL. https://t.co/6P7sdBJ5js pic.twitter.com/BKhd25EN8Y

— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 17, 2020

To quote the Washington Post:

The team has had eight losing seasons in the last 11 years; it recently dropped its 87-year-old name, which is considered a racial slur, under pressure from sponsors; it has commissioned an investigation of its corporate culture after The Washington Post published a story detailing allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse; and Snyder’s three minority partners want to sell their roughly 40 percent stake in the team.

Yet Wright, who has lived in the Washington area since 2013, said he understands what waits for him when he takes over the team’s business operations next week.

“A lot of the high-stakes stuff that you see in and around the club at this time is something that I’m quite familiar with,” he said. “Hopefully, having not grown up in [Washington’s] front office allows me to bring some catalytic thinking. It’s the same reason organizations bring in people externally — to push the thinking, to have new, creative ways of thinking about things [and] maybe be a bit disruptive.”

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Justice Martin Jenkins to Become 1st Openly Gay Man to Serve on CA Supreme Court

October 5, 2020, 1:20 pm

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[Justice Martin Jenkins. Photo Credit: Jason Doiy / ALM]

According to latimes.com, California Governor Gavin Newsom has appointed Martin Jenkins to the State Supreme Court.

Currently serving as Newsom’s Judicial Appointments secretary, Jenkins, 66 would become the first openly gay man on the California Supreme Court, and only the third Black man ever to serve on the state’s highest court.

To quote the Los Angeles Times:

“Justice Jenkins is widely respected among lawyers and jurists, active in his Oakland community and his faith, and is a decent man to his core,” Newsom said in a statement. “As a critical member of my senior leadership team, I’ve seen firsthand that Justice Jenkins possesses brilliance and humility in equal measure. The people of California could not ask for a better jurist or kinder person to take on this important responsibility.”

Jenkins was leading the search to fill a vacancy on the court left by the Aug. 31 retirement of Justice Ming W. Chin, a Republican appointee who was the court’s most conservative member.

Jenkins is viewed as generally less liberal than the four justices Brown appointed to the court. From Alameda County prosecutor, to federal judge to the San Francisco-based Court of Appeals, Jenkins did not publicly discuss his sexual orientation.

After his confirmation, the court will have two Black justices, two Asian Americans, one Latino, one white woman and one white man.

“I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by the governor to continue serving the people of California on the Supreme Court,” Jenkins said in a statement. “If confirmed, I will serve with the highest ethical standards that have guided me throughout my career, informed by the law and what I understand to be fair and just.”

A San Francisco native, Jenkins earned his undergraduate degree from Santa Clara University and at one point had a contract to play NFL football for the Seattle Seahawks, but chose instead to become an attorney and got his Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

To read more, click here.

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Jennifer King Makes History as 1st Black Woman to be Full-Time NFL Coach

January 23, 2021, 9:58 pm

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With the amount of glass ceilings broken this past week, America’s going to need a bigger broom.

Jennifer King continues her historic ascension up the coaching ladder by becoming the first full-time African-American woman coach in the National Football League.

The Washington Football Team will make King a full-time offensive assistant after spending this past season as a coaching intern.

The news was first reported by NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport on Thursday night.

Important development in Washington: Jennifer King is going to become a full-time offensive assistant for the WFT, source said. She spent the last year as a coaching intern.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 22, 2021

King spent 2018 and 2019 interning in for the league the off-season and during training camp for the Carolina Panthers. King spent the 2020 season as a full-time intern, working with running backs coach Randy Jordan.

In between her two stints with the Panthers, King worked as an assistant wide receiver coach and special teams assistant for the now-defunct Arizona Hotshots of the Alliance of American Football.

King was a regular participant in the NFL’s coaching clinics from 2015 to ’18, and attended the NFL Women’s Career in Football Forum in 2018. She also played for three professional women’s football teams from 2006 to ’19: the Carolina Phoenix, with whom she spent 11 years, the New York Sharks and the D.C. Divas.

Earlier this month, King made history alongside Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach Maral Javadifar as the first female coaches to occupy opposing sidelines during a playoff game.

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Spike Lee to Direct Multi-Part Colin Kaepernick Documentary for ESPN Films

February 3, 2022, 7:04 am

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According to Variety.com, Academy Award winning filmmaker Spike Lee is directing a multi-episode documentary on former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick for ESPN Films.

Production has commenced on the documentary, which was first announced in July 2020 as part of Kaepernick’s production deal with Walt Disney through his company, Ra Vision Media.

“Kaepernick, who has never given a full, first-person account of his journey, is collaborating closely with Lee who plans to use extensive new interviews and a vast never-before-seen archive to help Kaepernick tell his story from his perspective,” the press release states.

To quote Variety.com:

Kaepernick recently executive produced and starred in the Netflix series Colin in Black & White, which premiered on the streamer in October. Starring Jaden Michael as a young Kaepernick, the show chronicles the athlete’s formative years, focusing on how he navigated obstacles of race, culture and class as a Black child adopted into a white family.

In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback began to kneel during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality and systemic racism in America. After that season ended, Kaepernick became a free agent and went unsigned by any other NFL team. In November 2017, the former player filed a grievance with the NFL, claiming that they were conspiring to keep him out of the league. In February 2019, he reached a settlement with the NFL and remains a free agent.

Lee, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for 2019’s “BlacKkKlansman,” has directed and produced documentaries such as 1997’s “4 Little Girls”, “When The Levees Broke” and the HBO series “NYC Epicenters: 9/11 – 2021½.”

ESPN Films will executive produce the documentary, in association with 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. Jemele Hill will also serve as a producer on the project.

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