Athlete activists

Several top Black athletes of the era, including basketball stars Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, joined Brown in a gathering to discuss the situation involving boxing champ Muhammad Ali.

Months before, Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and faced charges for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War.

The athletes gathered in Cleveland to debate Ali’s stance. But reportedly there was another reason for their meetings. Brown and others potentially had a financial stake in Ali – there was a plan for Ali to fight exhibition matches for U.S. troops and have his charges dropped in exchange.

But Ali said no to the matches.

Still, Brown and the others rallied behind him in a show of unity. And the summit became an important moment in the history of athlete activism.

Brown would be a big part of that activism the rest of his life.

A different tack

But Jim Brown took a different tack.

He didn’t believe in the power of marching and protest. In a 2010 interview, Brown said he admired civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s courage and sincerity. But he disagreed with King’s strategy of passive resistance.

“I didn’t think that non-violence was a solution to the problem of inequality in America,” Brown said. “So I thought economic development, and a sense of cultural power, would be a better way to fight. Because capitalism in America was riding high, and you need resources.”

In 1988, Brown started a foundation called Amer-I-Can. Its mission was to stop gang violence that was tearing apart inner city communities in southern California, his home, and to give young Black people tools to reach those goals of economic development and cultural power.

Brown’s house became the scene of peaceful gang meetings between the notorious Crips and Bloods. Anti-death penalty activist Aqeela Sherrills went to some of the meetings and embraced Brown’s Amer-I-Can message.

“[Brown] said, you give me an opportunity to show you a different way of going about doing business, a different way of living your life,” Sherrills said, “and I promise you–you will never have to worry about sustaining yourself economically, taking care of your families and taking care of your community for the rest of your life.”

There was, in Jim Brown’s life however, a troubling irony.

Holding him accountable

Brown effectively preached to others about empowerment and personal responsibility. But he appeared to ignore those ideals in multiple abusive relationships with women.

Between 1965 and 1999, Brown was accused, tried and even jailed once, for multiple incidents of sexual and physical assault. These included the infamous 1968 fight in Hollywood between Brown and a young female model that prompted neighbors to call the police. When officers arrived, they found the woman lying dazed and injured under a balcony. Brown claims she fell trying to evade police; others say Brown threw her. He was charged with attempted murder but the woman decided not to pursue the case. Decades later, she told filmmaker Spike Lee, doing a documentary on Brown, that the football legend in fact pushed her off the balcony.

Through the years Brown would accept some responsibility, but largely would blame the public’s perception of these incidents on what he called inaccurate media accounts.

“A lot has to do with things I’ve done,” Brown said, “a lot has to do with things I’ve been accused of. But most of it has to do [with] the reporting of those things.”

Writing in 2018, sports journalist Dave Zirin said “not one conviction of violence against women emerged from any of the [charges against Brown]. Yet in almost all of these cases, Brown was not vindicated by a jury as much as by the women in question, who in nearly every instance refused to bring charges after initially calling the police.”

Zirin writes at length about the many factors at play when delving into this part of Jim Brown’s life – sex, politics, racism, power – all against the backdrop of a society that long ignored and even enabled violence against women.

Brown would acknowledge he had anger problems but chafed and often scoffed at the idea that he was a serial abuser of women.

Yet, the more than 30 years of cases against him are “a remarkable stretch that cannot be written off as just an endless series of law-and-order conspiracies, coincidences, or bad luck,” Zirin wrote.

“Brown and others have seen these as politically motivated attacks attempting to tear down a strong Black man. Even without convictions of violence against women, there are enough 911 tapes and testimonials to see that this is not a fantasy created by those trying to destroy him.”

For Rhoden, this part of Jim Brown’s history was “more than a blemish. It’s basically a blight,” he said, “on an otherwise spectacular career.”

And it was another lesson learned.

“Admire the political stuff, admire [Brown’s] work with gangs,” Rhoden said, “but also realize you had to hold him accountable for this other part.”

A 2006 biography of Jim Brown was titled “The Fierce Life of an American Hero.” Taking the full measure of Brown leaves one nodding at the idea of a fierce life – fierce, often triumphant, often meaningful.