Tag Archives: white athletes

The coaches for the primarily black teams were always big personalities it seems. They would move around the track keeping kids in check all day, organizing relay teams and keeping an eye on the focus of their best athletes.

As a white kid from the suburbs it was enlightening to see this leadership in progress. What I knew of leadership in the black community was from big-world events in the mid-to-late 1960s. I was in grade school when John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their hands in black gloves in protest on the Olympic podium. We learned about Martin Luther King, Jr., in school, and we knew that he’d advocated peaceful protest as a means to achieve equality for black people in America. We also knew that he was assassinated by someone that was afraid of what he had to say. That was my take anyway. Continue reading →