The next year Abdul-Jabbar shunned the Summer Olympics to protest American prejudice. “America is not my home,” he said in a televised interview. “I just live here.”
In those days, Harry Edwards, now a University of California, Berkeley, sociology professor emeritus, led a new wave of Black athletes in protests against American racism. Abdul-Jabbar was a vital part of that push. He also converted to Islam to embrace his Black African heritage, and changed his name from Lew Alcindor to Kareem (generous) Abdul (servant of Allah) Jabbar (powerful).
“You have to understand the context,” Edwards told me recently. “We’re still arguing over whether Black lives matter. Well, back then, Black lives absolutely did not matter. In that time, when you said ‘America,’ that was code for ‘white folks.’ So, how do those folks identify with a Black athlete who says I am a Muslim, I believe in Allah, that is what I give my allegiance to? They didn’t, and they let him know.”
Edwards added: “What Kareem did was seen as a betrayal of the American ideal. He risked his life.”
Black athletes still face backlash for standing up to racism, but their voices are more potent, and their sway is mightier now because of Black legends like Ali, Robinson, Russell and Abdul-Jabbar.
You saw their imprint when James wore a T-shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe” for Eric Garner, or a hoodie for Trayvon Martin, or when he joined an N.B.A. work stoppage for Jacob Blake. When right-wing pundits attack James and his peers for protesting, remember that Abdul-Jabbar has been in the hot seat, too.
The message here isn’t “Been there, done that, don’t need to hear it anymore.” No, that’s not it at all.