RIP to a great man. I will always remember him in I'm gonna git you sucka....long before I know about his rather incredible life....
Guess I'm a tad shocked, as, in spite of his age, I looked at Jim as being an immortal great who somehow couldn't die. (too tough also) The only guy that I'd put ahead of the Tyler Rose. Jim wore many hats, leaving a massive legacy. RIP
Good lord above, what a well-spoken (and freaking calm, stately) gentleman. Can you imagine having anything even close to that civil (sure, while heated) today? But of course, in that day, if a Black man didn't stay exactly that calm, you were probably going to be put on ice one way or the other and sooner than later. Thanks for sharing this clip -- had never seen nor heard of it. Edit: also zero signs of CTE. Dude was just bowling dudes over for his whole career.
I almost wish Jim would've gone to jail that day. Lester Maddox's shenanigans is the kind of garbage that needs to be eradicated from politics. I can't believe he served with Jimmy Carter in Georgia. In the meantime, R.I.P. to Mr. Brown. Always a legend.
He was the all time leading rusher for 20yrs despite playing only 9yrs. He held the season record for 10yrs. I remember when Franco Harris got close to his record in the 80's he threatened to come out of retirement in his 50's to keep it from happening because he didn't like how Franco would run out of bounds to avoid contact. He said if Walter Payton broke it fine but not Franco. Richard Pryor's bit on Jim in Live on the Sunset Strip is legandary.
Rest in Peace, GOAT conversation for his position and sport, Civil rights activist, and colorful acting career. I knew about his stand in sports, but I didn't know about his founding of economic organizations to create change. He also had a reported net worth of $55 million, mainly after football so he walked his talk of businesses and investments. Civil rights work Brown was one of the few athletes to speak out on racial issues in the 1950s as the civil rights movement was growing.[40] He was one of the most prominent African American athletes to engage in civil rights activism, and he called on other African American athletes to become involved in similar initiatives off the field.[65] In 1967, Brown, alongside Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Carl Stokes, were all members of the Cleveland Summit, a meeting with Muhammad Ali held with the intention of convincing the four to rally behind and recruit others to help Ali's cause of civil rights in the United States.[66] Because Ali was a "pariah" in American society at the time because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and refusal to enter the draft, his boxing license had been revoked, and he faced up to five years in prison. For Brown and the other participants to stand with Ali in support of him and his position consequently put "their reputations and their careers" at risk.[67][68] The Cleveland Summit was later called "a significant turning point for the role of the athlete in society" and "one of the most important civil rights acts in sports history", as well as a predecessor of the 21st century protest movement initiated by Colin Kaepernick.[67] In 1966, Brown founded the Negro Industrial Economic Union, later known as the Black Economic Union (BEU), to help promote economic opportunities for minority owned businesses.[69] Brown later stated in a 1968 Ebony interview, "We've got to stop wasting all our energy and money marching and picketing and going things like camping-down in Washington on a Poor People's Campaign...We've got to get off the emotional stuff and do something that will bring about real change. We've got to have industries and commercial enterprises and build our own sustaining economic base. Then we can face white folks man-to-man and we can deal."[70] The BEU secured loans and grants, including from the Ford Foundation, to support community initiatives related to food, medicines and farm and economic ventures in specific counties, starting with Marshall County, Mississippi.[17]Because of Brown's economic advocacy for the African American community, Richard Nixon expressed support for black capitalism in his campaign in the 1968 United States presidential election and received an endorsement from Brown.[17] In 1988, Brown founded the Amer-I-Can Foundation, an organization that sought to divert gang members and prisoners from violence by teaching them life skills.[40][71][72] Through the foundation, Brown helped establish the Watts truce between rival street gangs in Los Angeles.[73][74] Perceiving Brown and other outspoken African-American athletes as a threat, the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored Brown and his organizations. Files declassified in 2003 showed that the FBI, the United States Secret Service, and several police departments had monitored Brown and the Black Economic Union, attempting to smear the group as a source of Communist and radical Muslim extremism and collecting information to damage Brown's reputation.[17][75] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Brown
He was not a perfect man, he had issues (sometime very serios) like all of us, but he was indeed a legend.
