Jim Brown Hoping to Score Social Change
 Photos by Paul Guillotte
Actor and athlete Jim Brown says his dream is to 'be a catalyst for social change.' Top, fans surround him after his talk in Chapin Hall. |
He's so much more than that now.
Brown, an NFL Hall-of-Famer turned actor turned social activist, spoke in front of an attentive crowd at Williams College's Chapin Hall on Thursday night. The lecture, "A Night with a Legend: Jim Brown in His Own Words," was sponsored by the Williams College athletic department, the Griffin Society, leadership studies and the Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Diversity.
The football legend gave students, faculty members and local residents a little history of his life and a big dose of what he believes in. Always known as a controversial figure, Brown said that in the United States, "if you're too outspoken, you're going to be controversial."
Brown's message on Thursday night was mostly uplifting, although he still was able to splash in a few humorous moments mixed in between some tough talk about racism. Introduced by Ephs baseball player Jamaal Johnson as a "legend in sports excellence and a true role model for social justice," Brown quickly corrected Johnson when he also called him "the greatest athlete of all time."
"The greatest athlete of all time?" Brown questioned. "That might be a reach. There was a guy named Jim Thorpe, a woman named Babe Didrikson and another guy named Jackie Robinson.
"I defer to Jim Thorpe, but I put myself in the same category as Didrikson and Robinson," Brown said, prompting a chorus of laughs from the crowd.
Brown also got the audience going when he discussed his early retirement from professional football. Despite leading the league in rushing eight of the nine years he played and being named to the Pro Bowl every season, Brown walked away from the game at the early age of 29.
He says the most frequently asked question he's received over the years is how he could retire at such a young age."People always say to me they wanted me to play three more years," Brown said. "I always said to them, 'Why? So I can get two broken legs, become second string and regress to a point where you guys start to pity me? Is that when I'm suppose to retire?"
He said the decision to leave football was actually an easy one when Paramount Studios offered him a three-picture movie deal. The money he made from movies exceeded his football salary and in one such film, Brown got the chance to star opposite Raquel Welch, one of the biggest sex symbols of the '60s and '70s. Brown, in much detail, described his excitement when he learned that he and Welch would be involved in the first interracial love scene in film history.
"Leaving football wasn't as tough as you'd think," he said.
After he got the audience warmed up, Brown began discussing his present-day passion. As executive director of the Amer-I-Can Program, which he founded in 1988, Brown seeks to promote social justice and self-esteem for underrepresented populations in America. The Amer-I-Can progam is a 15-chapter life skills curriculum "designed to empower individuals to take charge of their lives and achieve their full potential."
Brown shared his own story of overcoming adversity, first as a poor black student at a wealthy all-white high school and later as an athlete at Syracuse University. As the only black player on the Syracuse football team, Brown said many people were hoping he would fail. He got so frustrated with his situation that he briefly quit school. It wasn't until his high school superintendent flew to Syracuse and told him to stick it out that Brown's athletic career finally took off.
He went from being the fifth-string running back on the football team to a standout in four different sports, earning 10 varsity letters and All-America honors in both football and lacrosse in the process.
"I decided that I will never ever let anyone in my life tell what I can or can't do," Brown said.
Brown said one of the ways of empowering yourself is to avoid being a victim and finding ways to cross color and gender lines. He credits a number of Caucasian people in helping him find success, particularly Ed Walsh, his high school football coach who Brown described as a "surrogate father."
"Ed Walsh was the greatest man I've known in my life, and he was Caucasian," Brown said. "It didn't matter to me. You'll find many people out there willing to help you if you're willing to help yourself."
Brown didn't hesitate on calling out some of the more famous black leaders as well, saying that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be much better off "spending less time concentrating on the majority and more time cleaning up the black neighborhoods."
He also questioned Michael Jordan's role in the black community. Although he has nothing personal against Jordan, Brown remembers a time when he asked him to endorse a Democratic politician. Jordan politely refused, saying, "I'm sorry, but Republicans buy Nike shoes, too." Brown said he's also opposed to advertising slogans like Nike's "Be Like Mike" campaign, pointing out how it might distract young black men from reaching their full potential.
"You try to be like Mike and you'll break your leg," Brown said. "Ever since that ad came out, all of the black kids want to play basketball. I don't want 100,000 basketball players. I want college presidents and Williams College graduates."
For Brown, education is the key component in helping underrepresented populations find success. He says it's his goal to one day get a bunch of his celebrity friends together and present a program to Washington that will help enact widespread social change. He mentioned a pretty impressive cast of characters, from Bill Belichick to George Foreman to Denzel Washington, and said, "Just wait because one day soon it's going to happen."
When Jim Brown was growing up, he didn't dream about being a professional football player, an actor or a social activist. He said at one point, like all kids do, he thought he'd like to be a fireman.
He has a different dream now, one that he continues to work on every day of his life.
"My dream now is to be a catalyst for social change," Brown said. "I want to help our kids get a better education and not to kill each other. I know it's not very profound, but I strive to do that each and every day of my life."
