Pod Insights American Scandal Muhammad Ali vs. The Draft | Black Athletes and Activism | 4 About this episode Muhammad Ali risked his career and even his freedom to take a stand against the Vietnam War. He followed in the footsteps of men like baseball great Jackie Robinson and singer Paul Robeson, who started out playing football. These Black athletes are all part of a heritage of working for social justice, according to journalist Howard Bryant. Today, Bryant joins Lindsay to talk about his book The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.
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0:00 Lindsay Graham? Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American Scandal early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
0:21 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American Scandal.
0:45 Lindsay Graham? Muhammad Ali was not the first Black athlete to risk his career, reputation, and even his freedom to advance a cause he believed in. He stood on the shoulders of men like Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line as the first African-American to play Major League Baseball, and Paul Robeson, who was most famous as a singer and actor but also played pro football. Before Ali, they used their fame to fight against the pervasive racism around them. And like Ali, they paid a price. Being a social activist and a famous sports figure is a risk, especially for Black athletes. While some people celebrate sports figures who take political stands, others criticize them as ungrateful or unpatriotic.
1:27 Lindsay Graham? In recent years, we've seen these divisions play out over athletes who have taken a knee during the National Anthem, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Journalist Howard Bryant explores the history of this intersection between sports and Black activism in his 2018 book, The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN and head of Unscripted Development for Metal Arc Media. Our conversation is next.
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2:19 Speaker 02 Hey, I'm Cassie DePecce, host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In our latest series, when a fur trapper named Hugh Glass is brutally mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead, he fights for survival and his chance for revenge. Listen to Against the Odds on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:47 Lindsay Graham? Howard Bryant, welcome to American Scandal.
2:49 Speaker 03 It's good to be here. Thank you.
2:51 Lindsay Graham? Our series focuses on Muhammad Ali, but as we mentioned in the introduction, he's part of a much bigger heritage, as you call it in your book. And this heritage started with earlier black athletes like Paul Robeson, who most people probably know as a singer and associate with the song "Old Man River." But he was also a football player. Tell us about his athletic career.
3:11 Speaker 03 Well, Paul Robeson was one of the great athletes of the first part of the 20th century in the same vein as Jim Thorpe, some of the great, great athletes to begin the century. He was a player in high school in Plainfield, New Jersey. He was a great football player, Letterman, basketball, baseball, track at Rutgers. He was part of the legendary Walter Camp, one of the godfathers of American football, his All-America teams in 1917 and 1918. And he was a member of the New Professional Football League in 1920 that would soon be called the National Football League. Obviously, all of the things that Robeson did as an athlete began to become obscured
3:54 Speaker 03 when he showed even more talent on the Broadway stage and on the concert stage as a singer, actor, and then in Hollywood as well. Robeson played two years in the NFL and then chose to go on Broadway, but he was an athlete first. And it's just sort of fascinating when you think about somebody that had that much ability, sort of a true Renaissance man.
4:17 Lindsay Graham? And a man of intense charisma, you'd have to be. How did Paul Robeson use his celebrity for social justice? And I guess, how did he get in trouble for doing so?
4:28 Speaker 03 The arc of Paul Robeson's career is very similar to the arc of a lot of black athletes in that he wasn't an activist at first. He was very much a believer in what we would call the American dream, very much a believer in being that representative of what possibilities could be if African Americans were given the chance to be part of the mainstream society. He was not a dissident as a player, or even in the first several years on Broadway, he was a standard for progress. In fact, much of mainstream America, much like Jackie Robinson, would use him as proof that whatever racial dynamics existed in America, that opportunities still existed.
5:09 Speaker 03 It wasn't until the 1930s, when he went to be on the stage in London, where his politics began to coalesce around social justice, around socialist policies. And that was where he began to get into trouble and then began to take a different look at America and began to realize that his position required of him a responsibility to uplift the races, he would say. And so by the mid to late 1930s, beginning of the 1940s, Robeson then began to recognize that his Hollywood roles, that the industry was not willing to put him in, or any African American role, in anything more than subservient positions.
5:53 Speaker 03 He began to recognize that he was much more of a social justice figure in terms of fighting against income inequality, all the things that we talk about now. In fact, Robeson even in the 1930s and early 40s would talk about the 1 percenters against the 99 percenters. So even that language dates back to him 100 years ago. He was clearly, politically, would refer to himself as a progressive New Dealer. And that would obviously put him in opposition to the anti-New Dealers. And then, of course, as we get to the Cold War, people began to paint him in communist circles.
6:29 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, let's talk about that era, because this is where he was probably most vociferously targeted. How did he get associated with communism in America?
6:38 Speaker 03 Well, I think it was his associations. It's hard to imagine today that there was ever in the United States a true opposition to capitalism. I think that today, especially in 2025, I think there's been a complete surrender that this is our economic system and there's no questioning that economic system. That was not the case in the 1920s and the 1930s. It's fascinating that there was during Robeson's time far more questioning of our economic systems. And so the time of the New Deal, the Great Depression, you take these economic forces and you combine them also with the Soviet Revolution in 1917.
7:20 Speaker 03 And so there is a feeling in the United States and around the world that workers' rights were underrepresented and that Robeson found himself, as he would always say, on the side of the common man. That, of course, put him in opposition with the forces in the United States who were very much anti-socialist, anti-communist, very much anti-New Deal.
7:42 Lindsay Graham? And this period, it became very polarized in an almost cartoonish way. You are either pro-American or you are against America. And Paul Robeson was forced to meet this opposition head-on when he was called up to speak before the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC. At one point in his testimony, he is forced to defend his patriotism after mentioning that while in Russia, he felt no color prejudice like he felt in Mississippi. I was wondering if you could share the exchange that followed.
8:13 Speaker 03 It was Gordon Shearer, the committee chairman, who asked Robeson, "Why do you not stay in Russia?" And he said, "Because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I'm going to stay here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?"
8:32 Lindsay Graham? So the passion there, his love of country is clear. How did he perhaps reconcile his activism with his patriotism?
8:40 Speaker 03 There was no way to separate Robeson from the Cold War. I know we talk about the period of McCarthyism for Joseph McCarthy and for the Red Scare, but nobody paid a higher price for his activism, for his convictions than Paul Robeson. You go back and think about what the Cold War was during those years, and you had the demand of loyalty oaths under the Truman administration. You had demands that the Attorney General had lists of subversive organizations. And one of the things that Robeson saw far earlier than a lot of the black establishment that he clashed with was that in a lot of ways, the capitalistic system, in terms of raw dollars, in terms of who owned and who had opportunity to earn, was not going to
9:25 Speaker 03 work for black people. The gaps were simply too great.
9:29 Lindsay Graham? Well, you're talking about the costs of activism in Paul Robeson's case. What was the result to his career?
9:34 Speaker 03 Well, Paul Robeson lost everything. He lost by refusing to sign the anti-communist affidavit that he was asked to sign, just prove to us that you're not a communist. His response would always be that his politics were no one else's business. And in 1950, the United States Passport Division revoked his passport, took away his opportunity to go abroad and earn a living, even though he was earning more than $100,000 a year, traveling the world as a concert singer, as an actor, as a stage performer. And all of that was taken away, and he was not allowed to perform in the United States, simply because he was associated with communism.
10:16 Speaker 03 And so he would be picketed whenever any sort of concert outlet would book him. He was radioactive inside the United States, was essentially under house arrest, was not allowed to travel abroad, where people loved and respected him around the globe. These convictions cost him everything. For eight years, he was not allowed to travel outside of the United States.
10:34 Lindsay Graham? So Robeson might be characterized, I suppose, as an early standard bearer for what you call the heritage.
10:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think that one of the things that, when I think about this, when I think about what that term means and what it has always meant to me and why the book was titled that, was this idea of a legacy of African-American entertainers, athletes especially, who were using their positions to advocate for social justice, really not even social justice so much, as for the rights of black people. And when you think about integration, you think about how the struggle for black rights, how it grew over the course of the 20th century. Integration did not take place through the doctors and the lawyers and politicians. It took place through athletes and it took place through entertainment.
11:23 Speaker 03 You know, white America did not need Joe DiMaggio or Babe Ruth to speak for it, but black America looked to Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis and later Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell. And so, yes, Paul Robeson was certainly one of those major, major voices to speak on behalf of African-Americans.
11:41 Lindsay Graham? I'm glad you brought up baseball. That seems to be an early source of black activism. Why do you think that is?
11:49 Speaker 03 I think that the reason why baseball was so prominent in terms of the social movements was twofold. Number one, baseball was very quickly the first professional sport to really take hold in the United States. There were other professional sports. I mean, there was a time when cycling was more popular than baseball. There was a time when college football was more popular than baseball. But when you think about the modern 20th century, it's baseball. And as the national pastime, as it was called, as the appointment viewing that was the World Series early on, it was the sport that really did carry the imagination of the country. And it's a mirror image to that. You also had the Negro leagues.
12:29 Speaker 03 You had the black leagues as well, which were one of the major black businesses in the United States. And so, baseball took on a place of importance that you wouldn't see in the other sports. And I think that, in addition, the way Baseball looked physically was very jarring. It was very glaring because it was all white. It was clearly all white. And this, and this is even when you have Jack Johnson as the heavyweight champion of the world, baseball is still all white. Even when you have the 1936 Olympics with Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson's brother, Mac Robinson, you have these great black athletes performing on behalf of the United States. You still look at the national pastime. In the national pastime, baseball has no black players. So
13:11 Speaker 03 baseball was symbolic. Baseball was the sport where you looked at it and you said, okay, well, if America belongs to everyone, why does this sport not have any black players? And so you have tons of opposition as strategies are being mounted to take on Jim Crow and to take on segregation. Baseball was a main target.
13:31 Lindsay Graham? Well, sticking with baseball, let's talk about Jackie Robinson and his activism. He, at one point, testified against Paul Robeson in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he was no less vociferous in his opinions.
13:43 Speaker 03 No, Jackie was very much like Robeson in that he was the type of person who believed in the American dream very much early on, that I'm an American and I am going to fight for it. As his wife, Rachel Robinson, would always say when she would talk about him, she would say, well, that was, that was Jack, my country, right or wrong. And in 1947, obviously, when Jackie Robinson comes in and integrates Major League Baseball, who better to represent progress in the United States or the potential of America than Jackie Robinson? And Robinson didn't really want to testify against Robeson, but he also did not feel like he had much of a say in the matter, considering that his boss with
14:23 Speaker 03 the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, asked him to do so. And so you had these two titans pitted against each other on Capitol Hill on July 18, 1949.
14:34 Lindsay Graham? But even though they may have been artificial foils, Jackie Robinson was absolutely, well, almost militant in his activism. Certainly, he would cause controversy today because, for instance, he refused to stand for the National Anthem.
14:49 Speaker 03 Well, by the end of his life, yes, but not when he was an active player. Jackie's disillusionment with the United States grew over time. All of the things that he fought for and all of the things that he sacrificed, that the changes just weren't coming. So, yes, by the end of the 60s, he would say very clearly, not only did he not stand for the National Anthem or did he not salute the flag, but he also gave an interview to the New York Times where he said, "If I see a car with an American flag bumper sticker on it, I'm assuming the guy behind the wheel is not my friend."
15:27 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm Kenya Paris.
15:28 Speaker 05 And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects.
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15:58 Speaker 04 I would. Listen to season one of The Unusual Suspects wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for a free trial Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing to Apple Podcasts.
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17:23 Lindsay Graham? Howard Bryant, I'm wondering, as a kid, which black athlete stood out to you as taking a stand for social causes? Who inspired you?
17:31 Speaker 03 One above everyone, it's Muhammad Ali. There's no question about that. He was the standard. He was our hero. He was the person that we all gravitated toward. And it's a good example as well of the power of boxing at that time. And of course, to the power of him as well. But certainly when, as a young kid growing up in the seventies, and of course, then as a teenager in the eighties, it was Muhammad Ali and everybody else. But also as a Bostonian, there was Bill Russell. And those two were friends. Those two together were the standards for what we felt an athlete's responsibility was to black people. And I think that what's really interesting about that, when you go back and look at those years, is it was so long ago.
18:15 Speaker 03 And yet, when you add up those two, you add up Robinson and Robison and Joe Lewis, and you add them to the Bill Russells and the Muhammad Ali's, even though their heydays were over a half century ago, that responsibility still lingers in today's athletes. Those players that came before, their impact was so large that if you didn't follow them, people looked at you and wondered, why aren't you embracing this the way you're supposed to?
18:45 Lindsay Graham? You consulted on and appeared in the PBS documentary series Muhammad Ali. Ali is, of course, remembered today as the greatest boxer of all time, but also a hero to many. He took on the establishment with a ferocity and style that is probably unmatched. But in his fight for civil rights, which was probably thrust upon him like many of these men. Where do you think Ali looked for his inspiration? Where did he find the determination to do what he did?
19:13 Speaker 03 Well, I think it came from Malcolm X and it came from the Nation of Islam. It came from growing up in Louisville and realizing what is around you. He was a very aware man and very aware as a young man. It doesn't take much to look at your situation if you're paying even remote attention and feeling the need to change it when you're black, living in Kentucky, when you're born in 1942. You've got segregation codified in the law. I mean, you still had de facto segregation in the North as well, but down there, it's literally against the law to sit where you wanted to sit or to sit in a restaurant or to be served or to drink out of a water fountain. So when I think about the Ali's of the world, it feels more natural. It's not that he was doing something so remarkable.
19:58 Speaker 03 The only reason it was remarkable was because other people weren't doing it, even though the injustice was very clear.
20:05 Lindsay Graham? Our series covers largely Ali's fight in the courts after his refusal to serve in the military and go to Vietnam. And we cover the harm it did to him and his family and his career. But he made a comeback and it was in 1974 in Zaire that he fought the rumble in the jungle against George Foreman. I guess I'd like you to characterize this fight. What did it mean for Ali at the time?
20:28 Speaker 03 It meant everything. The rumble in the jungle is the most important fight, not only to Muhammad Ali's career in my mind, but also in the idea of Muhammad Ali as a person, as the person he would become, as the symbol that would outlive him as the greatest, as the figure for social justice, as a humanitarian, as someone that America would eventually catch up to, even though he was once one of the most unpopular people in this country. And the reason why is when you think about what took place during those years and when you think about what took place later with Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee in 2016 and was blackballed from his career, you think about all of these athletes. You think about Tommy Smith and John Carlos, who gave the Black Fist salute at the 1968 Olympics.
21:13 Speaker 03 You think about Kurt Flood, who challenged baseball's Reserve clause that players were bound to to one team for life and he took that case to the Supreme Court and lost. And then eventually players got their freedom and now you have ball players signing 800 million dollar contracts. You think about all of these athletes and you think about the prices that they paid. This country broke them, every single one of them. This country broke them. They lost something that they never got back. They were never quite the same. And this country did its very best to break Muhammad Ali. Took three and a half years of his career. He comes back, he loses in his championship fight to Joe Frazier. And he's not champion.
21:57 Speaker 03 And then he goes out and he loses to Kenny Norton. Norton breaks his jaw. And you look at Ali and you look at the Ali of 1964, when he was beautiful and he weighed 214, 215 pounds and danced around like he was a middleweight. He's a heavyweight with that kind of movement and agility and youth. And it's all been taken away. Zaire is where he gets it back. He's the one they couldn't break. If he loses that fight, he's broken like everyone else. He's not the champion. And maybe he doesn't get another shot to win the championship, or maybe he never wins it. But the fact that he won that fight as a massive underdog and did it in Zaire and did
22:38 Speaker 03 it in Africa, it's the kind of perfect storm that creates a legacy, that creates an entirely different history. And I think about that quite often, about how badly everyone needed that fight. And not just him, but also all of the people who fought for social justice and who felt like the idea of justice was getting away. This is also taking place, Vietnam is not over yet. So the idea of fighting against systems and beating systems and actually having something tangible that you can hold in your hand and say, we, we won, they weren't just moral victories. All of this is on Ali and is on his shoulders during that fight against Ferman in 74.
23:18 Speaker 03 And that's why we still talk about that fight, even though it was more than 50 years ago.
23:24 Lindsay Graham? If we were to revisit that fight, watch it again now, would it be clear that this was not just for a championship, but for redemption? I mean, can you see it in the ring?
23:33 Speaker 03 You can see it in the broadcast and you watch that fight and hop on YouTube and watch it and sure you can see it because of the way they're talking. Ali is a huge underdog. The fight is taking place in Zaire, so instead of looking at a boxing match the way you usually do where you look in the crowd and there are virtually all white faces except for the black celebrities that are in the crowd. This is historic. And so when you see all of those different things and you listen to what they're saying on the broadcast as well about how much of an underdog he is. I mean, obviously, people aren't putting this in that sort of immediate context because it wasn't quite clear at the time. But by the time he wins that fight, it is clear. You know, even when you're watching the fight and it's clear that that the tide has turned and that Foreman has sort of punched himself out and Ali is not going to get demolished in the first round like everybody thought.
24:18 Speaker 03 Now you're starting to see a world figure onstage in his country. And the fact that you had two black men fighting in Africa, but the crowd and the people and the story and the narrative is only centered on one. And that person is Muhammad Ali. After all that had been done to him, it became very, very clear that this wasn't just another fight. This was something historic.
24:40 Lindsay Graham? What heritage do you think Muhammad Ali has bequeathed to the athletes who came after him?
24:46 Speaker 03 I don't know that. I believed at one point that there was a clear line of responsibility. And there was one enemy to that line that I'm not sure was defeated. In fact, I'm sure it wasn't defeated, and that was money. Money and the capitalism that Paul Robeson fought against, that a lot of people fight against, that this idea that the athlete was this force for good. And so to see Ali and then to see nobody really follow him. By the time we get into the mid to late 70s and the 80s and the 90s, it becomes entertainment. Then there's the Dr. Jays and the Michael Jordans and the rest of those players. And this idea of activism disappears.
25:31 Speaker 03 Of course, it disappears in a lot of ways from the country as well because you get into a more conservative time in the 1980s and the 1990s. And so you don't really see a return of this sort of play. Of the athlete being vocal until you start getting into the 2010s when Trayvon Martin is killed, then you start to see this new generation of players. But it had been 40 years, almost, between the athletes being activists and being vocal in the 1960s to when they began to speak up again. They had lost their place in that heritage. They had broken with what was taking place from Jackie Robinson up to Ali. It's not necessarily a straight line, and it wouldn't be a straight line.
26:16 Speaker 03 It disappeared for quite some time, and which is why I think it made so much news when suddenly athletes were speaking up again. And so I don't think that when you look at these athletes, it's an automatic given that they're going to take on any sort of responsibility anymore than any other citizen. I also think it's important to think about something else when we think about these time periods, and that is that the athletes are not leaders. The athletes are followers. And with the exception of Jackie Robinson, who was not necessarily politically active when he first was signed by the Dodgers, his presence gave him that responsibility because he was there. There was no way around it. He was the first black player in an all-white game. You couldn't miss him.
27:00 Speaker 03 But when you see the other players, and it includes Ali and Bill Russell and the rest of them, they're part of the civil rights movement. They are also reacting. They're reacting to Emmett Till. They're reacting to Selma. They're reacting to Montgomery. They're reacting to Birmingham. And they're using their platforms and they're using their positions to amplify what has already taken place in the street. I think the athlete gets sometimes far too much dispensation. Now, Ali, on the other hand, is different, simply because he was willing to challenge the Vietnam War. That was a very distinct departure.
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28:13 Lindsay Graham? In the summer of 1881, US Army Lieutenant Adolphus Greeley and 24 other men embarked on an ambitious scientific mission to the northernmost reaches of the Arctic. But despite several triumphs of discovery, the men would soon face tragedy. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of the podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, after Adolphus Greeley and his men arrive at their destination, more than 1,000 miles above the Arctic Circle, they get to work collecting scientific data and exploring the frigid landscape. But when resupply ships fail to reach them two summers in a row, they're forced to set out on a desperate search for rescue,
28:58 Lindsay Graham? and not all of them will make it home. Follow American History Tellers wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American History Tellers: Greeley Arctic Expedition, early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
29:22 Lindsay Graham? I'd like to dig into this a little more, that these black activists are reactionary. It makes a lot of sense because the 60s and 70s were a tumultuous period in American history. You've already mentioned that there was a fallow period of activism in the 80s through almost the 2000s. What happened in this period that there were no Muhammad Ali's, or Tommy Smith's, or John Carlos's?
29:45 Speaker 03 Well, what would you do if you looked out and you saw a graveyard? Would you want to join it or would you want to avoid it? I think that in the middle of the 70s, which is why the fight in Zaire is so important, there's tangible evidence that you're going to lose everything. If you voice your opinions, and I think that just as much as there's fear on the part of the athletes, there's also fatigue on the part of the country. By the time you get to the 70s, I mean, how long can you protest? People had been in the streets since the 1950s in terms of the civil rights movement. And so I think that coming out of the 1960s, and I think the King assassination had a lot to do with it as well, I think people were just broken. And I think that you moved into a new era where athletes were beginning to enjoy some
30:29 Speaker 03 of the same perks that the white athletes were getting. You had OJ Simpson, who was now making $100,000, $200,000 a year. Hank Aaron was making $240,000 a year. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar signed a contract that was worth $1 million. Then you have free agency. Reggie Jackson signs a multimillion dollar contract with the New York Yankees. And so now the money is replacing the activism. If you notice that it does parallel itself. As the activism in the street was reduced, so was the activism from the athletes, so were the ballplayers. And once it revived itself in the street, then the ballplayers followed.
31:03 Lindsay Graham? Well, let's talk about the period in which it revived itself in the street. You've already mentioned the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin as an inflection point. And certainly people took to the streets then and thereafter. You wrote in your book that LeBron James and other black athletes came out from behind the tinted glass of their Escalades. What kind of atmosphere do you think they were stepping into?
31:24 Speaker 03 They were stepping into an environment that was nearly as hostile to activism as the hostility of the 1950s. And that's because of 9/11. Try to go back and think about those first 10 years after 9/11, and then you've got the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. There was not a lot of room for the sort of activism of the 1960s. You look out and you watch a ballgame and there's an American flag across the 50-yard line, across the whole football field. Before the game, you've got the flags and the flyovers. And you've got military appreciation night in every ballpark around the country.
32:04 Speaker 03 And so for the players to then suddenly decide that they were going to take a stand against police brutality. And let's not forget, you've got Trayvon, who was shot, but not by a police officer, but there was violence involved here from a citizen who acted as though he were law enforcement, and George Zimmerman. And then you've got Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson in 2014. And you've suddenly, you know, you've got Sandra Bland in 2015. And you've got this social media viral movement where people are just sending video after video after video of some black person having a confrontation with the police. This is running specifically in opposition to the jingoism post 9/11.
32:48 Speaker 03 So now you have the sports leagues draping themselves in the American flag, and you've got the players openly challenging law enforcement. So not only do you have the revival of the black athlete speaking up against injustice the way that Ali and Bill Russell and that old heritage did, but you also have a labor battle. You've got the workers making a stand against management. It's an incredibly volatile mix.
33:14 Lindsay Graham? Colin Kaepernick began his protest in August of 2016, which was only a few months after Muhammad Ali died. Is that a coincidence, or is there a connection?
33:26 Speaker 03 Um, maybe a little bit of both. But I think that certainly when Ali passed in the spring, early summer of 2016, there was a, not just a reappraisal, but we were thinking about him more. He was fresh in our minds because even though he'd had Parkinson's and everything else, he just didn't think about Muhammad Ali dying. It was just so shocking, even though it wasn't shocking at all. But I think that for Kaepernick then to do what he did later on in August, it was an interesting through line. I don't know if the two were actually connected or not, but it, there was something, I don't know if poetic is the right word for it, but there was something interesting about that timeline.
34:06 Lindsay Graham? It's interesting that you use the phrase shocking about something that was shocking and not shocking at all, because that seems to be the case with Kaepernick's protest. At first, not too many people noticed. But I guess, remind us, when did the firestorm start?
34:21 Speaker 03 Fires from started when he was actually noticed. He was sitting, I think it was before a preseason game in August of 2016. And once it became clear that he was protesting, and then he came out and said it. And I believe he said something along the lines of, I'm not going to stand for a flag where you can commit murder and get free vacations. He's talking about police because of the number of shootings. He had been activated by the Philando Castile shooting in Minneapolis. And I think that when he did that, it really did activate the latent feelings that people had had about athletes and athletes speaking up and about where we were. It wasn't just the fact that he was challenging law enforcement.
35:05 Speaker 03 Kaepernick was also challenging the direction of this country in a post nine 11 America. It's no small thing.
35:12 Lindsay Graham? In reflecting on this, having written your book, what were the latent feelings of athlete activism that Kaepernick was facing? How did things unfold for him?
35:22 Speaker 03 After the season, after the 2016 season where he protested and took a knee for the rest of the season, he never played another down a football again. That was the end of his career. And everybody saw that. And when I say everybody, I don't mean just the people on their couches, eating nachos, watching the game. I mean, the other players. This is what's going to happen to me if I speak. And I think that it was really a flashpoint moment because of all of the discussion about athlete activism and player empowerment and how the players were now in control of things. And I took an opposite view of that. My feeling on that was how much power do you have if you lose everything by opening your mouth? Power is being able to speak, not losing everything when you do.
36:06 Speaker 03 And so to me, what was going to be very interesting to watch was going to be two things during that time period. Was it a moment or was it a movement? And how would the players respond going forward because of the massive salaries that they were earning? What happens when the protester becomes the power? What happens to your heritage? What happens to your lineage when you are now so far removed from those environments that created the Muhammad Ali's and the Bill Russells and the Jim Browns of the world?
36:40 Lindsay Graham? For this activism, Sports Illustrated gave Kaepernick the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award.
36:46 Lindsay Graham? I'm interested in your take on that. Is this something that Kaepernick deserved?
36:50 Speaker 03 Yes, of course he deserved it because he did something that Muhammad Ali did. He's actually one of the most deserving. Because if you go back and think about Ali and what he was, why was Ali the threat that he was? Because he advocated for black people specifically. Muhammad Ali was challenging the United States government and Colin Kaepernick was challenging American law enforcement, which is a national pastime unto itself when you look at our popular culture. The years 2010, 2011 to 2022, and you add in the George Floyd protests as well, which really was the last moment of this era of athlete empowerment or athletes taking a political stand, getting involved.
37:31 Speaker 03 What took place next, I would say chilled me to the bone when it came to wondering if this heritage was dead. The players disappeared. There hasn't been a real moment since. It wasn't sustained. And then the players were using their money to distance themselves from the mainstream because they had the money to disappear and go to their private islands or go to their private gyms and everything else, and they were no longer part of it. LeBron James is a billionaire. Serena Williams is a venture capitalist. Alex Rodriguez has a percentage of, you know, the Minnesota basketball team. The athlete is now, because their wealth is so enormous, they have less in common now with the very people that they were supposedly aligned with.
38:16 Speaker 03 They're not like us anymore. The thing that made this period so interesting and gave the player so much social import was that they went to public school, their kids went to the public school system, they were part of the everyday protest because the money wasn't as big back then. They were making four or five times what the average American was making. But now they make 200 times what the average American earns, 300 times. And I wonder what's going to happen, or what is happening, to this next stage in this journey.
38:49 Lindsay Graham? Well, Howard Bryant, thank you so much for talking with me today on American Scandal.
38:53 Speaker 03 It's my pleasure. Thank you.
38:55 Lindsay Graham? That was my conversation with journalist Howard Bryant. He's a senior writer for ESPN and head of unscripted development for Meadowlock Media. His book is The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.
39:13 Speaker 07 From Wondery, this is episode four of our series on Muhammad Ali. In the next season. In the 1950s, quiz shows were big business for the relatively new medium of television. But to keep viewers tuning in and ensure the most popular contestants kept winning, some programs began rigging the results, and soon, one disgruntled former contestant would blow the whistle.
39:35 Lindsay Graham? American Scandal is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American Scandal on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. And Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American Scandal early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com. American Scandal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship.
40:20 Lindsay Graham? This episode was produced by Polly Stryker. Our senior interview producer is Peter Arcuni. Sound design by Gabriel Ghul. Music by Thrum. Produced by John Reed. Managing producer, Joe Florentino. Senior producers are Andy Beckerman and Andy Herman. Development by Stephanie Jens. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louie, and Aaron O'Flaherty for Wondery.
40:48 Speaker 07 For decades, two legendary brands fought for the hearts of American bikers: Indian Motorcycle and Harley-Davidson. The battle looked a lot like Coke versus Pepsi or Ford versus Chevy, but tastes changed and Indian didn't adapt fast enough. The icon all but died. Then came the Con Men, the Dreamers, a string of spectacular failures that kept Indian in the grave, until one company finally got it right. This is the story of an improbable revival and the reignition of an old rivalry. Hey, I'm David Brown, the host of the podcast Business Wars, and every season we bring you the true stories Behind the companies that shape our world. Indian's new owners are going all in, but an existential crisis looms. Can Indian and Harley recruit enough younger riders to survive?
41:31 Speaker 07 Make sure to follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
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