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Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., nominated for reappointment to the grade of General and to Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee nominations hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 7, 2020.

Two years ago, the U.S. military decided to prosecute a Black service member for being six minutes late to a meeting, bringing his case to a court-martial hearing and, ultimately, a conviction.

“That’s a decision that truly should not have been made,” retired Col. Don Christensen, who previously served as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor, told lawmakers in a House Armed Services Committee hearing last month, citing the incident as evidence of racial bias inherent in the U.S. military justice system. “I have never seen anybody court-martialed for the sole offense of being six minutes late to a meeting – other than this African American.”

Though he never prosecuted anyone he thought was innocent, he says, nor did he ever see any of his colleagues doing this, Colonel Christensen, who now runs the service member advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, says the problem is that white troops are “getting the benefit of the doubt, whether based upon the relationship, implicit bias, explicit bias, whatever it was,” while Black troops aren’t.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last year backs these concerns. It concluded that within the military, allegations against Black service members are more than twice as likely to be brought to a court-martial hearing as those against white service members.

Now the Defense Department is under pressure to find out what is going wrong and to fix it. “This report raises difficult questions – questions that demand answers,” Lt. Gen. Charles Pede, judge advocate general for the U.S. Army, told lawmakers. “Sitting here today, we do not have those answers.”

In the wake of the GAO report, lawmakers added a provision in the most recent defense budget requiring all services to track the same data on racial disparities within the military justice system, to root out causes and find solutions. Critics point out that there has been ample missed opportunity to do just that, however: Pentagon studies over the years have concluded that racial disparities since 1972 were “consistent and persistent and getting worse.”

A legacy of discrimination

It was as America mobilized for World War II that U.S. military leaders became increasingly concerned about racism in its ranks. Black troops assigned to Southern bases “had no right to freedom from harassment and physical violence, in large part because the military police frequently chose to attack rather than protect them,” notes Douglas Bristol, associate professor and specialist in Black military history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

In a disturbingly discriminatory incident typical of the era, three Black soldiers in Houston were having drinks on their night off base when a white policeman called them the n-word. One of the GIs corrected him. “I am not a n* soldier – we are American soldiers,” he said. The cop told the Black troops that if they objected again he would kill them. When the cop called for backup, a white MP responded to the scene, telling the Black soldiers that they were in the South where they were “n*s and would be treated as such.” The three soldiers were thrown in jail, charged with inciting to riot, which was “not an entirely bad outcome considering that armed white MPs frequently patrolled the Black neighborhoods of Houston and viciously beat Black soldiers,” Dr. Bristol says.

Top military commanders generally dismissed racial discrimination as an unavoidable problem from civilian life until, that is, it began posing a threat to the war effort. When anger over mistreatment caused riots to break out among Black troops at bases throughout the U.S. – among U.S. troops executed after courts-martial in Europe, 80% were Black, though they comprised only 10% of U.S. forces – Gen. George Marshall, then-Army chief of staff, threatened to fire commanders who did not “personally and vigorously” address racism. He also ordered better training for MPs, the use of Black MPs, and new grievance procedures for Black troops, Dr. Bristol says. “The new policies worked, and although incidents still occurred, their frequency and number diminished greatly.”

But while the military has taken “tremendous strides” to end institutional racism, it still has “a long way to go towards addressing” racial disparities in its ranks, says retired Maj. Coretta Gray, who was inspired to join the Air Force after her mom served as a military nurse and her dad as a space and missiles officer. “My anticipation going in was that it would be just like anywhere else in America – yes, we have issues with race, but that it’s more of a meritocracy.”

A double standard

While she was serving in the Air Force as a judge advocate general, or lawyer, however, Major Gray, who is Black, saw disparities in how Black and white troops were treated. Though most supervisors “don’t want to tear everybody up or to be prejudiced,” they do behave in ways that are, often inadvertently, discriminatory, she says.

As the Air Force began to dig into their data, they found two offenses most likely to show discipline disparities by race. One is marijuana use, and the other is known as “failure to go,” or being late for work or a meeting. Marijuana charges are “usually” the result of random urinalysis, based on the generation of social security numbers by health services, says Ann Stefanek, chief of Air Force Media Operations.

The “failure to go” charges gave Air Force officials pause. “Is the white supervisor treating Black and white airmen the same the first time they’re late for work? Maybe the young white airmen from an area with limited diversity encounters a Black airman for the first time, and maybe the way they deal with each other is completely different,” Ms. Stefanek says.

For her part, Major Gray says, when she took part in regular meetings with commanders on the status of discipline in various units, “I’ve literally heard in that meeting, ‘These Black airmen just get in trouble more.’”

The disciplinary record may actually bear that out, she adds, but the charges often hinge on how minor infractions of new service members are handled by young supervisors. One airman may be punished for going AWOL, for example, while another may be told, “Hey, you better get yourself back to base before you’re declared AWOL,” Major Gray notes. “I don’t think we arm those front-line supervisors with enough training.”

As a result, young supervisors may treat discipline “less professionally and more like a social club,” she says. “It’s about whether ‘I know you and we go out on weekends and you helped me move,’ versus ‘You get this paperwork because I only see you at work and we don’t connect.’”

For troops inclined towards racism, it can also be a chance for “personal prejudice to have a ton of room to run,” she says. This might include giving a new recruit they don’t like “all the bad tasks, making them work overtime, punishing them for not wearing their [hat] before they go outside – all the high school bullying stuff, but with real consequences.”

If people complain about unequal treatment, they can easily be gaslit, Major Gray says. “They’re told, ‘You took that wrong,’ or ‘I’m sure they were just joking,’ or ‘There was some other reason you didn’t get that particular job or training opportunity.’ Sometimes it’s, ‘They just don’t like your attitude.’

“But why is it that it’s all these Black females who have an attitude? Some have told me, ‘I was literally sitting in my resting face, and he told me I had an attitude.’”

There’s often a legitimate reason for disciplinary action, particularly among new troops, and “of course you should be on time to meetings,” Ms. Gray says, “so these cases for the most part run in a way that it’s hard to point out any racism directly.”

The biggest step the military could take toward substantiating some of these biases, whether conscious or unconscious, is through the tracking of low-level administrative paperwork – the letters of counseling, admonishment, and reprimand – that generally don’t account for courts-martial in themselves, but when they accumulate can be used to build a bigger case for a denied promotion or dismissal.

“I can already hear people groaning, ‘Oh, another metric to track,” Ms. Gray says. “But the perception is that you’re not going to get the benefit of the doubt if you’re Black. I’ve seen it.”

Col. Bill Orr, associate director of the Air Force judiciary and a retired JAG and military trial judge, agrees, particularly since the racial disparities overwhelmingly crop up among younger troops. His department plans to begin tracking this data, he says. Adds Ms. Stefanek, “We acknowledge that the numbers tell a story, and we need to get to the bottom of why those numbers reflect what they do.”

Aiming higher

It doesn’t help military justice, officials say, that the officer corps isn’t more diverse. For example, when he retired in 2014, Col. Christensen told lawmakers, only 1 in 124 colonels in the Air Force JAG Corps were Black. Throughout the Pentagon, 78% of officers are white, and 8% are Black. There are two African American four-star generals in the U.S. military.

Colonel Orr, who is Black, says he remembers what it feels like to be the only Black officer in the room. “I see new JAGs go through the same thing and you’re trying to convince them to stay.” He tells them, “I wouldn’t have spent 30-something years in the Air Force if I didn’t think this is a good place to be. They need to have the impression that somebody does care – that somebody does understand what it’s like to be the only person in the room.”

In the wake of the HASC hearing, the Air Force last month increased the number of full-tuition scholarships available at historically black colleges and universities by roughly 60%, in an effort to get more Black officers into its ranks.

The Air Force has also launched unconscious bias training, designed to point out inadvertent ways in which service members and leaders may be perpetuating racism. It will be an important “conversation starter,” Colonel Orr says. “It will help keep people from committing unforced errors.”

One encouraging conclusion of the GAO report is that in terms of convictions and punishment, there is no statistical difference between Black and white troops, “except for Black service members in the Navy were less likely to be dismissed or discharged after a conviction,” Brenda Farrell, director of the GAO’s Defense Capabilities and Management Team, told lawmakers.

In other words, she said, though Black service members were more likely to be prosecuted, they were no more likely – and in some cases, less likely – to be convicted. “That makes sense from what I saw,” Major Gray says. “Once you make it to the court-martial and have all eyes on it, it evens out. It shows that the system works – not always, but mostly.”

This bodes well for future initiatives to address racial disparity, analysts add. “I think the Air Force can fix this. We’re the younger service, the more progressive service,” Major Gray says. “We’re in a better position to lead than almost any other service.”

It will be an ongoing effort, top military officials say. “Our struggle against racism and other forms of discrimination cannot be viewed as finite battles,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Rockwell, judge advocate general for the Air Force, told lawmakers. “Rather our approach must be infinite, a constant struggle for betterment.”

The voice of John Lewis spoke to the conscience of the nation for more than half a century.

His profound and poignant voice kicks off the official trailer for “Good Trouble,” a recent documentary about his life and work: 

“My philosophy is very simple: When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just – say something, do something,” Mr. Lewis said. “Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble!”

Almost 60 years prior, during the March on Washington, a protest organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Mr. Lewis spoke to the crowd about the urgent need for jobs and freedom.

While the march served as Mr. Lewis’ introduction to the country, the events of “Bloody Sunday” made him an icon.

Mr. Lewis, who at that time was SNCC chairman, and the Rev. Hosea Williams, one of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lieutenants in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led a protest of nearly 600 marchers out of Selma, Alabama, to address civil rights and voting rights. They were met at the Edmund Pettus Bridge with severe police violence, which included tear gas and nightstick attacks. 

“I thought I saw death,” Mr. Lewis famously said of the events of March 7, 1965. “I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. I had a concussion at the bridge. ... My legs went out from under me. I felt like I was going to die.”

By God’s grace, he lived. And what a life he lived.

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Before the March on Washington, Mr. Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders in 1961. Long before the nation knew who he was, Mr. Lewis put his life and livelihood on the line in the name of nonviolent protest.

Again, Mr. Lewis stared death in the face after he was hit in the head with a wooden crate. Again, he did not blink. 

He was 15 years old the first time he heard the words of Dr. King on the radio. Less than a decade later, he was working alongside Dr. King as part of the “Big Six” leaders of the March on Washington, a civil rights hero in his own right.

He transitioned from his work in the field as an organizer and a protester to working with the Field Foundation of New York in 1960. From there, he started his career in government, which crested with his election in 1986 to the House of Representatives for Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District. He served 17 terms in Congress and became the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. 

Representative Lewis was a man defined by honesty and authenticity – so much, in fact, that even when caricatured, those attributes shined through.

His life and legacy were the motivation for a graphic novel trilogy, “March.” Mr. Lewis himself introduced the trilogy in San Diego at Comic-Con 2015. He also dressed the part. 

Mr. Lewis donned an overcoat and book bag – similar to the clothes he wore on “Bloody Sunday.” Instead of leading protesters, he led a group of children through the halls of the San Diego Convention Center. 

It was a fitting gesture. Mr. Lewis always had a knack for ushering in a new generation.

His words from the March on Washington are a mural and a memorial. An excerpt of those words were painted on a wall, along with Mr. Lewis’ likeness, and were dedicated during a ceremony in downtown Atlanta in 2012.

Late Friday night, after Mr. Lewis’ passing, the mural started to fill up with mourners, flowers, and candles. His appeal, as sure as it echoes off that wall, echoes still in our hearts. It describes the work that is happening and the work yet to be done:

“I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.

“We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution.”

Evangelia Platanioti presses her palms and toes into the blue exercise mat in a pushup position, then nonchalantly brings her right leg past her head. In a move that would defy the czarinas of Twister, she proceeds to lift her back foot off the ground and balances a midair split on – get this – one bent elbow.

“Hold on this pose,” says the Greek Olympian into the camera, as her country’s flag flutters in the background. Ducking under her extended calf, she asks, “Can you see me?”

“Yeah, we see you perfect!” exclaims four-time Olympic medalist Andrea Fuentes from her California living room, where the Spanish champion-turned-U.S. team coach is running the first-ever worldwide workout for artistic swimming (formerly known as synchronized swimming) on Zoom.

More than 300 swimmers are following Ms. Platanioti’s lead from Austria to New Zealand, where it is 3 a.m. On plush carpets and sun-drenched terraces, they spend 1 1/2 hours copying the movements of more than two dozen of the best athletes in the sport, beamed via a laptop or phone into their homes. Meanwhile, some 6,000 viewers watch live, leaving a running commentary filled with emoji and frequent invocations of their favorite champion’s name followed by “YAAASSSSSS.”

Welcome to being an Olympian in quarantine.

Editor’s note: As a public service, all our coronavirus coverage is free. No paywall.

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Olympic medalist Andrea Fuentes of Spain, who now coaches the U.S. artistic swimming team, runs a global Zoom workout for athletes from her California living room.

Under normal circumstances, the world’s best athletes would be meeting in Tokyo in late July in hopes of experiencing the pinnacle of what they’ve spent decades sweating and sacrificing for: standing on the Olympic podium, medals draped around their necks, as they listen to their national anthems and the rest of the world looks on rapturously.

Instead, they are coming off what may be the most bizarre few months of training in Olympic history. Now, as they peel themselves off in-home workout mats and head back to the gym or pool, many are doing so with heightened purpose, perseverance, and a global sense of camaraderie that they hope will inspire individuals and nations emerging from COVID-19 lockdowns. 

Add in the upheaval surrounding a white policeman’s killing of George Floyd and COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on minority communities, and U.S. Olympians find themselves navigating the world of politics as well as a pandemic. As role models and often celebrities, they’re searching for the right balance between athletics and activism, with many addressing racism in more direct ways – including in their own sports.

From having frank conversations with teammates to challenging the long-standing restrictions of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on political expression, an increasing cadre of athletes is pushing back on the idea that the Olympic movement can or should be immune to issues convulsing society. Rather, they hope it can become a channel for advancing social change and global unity.

“It’s just tough because we’re dealing with racial injustice and a pandemic at the same time,” says Will Claye, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in triple jump based in San Diego. As a Black man who has experienced racial profiling and discrimination and tense encounters with police, he wants to give others insight into such issues. “What I can do is put together my network, resources – all the blessings I’ve been given – and use it to inspire people, use it to give people knowledge, and use it to make change. I think that’s my purpose.”

Kirby Lee/USA Today

Will Claye, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the triple jump, says he has faced racism since he was a child. While training for the Tokyo Games, he has spoken at an NAACP rally and participated in a town hall meeting where athletes pushed for greater political expression.

Mr. Claye spent the spring mixing creative workouts on a mini-trampoline with efforts such as encouraging young people at an NAACP rally to vote and speaking up at a U.S. Olympic & Paralympic town hall, where athletes pushed for greater political expression. And when he first found out the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be postponed a year, he wrote a song with the chorus – “Dreams don’t die, they just multiply” – dedicated to all the athletes.

“I think this Olympics will be one of the most prolific Olympics of all time,” he says, because it will be the coming together of nations after dealing with COVID-19, whether that meant not being able to train, losing a job, or knowing someone who died. “We all had to sacrifice.”

The trials of training

Olympic slalom canoeist Sebastián Rossi had been training for months at the Pau-Pyrénées Whitewater Stadium in western France, hoping to qualify for the 2020 Olympics, when the pandemic forced him to return home to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

All he had for water there was a swimming pool. While looking at the palm trees on the edge of the property one day, he had a crazy idea: tether the back of his boat to the tree trunks using a long rubber strap made from the tubes of bicycle tires, and then paddle in the pool against the resistance. 

For three months, instead of working out in a whitewater stadium, with its rapids and cascading pools, he’d head out to the pool for 45-minute sessions, paddling vigorously to maintain his strength and balance as fall turned into winter in the Southern Hemisphere. “I won’t go in a swimming pool ever again, even in the summer,” he jokes of his endless time in camp chlorine.

Now that he’s back in the gym and outside in the water in Argentina, he realizes the pool sessions made him stronger – and not just physically.

“I saw it like mental training mostly,” says Mr. Rossi, who shared his workouts on Facebook and Instagram as a way of showing the possibility of getting something good out of quarantine. “Even though it was good to keep fit, for the head it was really important to be able to do 45 minutes in the swimming pool. It makes you tough.” 

Agustin Marcarian/Reuters

Argentine canoeist Sebastián Rossi devised a novel way to train in a swimming pool while in isolation to prepare for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

In a spring survey of athletes, coaches, and other Olympic figures from 135 countries, the IOC found that 56% of athletes were having difficulty training effectively, while fully half were struggling with motivation. But among the dozen-plus athletes interviewed by the Monitor, many recognized that the challenges they faced were not unique to them. From employees juggling jobs and child care to children whose plans for summer camp were dashed, people in all walks of life were having to find creative ways to stay motivated and maintain their equilibrium.

“There’s so many people who are struggling right now, and I’m worried because I don’t have a pool to swim in?” pentathlete Samantha Schultz remembers thinking, as she tried to figure out how to continue training for her sport’s five disciplines – swimming, shooting, fencing, running, and equestrian show jumping. “It’s putting things in perspective – my problems are so small compared to other people’s.”

With the Olympic Training Center closed in her home base of Colorado Springs, Colorado, she found ways to train in her apartment complex. Her husband wasn’t into fencing with her – “he doesn’t really like being a pincushion,” she says – so she parried with a tennis ball, hung on a string in her garage, to refine her footwork. She would also do target practice in her driveway, startling neighbors, she surmises, who didn’t realize that what looked like an oversized pistol was actually a laser gun.

“I’m sure some people do double takes when they drive by,” says Ms. Schultz, whom more people now recognize as their next-door Olympian. “Hopefully I am the cool neighbor with a sword and the laser pistol.”

Across town, javelin thrower Kara Winger and her husband, former discus thrower Russell Winger, have designed an elaborate backyard setup to help her prepare for her fourth Olympic Games.

“The first month of quarantine was much more low-key as far as working out at home,” says Ms. Winger, who initially used kettle bells and other small weights – as well as her yellow Lab, Maddie, who is trained to sit on her back while she’s doing planks. “When it was clear it was going to last a lot longer, I was like, ‘We have to get a little more serious about the home gym.’”

David Zalubowski/AP

Kara Winger uses a cable system to simulate throwing a javelin as she trains at home in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Her husband constructed a cable running from the top of their house down to the back fence. He repurposed a small metal pipe from a cupcake stand he built for their wedding to serve as a “javelin” she could throw up the cable to simulate the action required in competition. A set of transportable parallel bars helps her work on shoulder stability, and she has a new weightlifting bench, which he welded and upholstered.

In addition to the training challenges, the quarantine has prompted some athletes to reflect on their role in society.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Vincent Hancock, who qualified for his fourth Summer Games in skeet shooting just before the shutdown, has long been wanting to have a greater impact. So in addition to home-schooling his two young daughters and remodeling a home bathroom, he has pulled together a grant proposal for a shooting park in Fort Worth, Texas, to welcome more young athletes into the sport.

Mr. Hancock, who once served in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, believes sports can help turn lives around.

“What I’m doing by creating this shooting park is showing people that they can do and accomplish anything they can set their mind to,” he says. “So they can see someone who truly loves and is passionate about what they do. I think that can be the biggest mode of change that I can present at this point.”

New voices for racial justice

Many athletes and sports administrators have been using their sizable social media platforms to support the protest movement in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s killing as well.

On June 2, Sarah Hirshland, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, tweeted, “The USOPC stands with those who demand equality and equal treatment,” and linked to a letter she’d written to U.S. athletes.

That didn’t sit well with Gwen Berry, one of the best hammer throwers in the world. After winning gold at the Pan American Games last August, she had been put on yearlong probation by the USOPC for raising her fist toward the end of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a salute reminiscent of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics.

David J. Phillip/AP

U.S. hammer thrower Gwen Berry was put on probation for raising a fist to highlight racial justice issues at last year’s Pan American Games.

“I thought that was the pinnacle opportunity for me to let the world know where I stood and who I stood for,” says Ms. Berry, who grew up in Ferguson, Missouri, and marched with those protesting the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, by a white police officer who was never indicted. “I definitely did not know what I was getting myself into.”

The video went viral, and Ms. Berry says she started receiving death threats. She recalls people telling her to “go back to Africa, go back where you came from.” She also lost 80% of her sponsorship income, which included a major reduction in a USA Track & Field Foundation grant that she had received for years. “This is why athletes do not protest,” says Ms. Berry, who adds that she likely will have to start working soon to make ends meet – maybe at a mall near her home in Houston, or as a personal assistant to an executive. “The first thing that happens is your financial stability is taken away.”

(Race Imboden, a fencer who is white and who knelt on the podium in Lima after his team won gold, was also put on yearlong probation.)

After Ms. Hirshland’s comments, Ms. Berry shot back with a tweet of her own: “I want an apology letter .. mailed  .. just like you and the IOC MAILED ME WHEN YOU PUT ME ON PROBATION .. stop playing with me.”

In a phone call between the two women facilitated by USA Track & Field CEO Max Siegel, Ms. Hirshland explained her decision but also apologized and heard out Ms. Berry, later tweeting: “Gwen has a powerful voice in this national conversation.” Several days later, Ms. Hirshland announced the creation of an athlete-led group “to challenge the rules and systems in our organization that create barriers to progress, including your right to protest.”

Numerous athletes have called for the USOPC to lift Ms. Berry’s and Mr. Imboden’s probations, and to challenge the IOC’s Rule 50, which bans demonstrations and “political, religious or racial propaganda.”

The IOC Athletes’ Commission introduced updated Rule 50 guidelines in January, which, while allowing athletes to express their views on social media and at press conferences, ruled out specific forms of protest such as kneeling, hand gestures, and the wearing of armbands. It explained that “the example we set by competing with the world’s best while living in harmony in the Olympic Village is a uniquely positive message to send to an increasingly divided world.”

In late June, the USOPC’s Athletes’ Advisory Council demanded that the rule be abolished. “Athletes will no longer be silenced,” it wrote in a letter also signed by Mr. Carlos, the 1968 Olympian.

“I’m extremely encouraged and extremely proud of a lot of athletes who may be risking a lot to change our country and change our communities for the greater good,” says Ms. Berry. “I’m definitely not alone anymore.”

For Olympic 10,000-meter runner Marielle Hall, the sole Black runner on her women’s distance team at a track club in Oregon, Ms. Berry’s ordeal was something of a wake-up call – a recognition of the need to speak openly about her own experience, which she had been hesitant to do before.

Jeff Swinger/USA Today

U.S. Olympic taekwondo medalist Paige McPherson), who once had a white neighbor threaten to kill her, says she strives to forgive when confronted by racism and will continue to fight for equality and systemic change, but in her own way.

“I feel like in that way I’ve isolated someone like Gwen because I haven’t done the work with people I’m around to try and inform them and to allow them to see me fully,” says Ms. Hall, who wrote an essay for Runners World describing the profound impact the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who was shot while jogging through a Georgia town, has had on her. She says she thinks about it every day, on every run.

Black Olympians, who brought home more than a third of Team USA’s 2016 gold medal haul, tell of numerous racial incidents they’ve experienced. Ms. Hall, who attended high school outside her district in a largely white area of New Jersey in order to be able to run track, details in her essay how a mother asked her coach whether one of her parents was white – searching for an explanation for her discipline and focus, which the woman didn’t associate with Black families, Ms. Hall wrote.

Mr. Claye, the triple jumper, says he’s been followed in stores ever since he was a child in Arizona, sees women clutch their purses when they pass him, is frequently asked if he’s in the wrong seat when flying business class, and has had police draw guns on him “for no reason.”

And Paige McPherson, a Black athlete adopted by a white couple in South Dakota, relates having a neighbor threaten to shoot her and her Black sister if they ventured onto his property.

“I choose to be the bigger person than those that deem me as different because of my black skin,” says Ms. McPherson, an Olympic bronze medalist in taekwondo. “My parents instilled in me to be strong in my own being, kind to others, and forgiving, as the Bible says.” She has spoken out on social media against Breonna Taylor’s killing, marched in a Miami prayer walk, and says she understands her fellow athletes’ decisions to protest because of their desire to stop the injustices in America.

But, she adds, the national anthem and raising of the flag is a very delicate subject and has many different meanings to people across the nation. “I also will continue to fight for equality and systemic change but through the use of my own means,” says Ms. McPherson, who has family serving in the Army and National Guard. “They have given their lives to protect and serve our country, which is something I respect and support.”

With the nation’s upheaval playing out in sports as well as on the streets, the usual made-for-TV vignettes about athletes’ path to victory – accompanied by dramatic music and soft, dreamy cinematography – may come across as incongruous. Ms. Berry says there’s no way that athletes’ individual struggles, shaped by their different backgrounds and demographics, can be washed away with “fairy tales and roses” at the Olympics.

“I’m hopeful that the Olympic Games reflect where we are as a country,” says Ms. Hall, who would like to see the Tokyo media coverage showcase more nuanced tales of triumph. “Seeing whole, full people and acknowledging them doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy people doing incredible things and breaking barriers.”

Tight bonds among athletes

In many sports, there’s long been a camaraderie among athletes that stretches across borders. Mr. Hancock once hosted a Chinese skeet shooter who came to train with him and his father in Georgia, and the whole Chinese team later came to Texas, where he took them to a steakhouse. They came face-to-face with 30-ounce tomahawk steaks. 

Ms. Schultz says with four- to five-day competitions, the worldwide pentathlon community is quite close. The U.S. team has trained in Germany and Poland, and Egypt and Japan came to the U.S. for workouts.

Courtesy of Samantha Schultz/@SAMANTHAAUSA (Instagram/Twitter)

U.S. modern pentathlete Samantha Schultz does Pilates in the Colorado outdoors as part of her training. During the pandemic, her workouts have included fencing with a dangling tennis ball in her garage and shooting targets with a laser gun in the driveway.

Now, such esprit de corps is being heightened thanks to COVID-19, from a fun video that international pentathletes collaborated on to the worldwide artistic swimming workout. 

“The pandemic [brought] us together like one team – like a world team,” says artistic swimmer Svetlana Kolesnichenko of Russia, a two-time world champion who trains more than 10 hours a day and rarely interacts with other athletes at competitions. She was one of more than two dozen athletes, including Ms. Platanioti of Greece, who spent a month organizing the May 3 worldwide workout via a WhatsApp chat group, which gave them an opportunity to get to know each other as friends rather than just competitors. She has since done Zoom workouts with athletes in Chile, Italy, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, and the U.S., which she hopes to visit one day.

Paula Ramírez of Spain, who was also part of the WhatsApp group, says it was amazing to get to know the Russian champions. The Spanish team also bonded with the Italians, their closest rivals, as both countries were struggling with COVID-19. “It feels really good to be talking with them, ‘Are you OK, are you training?’” says Ms. Ramírez. “We really want to compete with them and beat them. ... [But] in the end we want to compete with someone who is OK.”

Ms. Fuentes, the U.S. artistic swimming coach, told her young U.S. team that Tokyo will be the most special Olympic Games ever if they don’t get canceled.

“It will be very symbolic and it will mean that humanity got over the virus,” she says. “It will be the first time the world will be united after the whole episode. It will be a historical moment.”

Staff writer Sara Miller Llana contributed to this report from Toronto.

Moumini Niaoné, a doctor and public health specialist, bounds into a radio studio in Ouagadougou and takes position behind a microphone, 6 feet from the show’s host. He draws down his white mask accented with gray stripes, matching his African tunic, to make himself more audible. He’s ready to field coronavirus questions from the public.

The host fires off a true-or-false, aimed at the false information circulating the city.

“After the lifting of the curfew and restrictions people can cuddle and kiss,” she says.

Dr. Niaoné smiles. “False,” he says. “We must beware of a second wave that could worsen the epidemic.”

Two translators conveying his words into Fulfude and Gourmantché, two of the nation’s many languages, struggle to find a word for “kiss,” for which there is no literal translation. They settle on “saying hello with your mouth.”

For Dr. Niaoné, a former Fulbright scholar who completed his master’s at the University of Indiana, his own work is not dissimilar to translation: It involves searching for a way of speaking about health and illness with people who may have limited literacy, scientific knowledge, and financial means. “I will come to the community and look at the problem from their eyes. When I know where they stand, it’s easier to design the intervention,” he says.

While training in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Dr. Niaoné remembers seeing the high cost of patients’ poverty and lack of basic medical knowledge, as he witnessed deaths from preventable or easily treatable diseases. Watching a patient come back “two weeks or two months or one year later with the same disease or with another sickness, related to the same risk factor,” he recalls, “it’s like no, you are doing nothing.”

He saw the role that careful listening and public messaging could play in saving people’s lives – and the novel coronavirus is no exception.

“Allô Docteur”

Since March 9, when the first cases were detected in Burkina Faso – a West African nation battling a jihadist insurgency, where literacy rates are low – Dr. Niaoné knew that citizens would have to go door to door to outpace the misinformation circulating on social media. He put out a call for volunteers on his Facebook page and WhatsApp, made an announcement on the radio, and soon gathered hundreds of volunteers across the country, among them his own medical students at the University of Ouagadougou.

Clair MacDougall

Dr. Moumini Niaoné debriefs students and volunteers after they finished their final day of outreach and awareness-raising in the community of Nioko II on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Next, he took to the airwaves in a popular show called “Allô Docteur,” where ordinary Burkinabés would call in and ask questions about the virus: from whether it was invented by the government or a laboratory, to how someone could be asymptomatic. In many Burkinabés’ understanding, “someone is only sick when they are in a bed,” Dr. Niaoné explains.

He and his volunteers set out to places where the virus could easily spread, like the Grand Marché, the city’s largest market: a two-storied African futurist brick structure, made up of alleyways choked with electronic goods, glittering with imitation gold rings and chains, and crammed with stacks of batik and indigo fabrics, plastic buckets, and chairs.

His teams stood at entrances in fluorescent orange vests, making sure customers and sellers washed their hands and put on masks, before taking their temperature. They wore handmade masks of bright-patterned, hand-woven fabrics that tied at the back – based on Dr. Niaoné’s many conversations with people who said they found the elastic bands that hooked onto their ears uncomfortable.

The doctor carefully wove through the alleyways of the Grand Marché, and in a soft-spoken voice advised marketeers to put their masks on and stay behind social distancing lines. They obliged, but he complained of the lax enforcement around him, and offered a cynical explanation: “It is an election year.” Although the doctor serves on the government’s departments of medical emergencies and logistics, he is of a younger generation of professionals unafraid to criticize leaders, though public dissent remains limited.

Partners in prevention

A few weeks later they moved on to a rapidly growing, low-income community on the outskirts of Ouagadougou known as Nioko II, where their work is especially key. The local chief – or naaba, in the culture of the Mossi, the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso – met Dr. Niaoné in a palaver hut outside his walled house, adorned with a large faded painting of himself surrounded by key advisers. As community members wheeled in heavy metal barrels and clustered around a local water depot a short distance away, Dr. Niaoné knelt, as is custom, and presented the naaba with a plastic jerrycan full of handmade soap.

Here and everywhere, Dr. Niaoné says, his strategy is simple: listening to people’s concerns, documenting and analyzing their understandings, and working out how they can protect themselves, in a way that makes sense for their everyday lives. Then comes identifying and mobilizing leaders, like the naaba. Those include “legal” leaders and, as he calls them, “legitimate” ones: people who have earned trust and recognition, regardless of official status, and could be trained to form their own groups and continue the work.

“We need to get communities involved from the beginning. When we saw people fighting to open the mosques, it’s because the religious leaders weren’t involved in the response,” he says.

For Dr. Niaoné, it soon became clear that residents in Nioko II felt only wealthy people were affected. “They said, ‘I’m not going to wear [masks] because I don’t go to Ouaga 2000,’” he says, referring to a suburb where embassy staff and the Burkinabé elite live. And with high levels of distrust toward the political establishment, many thought the pandemic was a government ploy to make money.

The team mapped the community and identified potential hot spots: water depots, bars, marketplaces, churches, mosques, and places men gathered to play cards and drink tea. Student volunteers – studying everything from economics and sociology to law and medicine – visited four hours a day, three times a week, working out who leaders were and educating them about the virus.

After a long Saturday morning out on the field, Dr. Niaoné’s team members come back to the tree where they’ve parked their scooters. Dr. Niaoné speaks to a woman selling a fried doughnut-like snack called bourmassa and asks her why she isn’t wearing a mask. “It’s too hot; I can’t breathe,” she says. A man sitting outside a health clinic said he wouldn’t wear a mask because the pandemic was brought about by the “will of God,” and high infection rates in the U.S. and Europe.

Rashida Ouédraogo, a pharmacy student working with Dr. Niaoné’s team, says their work “has helped people understand,” though “there are people who will never believe because they haven’t seen cases with their own eyes.” But there is still a long way to go. The government and other groups needed to give soap and masks to people without means to purchase them themselves, she adds.

As West African nations prepare to open their borders, Dr. Niaoné is nervous that people have become too relaxed. Government measures have decreased, but for him the fight against COVID-19 has only just begun. With a presidential election in November, he is concerned health measures will be sidelined.

“It is like in the United States – if the leadership doesn’t show the right behavior, people will not take the right measures,” he says. “We need to give communities finances and support so that they can work to prevent the disease themselves. We need stronger civil society actors doing what I’m doing. We need people who trust what we tell them.”

Reuters

An image of late Rep. John Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement, is projected on the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, July 19.

The passing of John Lewis, one of the last great icons of the U.S. civil rights movement, has served as a reminder that the torch of social justice has passed to a new generation. It also comes at a time when many Americans are reassessing which past leaders should still be venerated in bronze and stone. Two months after the police killing of a Black man in Minneapolis spawned mass protests, public images have been toppled with an intensity reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

More than 120 statues and fountains honoring the Confederacy have been dismantled. At least 14 monuments dedicated to people accused of genocide against Native Americans have fallen. Thirty-three statues of Columbus have been defaced or removed. So have nine statues of seminal figures such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt. In many other countries, statues and street names of slave traders and colonial governors have met a similar response.

This challenge to the old certainties of history reveals a rapid shift in public thought. Already debate is underway about using the emptied pedestals to depict other figures as a way to achieve social reconciliation. Whose likenesses should be cast? Would a major flaw of an otherwise good person rule him or her out? Must a person’s inspiring words be reflected in personal actions?

Perhaps the most important question is this: What exactly are the purposes of venerating a person at all?

One answer to that question lies in the current social justice movement. Like other recent protest movements in Hong Kong, Chile, and Lebanon, the U.S. movement was designed by a few people to bring about social action without centralized leadership and through a heavy reliance on social media. The three women who launched Black Lives Matter, for example, emphasized individual agency and empowerment as the sustaining force.

This tactic of distributed leadership found an echo in at least one tribute to Congressman Lewis. Americans, said former President George W. Bush, “can best honor John’s memory by continuing his journey toward liberty and justice for all.”

There is still a place for holding up men and women whose lives promoted humanity’s advancement. Yet physical depictions of them hardly begin to capture higher qualities of thought that drove their achievements. Their successes relied on a receptivity and embrace of ideals that lifted others to join a cause and were sometimes heard for the first time.

At their best, statues can inspire contemplation of a life driven by high ideals and selfless endeavor. They can nudge people toward reason, conscience, and self-government. Such attributes are available to anyone, with or without a majestic bronze sculpture. The good they bring to others can be monument enough.