Basketball star Bill Russell: Determination on the court – and off
President Barack Obama presents a 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Bill Russell, a Basketball Hall of Famer and former Boston Celtics coach and captain, on Feb. 15, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington.
Charles Dharapak/AP/File
Basketball has recently been burdened with conversations about who is the “greatest of all time,” or the GOAT. William Felton Russell, better known as Bill Russell, who died on Sunday, is an obvious contender, with 11 NBA championships to his name and two NBA titles as player/head coach.
His list of sports accomplishments goes on, but that’s part of the problem. Conversations about GOATs mostly measure the achievements of players on the court. In Mr. Russell’s case, such an assessment is woefully inadequate.
When NBA players took part in a “wildcat strike” in August 2020 after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, one of the GOATs stood with them in spirit – and in experience.
Why We Wrote This
For NBA star Bill Russell, the same determination that made him a great athlete made him an accomplished civil rights activist, too.
“In ’61 I walked out [of] an exhibition game, much like the @nba players did yesterday,” Bill Russell tweeted. “I am one of the few people that knows what it felt like to make such an important decision. I am proud of these young guys.”
Mr. Russell then recalled and shared a news clipping from a 1964 Chicago Defender article. The headline – “Russell Would Give Up Basketball For Rights” – put his basketball talent and accomplishments in perspective, and also outlined his approach to social justice.
The article referenced an incident in Lexington, Kentucky, nearly 60 years before the wildcat strike. Two of his Boston Celtics teammates, Sam Jones and Tom Sanders, were refused service at a hotel restaurant because they were Black. When Mr. Russell and another Black teammate, K.C. Jones, heard the news, they told coach Red Auerbach what happened, and all five Black players skipped the day’s exhibition game and left Lexington – following Mr. Russell’s lead.
As the article explains, “Defensive genius Bill Russell said he would quit the Boston Celtics ‘without hesitation’ to assist the civil rights movement if it would ease racial tension and aid Negroes.”
He didn’t quit the Celtics, but his activism became more important than his basketball career. When civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Russell called Mr. Evers’ brother to see where help was needed. They decided upon an integrated basketball camp in Mississippi during a time of great racial tension and violence. Only a few years later, in 1967, Mr. Russell joined a number of Black athletes in what is now known as the “Ali Summit” in support of Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam.
Mr. Russell’s principled stances proved that he would give up not only “basketball for rights,” but even his life. That commitment directed his support of social causes and his voice, which was so strong that he was sometimes called “Felton X,” his daughter Karen wrote in a 1987 editorial for The New York Times:
The only time we were really scared was after my father wrote an article about racism in professional basketball for The Saturday Evening Post. He earned the nickname Felton X. We received threatening letters, and my parents notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What I find most telling about this episode is that years later, after Congress had passed the Freedom of Information Act, my father requested his F.B.I. file and found that he was repeatedly referred to therein as “an arrogant Negro who won’t sign autographs for white children.”
As she goes on to explain, her father didn’t sign autographs for anyone because they felt impersonal. He also didn’t sign them because, in light of the racism he experienced, he didn’t want to be commodified. His attitude matched the words of author James Baldwin: “I am not your Negro.”
Mr. Russell was truly a man of determination, on and off the court. Determination as a revolutionary speaks to not only dealing with and ultimately defying indignities, but also sharing kinship with future freedom fighters. When football player Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee, so did Mr. Russell.
That perseverance will live on. Long before he died, he had already “Gone Up for Glory,” fulfilling the title of his autobiography and attaining greatness beyond measure.