Michael A. FletcherMar 25, 2025, 08:00 AM ET
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- Michael Fletcher is a senior creator with ESPN’s undertaking and investigative crew. Prior to that, he wrote for ESPN’s The Undefeated, specializing in politics, felony justice and social problems. He spent 21 years at The Washington Submit, the place his beats integrated the nationwide financial system, the White Area and race members of the family.
THE LETTER WAS a venomous tirade, dripping with racist vitriol.
The greeting began with a slur, “Harry ‘Liver-Lips’ Edwards,” and categorized Black scholars as “silly sub-human scum.” The only-page missive predicted that the Black Energy motion would lead the rustic right into a race struggle. Signed through Nationwide Entrance, a white supremacist team, the letter got here to Harry Edwards within the past due Nineteen Sixties, simply as his calls for for equivalent rights for Black athletes had been gaining in style consideration.
As a professor at what was once then known as San Jose State Faculty, Edwards spearheaded the Olympic Undertaking for Human Rights, which known as for Black athletes to boycott the 1968 Olympics. Despite the fact that the boycott by no means materialized, the gang’s efforts culminated within the iconic second when American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists in protest at the Olympic medal stand on the 1968 Mexico Town Video games.
The loss of life threats, hate mail and intimidation makes an attempt have did not dwarf Edwards’ significant affect over the last 60 years, making him arguably the most powerful suggest for Black athletes in historical past.
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He has impressed protests and recommended numerous athletes, together with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose 2016 demonstrations towards police brutality rocked the sports activities international and polarized the country. He additionally has been a valued advisor to crew house owners and sports activities league executives, together with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, operating to craft systems to diversify their control ranks and supply off-field enhance to gamers.
Now age 82 and afflicted through most cancers in his bone marrow, thyroid and prostate, Edwards nonetheless sounds powerful however is resigned to what is forward.
“My bone marrow isn’t generating sufficient crimson blood cells, and sooner or later it is going to stop to provide sufficient to provide my primary organs,” he stated. “At that time, it is over. And that’s the reason assuming that the prostate most cancers does not get to me previously. However you already know what? This is a part of the deal in the world. No person will get out of existence alive.”
A towering presence each bodily and intellectually, Edwards helped shatter the as soon as pervasive delusion that sports activities are by hook or by crook exempt from society’s ills. “It was clean to me that sports activities was once so intertwined with society that institutionally it was once a reiteration of the construction and dynamics of human and institutional relationships in society,” he stated. “And due to this fact, there was once the possibility of leveraging sports activities to generate exchange.”
He is pledging to struggle for justice so long as he can.
EDWARDS MOVED GINGERLY, leaning on a black cane as he stepped right into a room on the 49ers places of work subsequent to Levi’s Stadium. His 6-foot-8 body nonetheless commanded consideration, whilst time had etched itself into his gait. In this February day, he was once dressed head-to-toe in his signature black, he exuded a centered depth. However underneath the armor was once a instructor’s heat, out there and affected person, desperate to light up forgotten tales from the previous that lend a hand give an explanation for the prevailing.
Most cancers has led to episodes of stabbing ache in his proper shin, hips and pelvis, slowing his stride. He additionally had simply wrenched a knee, the type of damage that includes the years. “I do not know what came about,” he stated, his deep voice softened through a small smile. Age, he joked, has some way of catching up with even the fiercest of warring parties. He settled at a light-colored desk and unfurled historical past each private and collective. He mentioned athletes who dared to talk out and the associated fee they paid for his or her defiance.
The protest through U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, heart, and John Carlos, proper, throughout the 1968 Summer time Olympics in Mexico Town is one in all recreation’s maximum iconic moments. Edwards arranged the protest, which is featured in a poster. Left: Courtesy Dr. Harry Edwards. Proper: AP Photograph/Record
For generations, society had celebrated sports activities as a shelter, a spot to cheer and overlook. He additionally knew that sports activities figures began protesting lengthy earlier than his personal upward push as an activist and member of the Black Panther Birthday celebration within the Nineteen Sixties. And, he understood, the backlash they brought about was once frequently swift and brutal. He spoke of Octavius Catto, who noticed baseball as a bridge around the country’s racial divide however was once denied in his try to have his all-Black crew play in a forerunner to the Main Leagues within the years after the Civil Conflict. Catto was once shot lifeless through a white rioter in 1871 whilst organizing Black citizens in Philadelphia.
Edwards invoked Eroseanna “Rose” Robinson, a prime jumper who, incensed through Jim Crow, refused to face for the nationwide anthem on the 1959 Pan American Video games, handiest to search out herself arrested on tax-evasion fees six months later.
Wilma Rudolph, the megastar sprinter who returned from the 1960 Olympics with 3 gold medals, demanded that officers in her native land of Clarksville, Tennessee desegregate a parade to be held in her honor. They agreed, however Rudolph paid a steep value for her audacity. “As a end result, in her personal nation, she was once canceled, constricted, limited,” Edwards stated. “It was once the associated fee that she paid for having the dedication to mention we as American citizens are higher than this.”
Many stuff have modified over the years, he stated, however activism at all times comes with a value and a surcharge. When Kaepernick kneeled throughout the nationwide anthem to protest ongoing racism, Edwards stated he by no means recommended him on what to do. However he did warn Kaepernick that critics would distort his protest and denounce him as un-American, without reference to whether or not it was once true or now not.
“Individuals who hate this nation such a lot that they’d disrespect the flag, would now not cross out on a limb and make themselves inclined in that regard,” Edwards stated. “I stated, ‘Kap, do not be disturbed about what those persons are announcing. They might have the similar response to you should you had been in side road garments and took a knee at the sidewalk to the taking part in of chopsticks and stated, that is in protest.'”
Edwards has felt equivalent repercussions. Evidence is contained in lots of the paperwork in his archives, which span 18 bins at San Jose State College’s primary library. The gathering comprises unhinged hate mail, and a duplicate of a FBI poster that includes Edwards dressed in black sunglasses and a black Kangol cap, headlined “Armed and Unhealthy.”
There’s a letter written within the months following the famend Smith-Carlos protest through Avery Brundage, Global Olympic Committee president, to Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, chairman of the Mexico Town organizing committee. The observe excoriated Ramírez Vázquez for together with pictures of the protest within the movie documenting the Video games.
“It was once very traumatic to have you ever ascertain the rumors that experience reached my ears about the usage of photos of the nasty demonstration towards america flag through negroes,” learn the letter, dated Aug. 19, 1969. “As you already know, the response was once speedy and the culprits had been despatched house immediately.”
It was once clean Brundage noticed the real offense because the act of protest, now not the injustice that provoked it. However Edwards has lengthy since made peace with such hostility. He sees it as step one at the highway to his function, which is to develop into fighters into allies. “Except our strategic exchange efforts contain changing critics and adversaries into collaborators and advocates, then what are we suffering for?” he requested.
Edwards (black blouse) speaks to an target market at San Jose State College about racial discrimination in September 1967. Photograph courtesy SJSU Particular Collections & Archives
Edwards’ resolution was once solid amid hardship in his native land of East St. Louis, Illinois. He was once raised within the all-Black Southend community nonetheless haunted through a 1917 bloodbath throughout which roving white mobs killed masses of Black citizens and compelled hundreds of others from their properties. Edwards grew up listening to the tales, whispered reminders of the houses torched, households slaughtered.
“Outdated other folks would nonetheless be speaking about, ‘Yeah, that empty lot over there may be the place Mr. Howard’s area was once,'” he stated. “And ‘that is the place the Johnson ladies had been burned alive as a result of they ran in there to cover from the individuals who had been killing Black other folks on the street’.” Edwards was once the second one of 8 youngsters, and his circle of relatives’s monetary struggles grew dire when his mom, bored stiff together with her husband, left house when he was once 8. His father labored two jobs however that was once now not sufficient to stop Edwards and his siblings from slipping into what he known as the group’s chaotic “underfooting.” They on occasion went hungry, and frequently had been pressured to continue to exist through their very own wits.
In his 1980 memoir, “The Combat That Should Be,” Edwards wrote that during grade college he as soon as was once requested through a instructor to put in writing an essay in regards to the significance of newspapers. He stated they helped stay him heat. “Newspapers are essential as a result of we used them to begin fires within the lounge heater and the kitchen range, and since within the wintry weather we wrapped them round our legs, crammed them within the linings and sleeves of our coats, put them between the blankets on our beds, and positioned them folded, layer upon layer, in our footwear when the soles had worn too skinny,” he wrote.
His oldsters attempted unsuccessfully to reconcile at one level, and when Edwards was once 13, his mom returned to get her youngsters. However Edwards stayed at the back of along with his father, a one-time aspiring prize fighter who labored more than a few low-wage jobs, together with as a laborer at an area chemical plant. Edwards was once already a celeb highschool athlete, and his father driven him to make use of sports activities as a price tag out. A circle of relatives good friend had at all times regaled him with tales in regards to the probabilities of school and of California, the place Edwards’ grandmother lived.
So, when he graduated from highschool, the circle of relatives good friend purchased him a educate price tag to California, the place he moved in along with his grandmother and enrolled at Fresno Town Faculty. There, he joined the monitor crew and was once a right away megastar. Extra essential to his existence’s adventure, he was excited by studying and finding out.
“The extra I learn, the extra excited I was. I quickly discovered that there was once a message, a tale, any individual’s viewpoint implicit in each and every e-book I have been assigned,” he wrote in his memoir. “I had discovered to learn significantly. And except one is studying significantly, one isn’t studying in any respect.”
An athletic scholarship introduced him to San Jose State, the place he set a college file within the discus and captained the basketball crew. However the blatant racism Black athletes confronted on campus temporarily soured him. White scholars hurled racial epithets at Black scholars in the event that they came about upon fraternity row. Black scholars had been discouraged from attending one of the most college dances. And the college’s housing workplace gave white scholars the choice of opting for to not are living with Black roommates in dormitories. Black scholars had been by no means presented a decision.
In his early days on campus, Edwards overheard two white guys within the locker room denigrating Black athletes, announcing they at all times choke underneath force. Simplest later did he be informed they had been assistant coaches. His snapping point got here throughout a heated war of words along with his monitor trainer, which ended with Edwards leaving the crew earlier than the top of his sophomore yr. He stated he by no means picked up a discus once more however was once in a position to stay his scholarship as a result of he endured as a basketball participant.
When Edwards graduated in 1964, he drew pastime from the Minnesota Vikings and San Diego Chargers, in addition to the Los Angeles Lakers. However he made up our minds to just accept a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to wait Cornell College. There, he earned a grasp’s stage and, sooner or later, a doctorate in a completely new self-discipline: the sociology of recreation. Edwards recalled that once he offered his thesis thought to the 3 school participants on his doctoral committee, they had been dismissive.
“To a person, they stated there’s no such factor because the sociology of recreation. I stated, that is why I wish to do it, as a result of I believe that we are lacking one thing on the subject of our analyses of social construction and social exchange,” Edwards stated. The committee participants had been reluctant however sooner or later relented. Nonetheless, Edwards stated, they warned him, “You’ll be laughed out of the self-discipline.”
In spite of that, Edwards thrived at Cornell and loved the educational camaraderie amongst graduate scholars there. On a number of weekends, he took the four-hour bus journey to New York Town to wait conferences of Malcolm X’s Group of Afro-American Harmony. “Greater than simply stimulating new concepts for me, Malcolm X incited, infected and legitimized a zeal to behave upon deeply felt convictions,” Edwards wrote. Whilst operating on his dissertation, he returned to San Jose State to paintings as a part-time teacher and immerse himself within the rising Black Energy motion.
Within the fall of 1967, the ambience at San Jose State simmered with pressure and earlier than lengthy he emerged as a voice for Black scholars who had lengthy continued the indignities of racism on campus. Edwards and a coalition of pupil activists offered a listing of grievances to school officers, tough amongst different issues: an build up in Black school, the recruitment of extra Black scholars, and the desegregation of social existence on campus. When their considerations had been met with indifference, they issued a daring ultimatum: Except motion was once taken, they’d disrupt the approaching soccer recreation. The danger labored. The sport was once canceled, and the calls for had been addressed, proving that sports activities is usually a robust lever for social exchange.
“While you glance again on what he was once announcing within the ’60s, it was once in reality now not the rest greater than not unusual sense,” stated Richard Lapchick, founding father of the Institute for Recreation & Social Justice on the College of Central Florida. “If you’ll have a society that has racial justice, you had to do what Harry was once speaking about. It made sense to make use of the sports activities platform as a automobile to get other people’s consideration who may now not another way be aware of those problems.”
The trouble thrust Edwards into the highlight, which handiest intensified along with his position within the Olympic protest. His defiance made him a goal, however it additionally catapulted him into one of those superstar standing. Dozens of reports tales chronicled his upward push and his insights at the intersection of sports activities and society. He won letters from infantrymen stationed in another country, from athletes, and from atypical electorate, each and every one a testomony to the rising achieve of his message.
After incomes his doctorate in 1973, he started educating on the College of California, Berkeley, the place his sociology categories packed huge lecture halls with masses of scholars. For all his budding popularity, Edwards at all times remained grounded and made up our minds to split his private existence from his activist paintings. He married his spouse, Sandra, just about 55 years in the past, and he raised his 3 youngsters in a house in Fremont, California, the place he and his spouse nonetheless are living. Early on, he stated, he and his spouse agreed to stay his paintings cut loose their private existence, a pledge he stated he’s proud to have at all times fulfilled.
Over the years, Edwards stated he was once cautious to make certain that his activism be greater than symbolic. He sought after it to drive tangible exchange. That intended operating with sports activities leagues, coaches and crew house owners, the kinds of people that had been as soon as objectives of his protests.
Lately, Edwards has won realize for his paintings with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Regardless that it may well be unexpected from the outdoor, Edwards and Goodell have fostered a friendship, operating to navigate one of the most NFL’s prime visibility scenarios. Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Photographs
Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, he was a participant liaison and mentor with the Golden State Warriors. Round the similar time, he started an extended affiliation as a specialist with the 49ers, a job that advanced after he and then-coach Invoice Walsh struck up a dating. It was once the beginning of an in depth friendship the 2 males shared till Walsh’s loss of life in 2007.
“The entirety and the rest this is stated or mentioned between us — together with the truth of even having had a dialogue — in my opinion will keep between us,” Edwards wrote to Walsh in Might 1986. “I consider that you are going to to find that my loyalty to pals has a tendency towards absolutely the whilst I’m scrupulously truthful and easy in my non-public conversations and members of the family with them.”
Edwards helped Walsh determine a construction pipeline for Black coaches that later morphed into the NFL’s Invoice Walsh Variety Training Fellowship. This system permits aspiring coaches to look at NFL coaching camps and offseason workout routines to hone their craft. Over the years, this system has became out a slew of long term Black head coaches, together with Lovie Smith, Marvin Lewis, Leslie Frazier, Anthony Lynn, Mike Tomlin and Raheem Morris.
The 2 additionally persuaded the 49ers to increase systems to lend a hand gamers organize off-field problems and get ready for his or her lives after soccer. It proved to be a vital step towards shifting groups nearer to valuing the humanity of gamers, Edwards stated, and over the years, the ones types of efforts have transform same old around the NFL.
“Harry handled the rest that got here to mild within the group that was once coping with race, or issues off the sphere,” stated Eric Wright, a former defensive again who performed for the 49ers from 1981 thru 1990. “He helped the group put in force positive systems. Monetary literacy and inspiring gamers to return and get their levels. Harry applied all of that.” Wright stated that as a result of Edwards was once operating for the crew, some gamers wrongly suspected that he was once a control undercover agent or apologist.
“They roughly felt he was once situated to be a mouthpiece for the group,” Wright stated. “He went thru that with one of the most gamers. However Harry’s point of interest was once looking to uplift, to get the athlete on a a success trail so to navigate existence.”
Regardless that nonetheless early in his profession, Edwards (at the proper throughout a campus protest at SJSU in 1967) was once thrust in to the highlight as a idea chief and won enhance among other people preventing towards racial discrimination. Courtesy SJSU Particular Collections & Archives
MLB employed Edwards in 1987 to lend a hand increase a plan to extend the selection of Black managers and entrance workplace executives. On the time, MLB was once scrambling to flee the fallout from the notorious feedback then-Dodgers VP and Common Supervisor Al Campanis made a number of weeks previous at the ABC Information “Nightline” program. Requested why there have been no Black managers in baseball on the time, Campanis replied: “I really consider that they would possibly not have one of the most must haves to be, shall we say, a subject supervisor, or, possibly a basic supervisor.”
It was once a crisis that then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth requested Edwards to lend a hand mitigate. “Peter known as me and stated, ‘Harry, I want some lend a hand in this. I would like you to determine a strategy to get us again not off course from this Al Campanis fiasco,'” Edwards recalled. He famous that he had gotten to understand Ueberroth, a fellow San Jose State alum, over the years.
Edwards reached out to, of all other people, the disgraced Campanis. Edwards employed him as a specialist and requested Campanis to call the most efficient Black managerial candidate he knew. Campanis instantly really useful Dusty Baker, who had lately retired after a 19-year taking part in profession, together with 8 with the Dodgers. Edwards stated he didn’t need Baker to paintings with the Dodgers, for worry that the rent would seem like a exposure stunt. As an alternative, they arrange an interview for Baker with the San Francisco Giants, who ended up hiring Baker as a first-base trainer in 1988. Baker was supervisor of the Giants for the 1993 season, when he was once named Nationwide League Supervisor of the Yr.
Edwards additionally helped MLB increase a broader program to search out minority applicants for managerial and entrance workplace jobs. It was once one of those quiet international relations made imaginable through the protests he led within the Nineteen Sixties. “The typical American most probably would see Harry as menacing or a danger, through the way in which he seems to be and attire,” Baker stated. “He isn’t intimidated through any one, however he is aware of play the sport with out bowing down.”
Edwards, proper, talks with 49ers megastar receivers Jerry Rice, left, and John Taylor. Within the ’80s Edwards advanced a friendship with mythical 49ers trainer Invoice Walsh, resulting in an legit advisor place with the crew. Courtesy 49ers.com
Over time, Edwards has advanced a distinct bond with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The 2 males met for the primary time in 2006 throughout Goodell’s early days as commissioner, sitting in combination within the proprietor’s field at a 49ers recreation. They talked all of the recreation, Edwards stated, and got here to an figuring out that he could be Goodell’s “eyes, ears, voice and analytical thoughts” coping with problems that may affect the NFL. Since then, Edwards has been a casual adviser to the commissioner, sending him common notes and emails in regards to the league’s possible position in addressing societal considerations.
In a contemporary ESPN interview, Goodell stated that Edwards’ insights had been in particular useful in shaping the league’s private habits coverage and addressing participant protests that surged throughout the height of the Black Lives Subject motion.
“Previous in my time as commissioner, we took a more potent means on self-discipline and participant habits. He was once very useful on that. The time period he used to make use of with me always was once the ladder means,” Goodell stated. If a participant or trainer violated the league’s private habits regulations, he stated, “You gave [him] a possibility to take that ladder and climb out of it. However you needed to climb out of it and earn your long ago.”
All the way through the wave of participant protests, Goodell stated many gamers had been direct with him in regards to the problems affecting their communities and what the NFL may do to deal with them. He stated Edwards helped him higher perceive the existence reports gamers dropped at the protests.
“He is an implausible observer of other people,” Goodell stated. “He is had an enormous affect on me. He was once very useful to me in figuring out a large number of deep problems that I prior to now would possibly not have totally understood.”
Edwards stated he has at all times favored the tricky position that Goodell performs as commissioner. He’s the embodiment of the NFL status quo, and will have to solution to the house owners who make use of him. Edwards credit Goodell for organising tasks reminiscent of social justice awards for each and every crew. He additionally calls the commissioner the motive force at the back of the league’s Encourage Trade initiative that has raised over $375 million for an array of group organizations over the last seven years.
On the identical time, he is aware of critics frequently disregard the ones efforts as performative and inconsequential for a sports activities league that generates greater than $20 billion a yr in earnings. As well as, Goodell was once not able to steer a crew to signal Kaepernick after he was a unfastened agent in 2017. Edwards stated the commissioner helped prepare a number of possible tryouts for Kaepernick, however the ones efforts at all times broke down. At one level, Edwards stated he instructed that Goodell rent Kaepernick as a league advisor. He stated the commissioner temporarily let him know that will now not paintings. “His very first thing was once, ‘Then who’s going to rent me?'” Edwards recalled.
From proper, Edwards, Invoice Russell and Jim Brown seem on a panel on the second one day of the Civil Rights Summit on the LBJ Presidential Library in April 2014 in Austin, Texas. The summit marked the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act. Left: Jim Gensheimer//The Mercury Information by the use of Getty Photographs. Proper: Ricardo B. Brazziell-Pool/Getty Photographs
As Edwards has faced the truth of his most cancers prognosis, he has written to a make a choice team of other people to precise to them his admiration and admire. He stated the letters get started, “In case I am not right here when your day after today starts …” Goodell was once a number of the recipients.
“This can be a letter I will be able to stay endlessly,” Goodell stated. Edwards is clear-eyed about his sickness, in addition to the demanding situations that he’s going to in the future depart at the back of. In any case of his paintings to advertise variety, he’s witnessing the government vilify and undermine the ones sorts of efforts. But, he isn’t discouraged. He says he believes setbacks are inevitable and may also be rendered transient through endured activism.
“There aren’t any ultimate victories,” Edwards stated. “There is simply fight. The one two issues that continue to exist are the fight and the folk, and they’re perpetual.”
Edwards stated he does now not know who will lead that struggle at some point. However that has at all times been the case, he famous. Few other people can have predicted that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would upward push to prominence when he was once a 26-year-old minister main the Bernard Law Montgomery Bus Boycott. Nor did many of us watch for the Black Lives Subject motion sweeping the country when it took form greater than a decade in the past.
Edwards stated his personal existence at the entrance strains of contemporary sports activities activism would had been unthinkable when he was once a tender guy rising up amid violent segregation and poverty in East St. Louis. But, his paintings was once in a position to develop into how a lot of the arena sees sports activities. “[It] modified the way in which, now not simply this society, however a lot of the arena checked out sports activities,” Edwards stated. “It modified the arena’s perceptions at the significance, affect and affect of sports activities in fashionable societies. I believe that is a contribution.”
