POLITICAL CATALYSTS

1936: Jesse Owens Defeats Germany
Owens won international fame with four gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay.
He was the most successful athlete at the games and, as a black man, was credited with single-handedly crushing Hitler’smyth of Aryan supremacy.
Owens’s success at the games represented a counter to Adolf Hitler, who was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany.

In 1945, baseball policies separating black and white players changed forever when Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey signed a contract with Jackie Robinson that would bring him into the major leagues.
On October 23, 1945, Robinson officially signed his contract with the Dodgers. After a year on a minor league team to sharpen his skills, he put on his first Dodgers uniform (#42) in April 1947.
He won the first Rookie of the Year award in 1947 and in 1949, he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award, leading the league with a .342 batting average and 37 stolen bases.

April 28, 1967: The U.S. was at war in Vietnam and Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong”.
June 20, 1967: Ali was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000, and banned from boxing for three years.
March 8, 1971: Ali fought Joe Frazier in the “Fight of the Century” and lost after 15 rounds, the first loss of his professional boxing career.
June 28, 1971: The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction for evading the draft.

After having won the gold and bronze medals, Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads, raised their black-gloved fists, and kept them raised until the National Anthem ended to bring attention to the fact that injustices towards African Americans were not eliminated during the Civil Rights Movement.
Smith raised his right glove to represent black power and Carlos raised his left hand to represent black unity in America.

The U.S. and China had little contact in the 22 years leading up to 1971’s World Table Tennis Championships.
The event made a huge impact by transforming American perceptions of the “Red Chinese” and setting the scene for President Nixon’s momentous trip to China in 1972.

The 1972 Summer Olympics were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972.
Eleven Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
Shortly after the crisis began, they demanded 234 prisoners jailed in Israel and the German-held founders of the Red Army Faction (Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof) be released.
Police officers killed five of the eight Black September members during a failed rescue attempt. They captured the three survivors, whom West Germany later released following hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615 in October.

Title IX was passed by the U.S. Congress on June 23, 1972, and signed by President Richard M. Nixon on July 1, 1972. It is a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in education programs and activities receiving federal funds.
Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance.
Title IX states that:
- No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

King was the first woman chosen as Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year”.
Best known for her 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs, in which she beat the former No. 1 ranked player and self-proclaimed male chauvinist

Mandela’s determination to put 27 years of captivity behind him and extend the hand of friendship to all South Africans, regardless of race, was no better symbolized than the moment he handed over the Webb Ellis Cup to the Springbok’s Rugby World Cup 1995-winning captain, Francois Pienaar.
During the event, Mandela wore a Springbok jersey and cap: a moment that has since been immortalised by the Hollywood blockbuster, Invictus.
In the eyes of many South Africans the Springbok emblem was a hated symbol of the apartheid regime that Mandela worked so tirelessly to overthrow. It personified the racial divide between the ruling minority and the majority.
When the blonde Afrikaner, François Pienaar, shook hands with the black freedom fighter turned president, they instantly forged one of the country’s defining images of racial unity.

During his first season with the Denver Nuggets, Chris Wayne Johnson converted to Islam and changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
Abdul-Rauf saw the flag as a symbol of oppression. He believed the U.S. was an unjust tyranny and conflicted with his Islamic beliefs.
NBA commissioner David Stern did not like this belief and Abdul-Rauf was suspended for one game.
Compromise: Abdul-Rauf agreed to stand for the national anthem, but would be allowed to bow his head, close his eyes and recite a Muslin prayer.

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was an African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who, at 17 years old, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida.
Dwayne Wade posted a photo of himself from a previous photo shoot wearing a a hoodie to his Twitter and Facebook pages on Friday morning.
A couple hours later, LeBron James posted a photo with the Heat team, all wearing hoodies, their heads bowed, their hands stuffed in their pockets.

Members of the St. Louis Rams raised their arms in awareness of the events in Ferguson, MO as they walked onto the field during introductions before their game against the Oakland Raiders in St. Louis.
Stedman Bailey (12), Tavon Austin (11), Jared Cook (89), Chris Givens (13), and Kenny Britt (81) were involved in the motion.

Kaepernick kneeled to protest racial oppression, inequality, and police brutality in the U.S. Other athletes around the country have since replicated Kaepernick’s public display of social activism.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color…” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after a game.

In 2005, Donald Trump was recorded boasting about women in lewd terms to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush.
Trump said, “I am automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss, I don’t even wait … and when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p—-. You can do anything”.
Professional athletes and coaches have publicly refuted Donald Trump’s dismissal of lewd comments about groping women as “locker room talk”.
Many former and current athletes have taken to social media to convey their anger and frustration with Trump connecting his disgusting sentiment to a place where they speak about their children, parents, significant others, etc.