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This year’s NFL season featured two of America’s pastimes: football and race Womens Henrik Zetterberg Jersey , with pre-game protests dividing fans along color lines and making Sunday afternoons among the most segregated hours in the country.

While some fans would prefer players stick to sports, many black athletes have chosen a different path by protesting, making people uncomfortable.

”The whole purpose of the demonstrations is to get (fans’) attention,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said in an interview with The Associated Press. ”These are the people that ignore the fact that people are being shot dead in the street. They’ve found ways to ignore it.”

For weeks, some NFL players, most of them African-American, knelt silently on the sidelines as the national anthem played before kickoff. Their goal: to raise awareness about disparities in policing in communities of color , and about persistent, systemic racism in America.

It was a new approach to an age-old problem.

For generations, black athletes from heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson to tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick have protested in ways large and small to highlight injustice, galvanize support and move the country forward. Often met with backlash from fans uninterested in mixing sports and social issues, many have taken stances that have cost them their careers.

The roots of black athlete activism can be traced to the dawn of black freedom. Even after slavery ended, black Americans were barred from full participation in the public sphere: denied the right to vote, access to mass media, or equal housing and schools.

Because they were blocked from entry in most civic institutions for much of the 20th century, black people found public visibility and expression in other arenas – often cultural ones, like music and sports.

Johnson fought – and beat – white boxers at the height of Jim Crow, when blacks were presumed to be inferior, and dated white women http://www.officialblackhawksproshop.com/authentic-adidas-artem-anisimov-jersey , upending the social norms of the day.

When he finally lost, it would be a generation before another black boxer would be allowed to compete at such a level, and the message had been sent to black athletes that disrupting society came with consequences.

”It’s because of what happens to him that others know they have to toe the line,” said New York University historian Jeffrey Sammons. ”They can’t be seen as defiant or opponents of the system . They know they can’t succeed without living up to expectations and being humble, unassuming and supportive of the established order.”

Then came along Muhammad Ali, who was not one to toe the line.

Ali was the most visible and influential athlete of his generation when he protested the Vietnam War as racially unjust by refusing to be drafted in 1967, a move that cost him his livelihood, derailing his fighting career for years.

Ali’s actions influenced others. Basketball player Abdul-Jabbar boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics. At the same games, held in Mexico City, American track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos held raised fists covered in black leather gloves as the national anthem played after winning gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.

Abdul-Jabbar, who at 70 represents a bridge between Ali and Kaepernick, went on to a storied NBA career, but Smith and Carlos returned home to the threat of having their medals taken, and faced difficulty finding coaching jobs.

”It was an international stage that was being used to promote how unified and wonderful the world is, but black Americans at that point were still in a very tough struggle to obtain their rights, both human and political,” Abdul-Jabbar said of the 1968 games. ”The fact that (Smith and Carlos) used an international platform to speak for people who usually don’t have any power to be heard made it all the more significant.”

Carlos said Mexico City was the only place he could’ve made such a statement.

”At that time, for me, there was no other vehicle than the Olympic Games Jonathan Huberdeau Jersey ,” he recalled. ”I felt like the humanitarian issues at that time, as well as the humanitarian issues of today, are more compelling to me than an Olympic medal. I love the Olympics and I love sports, but I love a just cause for humanity even greater.”

It is a sentiment shared by NFL players.

The killing of mostly unarmed black men by mostly white police officers sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, which has again drawn black athletes into the national conversation on race . The sideline protests in the NFL – started in August 2016 by Kaepernick – have been the most prominent display of players’ engagement, though black athletes in baseball and basketball have also had smaller displays of activism.

Because sports are such a prominent aspect of American life, they remain an effective way to bring attention to issues of racial injustice.

”This is our inheritance,” said Howard Bryant, senior writer at ESPN and author of the forthcoming book ”The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.”

”You’re not allowed to check out,” Bryant said. ”This is going to continue until the United States respects the black brain more than the black body. Then sports can go back to what it was supposed to be – just a game.”

Media – and social media in particular – has helped in recruiting athletes to the cause, explained Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson, whose online civil rights organization has joined with athletes in addressing sy

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — The New Orleans Saints can only hope safety Marcus Williams’ recent refusal to discuss the last play of last season isn’t a sign of mental fragility.

New Orleans is counting on Williams, a 2017 second-round draft choice , to build on a largely promising rookie campaign that helped solidify the Saints’ secondary and propel the club back to the playoffs for the first time in four years.

At issue now is how Williams will move forward from the cruel way his first NFL season ended. His whiffed tackle attempt on Minnesota’s Stefon Diggs last January allowed the Vikings receiver to score a 61-yard, game-winning touchdown in the dying seconds of an NFC divisional round playoff game.

It’s a question that, for now Womens Kyle Palmieri Jersey , Williams declines to field.

“I’m not talking about last year,” Williams said after practice on Saturday.

Asked moments later if he still watches a video he promoted on social media that opens with that final play in Minnesota — which he titled “Turning my NIGHTMARE into my MOTIVATION” — Williams smiled silently and turned his gaze toward a team public relations official, who ended the interview.

Defensive backs routinely utter the refrain that players at their position must have short memories — that they must quickly forget receptions made by players they defend and focus immediately on their next opportunity to thwart a pass.

But in Williams’ case, the touchdown he couldn’t prevent in Minnesota instantly went into NFL annals as one of the more stunning and unusual endings to a playoff game in league history.

That one will be hard to forget.

Meanwhile, Williams’ decision to block a columnist for The Times-Picayune on Twitter also raises questions about how he deals with scrutiny.

Teammates, however, are quick to suggest that Williams’ performance at training camp says more about his response than anything else.

“The way he approaches practice, the way he approaches each meeting, the way he approaches the game — period — you can tell he doesn’t necessarily think about it, but it’s there and it drives him,” Saints defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins said. “He’s been playing out of his mind in training camp so far.

“I commend him for that,” Rankins continued. “A play of that magnitude in that game — that could derail a lot of people’s confidence and kind of make people go into the tank.”

During the first couple weeks of training camp, Williams has looked like a star in the making, closing hard on balls thrown anywhere near him. Several times, he has intercepted Drew Brees, who compared Williams to retired Baltimore Ravens safety Ed Reed, a five-time All-Pro.

“I really love everything about him as a teammate and as a young player who is just hungry to be great,” Brees said. “He is definitely a presence and a force in the deep part of the field. You have to know where he is because he’s got such good range and such good instincts.”

Coach Sean Payton appeared to make a point this offseason of deflecting blame for last season’s end away from Williams, who not only had four interceptions during the 2017 regular season Radek Faksa Jersey , but also had another pick in the playoff game against the Vikings. While being interviewed by his daughter, Meghan, on NFL Network, Payton said his biggest regret from the playoff loss was the Saints offense’s inability to convert a third-and-1 play before kicking a go-ahead field goal with 25 seconds left. If New Orleans had gotten one more first down, Payton reasoned, the Saints’ field goal would have been attempted with virtually no time left for the Vikings to respond.

And after recent practices, Payton has been highly complimentary of Williams.

“You have seen him come back in the spring and even now in training camp, just playing at a real high level,” Payton said. “He is just continuing to get better. He is a great thinker. He is smart. Rarely on the field does he do something that you don’t want. That intelligence, along with his physical skill set, are two great traits.”

Williams does discuss the upcoming season. And in those moments, he doesn’t sound like a player overly burdened by his past.

“I just do my one-eleventh — whatever the coach tells me to do,” Williams said. “Everybody has their own job to do. You can’t be Superman out here.”

NOTES: Players not practicing on Saturday included DE Marcus Davenport, WR Cameron Meredith, TE Michael Hoomanawanui and DL Mitch Loewen. Davenport, the club’s first-round draft pick last spring, has not practiced in about two weeks.

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