A Time to Be Heard

IN THIS EXTRAORDINARY and pivotal time, Black student-athlete voices are emerging at Stanford.

They’re coming from Kyla Bryant and Wesley Stephenson of the women’s gymnastics team, and from football players Thomas Booker and Jacob Mangum-Farrar.

They come from soccer’s Kiki Pickett, basketball’s Jenna Brown, and track and field’s Yinka Braimah and Brielle Smith. 

They join Maya Anne Crisencia Dodson, a senior on the Cardinal basketball team, as founders of CardinalBLCK, a community of Black student-athletes whose creation is another step toward securing recognition and accountability.

Dodson takes on that responsibility as a legacy of Carolyn Anne Dodson, and is proud to share a middle name with her grandmother. 

A native of the potato farming town of Laurel, Delaware, Carolyn rose early on Aug. 28, 1963. She traveled across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, over Chesapeake Bay and into Washington, D.C., to join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

She listened closely on that warm, humid day as Martin Luther King, Jr., from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, said to the 250,000 assembled in front of him, “I have a dream …”

It was a revelation that Maya was not aware of until recently, that her Nana, now experiencing dementia, had witnessed one of the most significant events in American history, as King called for civil and economic rights for Black Americans and an end to racism.

When CardinalBLCK (Brilliance, Leadership, Community, and Knowledge) introduced itself with a video describing its purpose and featuring the faces of its members, it was King who provided the narrative from his speech, “The Other America,” given at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on April 14, 1967.

“We must realize that the time is always ripe to do right,” King said, 10 days short of a year before he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  

King’s speech, about 45 minutes long, pondered how a nation so wealthy could have so much poverty. Systemic racism divided the country into two.

It was a time of combustion, much like today. The next few months would be known as the “Long, Hot Summer,” when 159 race riots erupted throughout the nation. A year later, King’s death ignited the “Holy Week Uprising,” the greatest wave of social unrest in the U.S. since the Civil War.

King looked weary that afternoon in Memorial Auditorium, and knew the country was a powder keg. King preached nonviolence and condemned rioting, but understood why the riots were happening and condemned the conditions Black Americans faced that fueled their rage. 

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” King said. 

As unrest continues in reaction to the deaths and shootings of Black men and women at the hands of white police officers, voices from the Black community are amplified once again.

Muir later said, “We realize we can do an even better job, within Stanford and in the broader community, just to celebrate diversity and inclusion even further. The student-athletes want to build on the sense of community, and take stances on social justice, and there’s an opportunity across all of the Pac-12 schools to really engage there.”

Dodson and Kyla Bryant worked with Kristen Azevedo, the Assistant Athletics Director for Student-Athlete Development, to formalize CardinalBLCK. The timing was right in another way because Stanford Athletics had begun a process of giving student-athletes the opportunity to create their own community groups and this was an ideal use of that platform. 

“It was eye-opening knowing that we need to move, we need to do something,” Muir said. “(Deputy Athletics Director) Patrick Dunkley and I got on a call with the group and we talked it out. They felt the athletic department had been silent on an issue that was affecting Black student-athletes, as well as the community. They expected to hear from Stanford on issues like this. That’s where I realized, we really do need to come together and lend our voice.” 

The main goal of CardinalBLCK was in “creating an open dialogue surrounding racism and social injustice,” Braimah said. “I want to see Stanford face racism head on and not overlook issues so clearly visible.”

A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee within Stanford Athletics, created by Melissa Stringer, Stanford’s Associate Athletics Director for Student Services, already was in the works. CardinalBLCK will work with the Diversity committee on a voter registration campaign, focusing on student-athletes while the committee works with staff.

Stringer would like to see Athletics duplicate the university’s “Brave Spaces” program, a self-described “virtual forum for staff from across campus to openly discuss the realities of inequality and anti-Black racism, and how to confront them.”

Another area of need, many Black student-athletes have said, is racial sensitivity training for coaches, staff, and student-athletes. Too often, offensive comments go unnoticed, differences are not addressed, coaches do not invite conversation, and Black student-athletes feel alone.

“OUR MISSION IS to provide a safe space for Black student-athletes to connect, share, and foster a meaningful community that will support them long after their undergraduate experience is over,” reads CardinalBLCK’s mission statement. “We endeavor to make a valuable impact not only on Stanford’s campus, but on a larger scale as well. CardinalBLCK realizes the power of our collective voices, and we strive to empower our Black student-athletes to use their influence in positive ways.”

The reality of being Black at Stanford is battling perception. It is common for Stanford students of any race to question whether they belong at such a prestigious and selective university. But Black students encounter that twofold. Many feel they must overcome the idea they wouldn’t have made it if not for sports, or if not to fulfill a racial quota.

“It’s a real thing,” said Howard Bryant, author and writer for ESPN.com, and a leading voice on race in sports. “There’s always some reason to deny Black people admission. And when they get into the corporate world, somebody in the office will say, ‘They’re an affirmative action hire.’ There’s always some way to de-legitimize the Black presence. 

“Because of that, players absolutely need to take advantage of this moment to expand their leverage. You’re in a position right now where people are finally listening to you. So, if you have something to say, say it. People are actually finally taking this seriously.”

It can be difficult for white teammates to understand what a Black teammate goes through. Beyond the demands of athletics and academics, Black student-athletes often face the burden of being a spokesperson for their race, or in weighing whether to strike back at microaggressions that pummel them daily.

“When I see or experience racism and tell a non-Black peer about it, usually they desperately try to provide a ‘non-racist’ justification for that individual’s actions when there is nothing to debate,” Braimah said. “It could be something as straightforward as a non-Black peer saying the n-word, and people will try and defend their actions by telling me that they are otherwise a nice person and believe that should excuse their racism, which it does not.”

INTEGRATION AND EQUALITY have been a process at Stanford, going back to its founding. Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan, was a proponent of eugenics, which aimed to improve the genetic composition of the human race largely through selective breeding. 

Stanford did not have a Black athlete in the 20th century until basketball’s Eddie Tucker in 1950. The first Black football player, walk-on running back Tom Williams, played one season, in 1958. The first Black baseball player was current Arizona State Athletics Director Ray Anderson, in 1973 – 26 years after Jackie Robinson broke the major leagues’ color line.

When Morrison Warren, Stanford’s first successfully recruited Black football player, graduated in 1965, he was the only African American male in his class, with no acculturation or support system to help him along the way.

Warren, whose brother Kevin is Commissioner of the Big Ten, said his first Stanford practices were packed with spectators eager to see the novelty. The 1962 season opener at Tulane was to be Warren’s first varsity game, but no hotel in New Orleans would take a team with a Black player. Tulane offered its infirmary instead. Stanford could not guarantee his safety and ultimately left him behind.

It wasn’t until John Ralston took over as football coach in 1963 that Stanford began to actively recruit Black players. Ralston developed a relationship with admissions director Rick Snyder, helping convince the office to look at potential rather than solely academic achievement. Soon, Stanford began to diversify its student body. Within a decade, Stanford, with an influx of Black players, won two Rose Bowls, as the Stanford “Indians.”

The racially-tinged nickname was made official in 1930 as a nod to football coach Pop Warner, who previously built the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school built to assimilate Indigenous peoples into white culture, into a power.

By the Rose Bowl seasons of 1970 and 1971, students began to take offense at the Indian caricatures. For 20 years, Timm Williams, a member of the northwestern California’s Yurok tribe, danced on the sidelines as “Prince Lightfoot.” He wore a headdress, chanted, and cast hexes at opponents. Stanford’s increasing number of Indigenous students were horrified. They organized the Stanford American Indian Organization to campaign against an Indians mascot.

In 1972, Stanford rid itself of “Indians,” and is believed to be the first institution or organization -- high school, college, or pro -- to disavow an Indigenous-related name.

In 1989, Stanford made Dennis Green the first Black head football coach in today’s Pac-12 and was Stanford's first Black head coach in any sport. From 2012-16, Stanford was the only major athletics department in the country with a Black athletics director, head men’s basketball coach and head football coach. 

ON APRIL 29, 1992, rioting erupted in Los Angeles when four LAPD officers were acquitted on charges of excessive force in the arrest of Rodney King, whose beating was videotaped and widely circulated on television.

Not only did anger boil up in L.A., but in the Black communities of East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park. VanDerveer had a strong connection to those communities, creating an informal big sister partnership with kids at the Onetta Harris Community Center in East Menlo Park that involved clinics, holiday parties, tutoring, basketball, and just talking. When Stanford reached the 1992 NCAA championship game, a busload of kids from Onetta Harris came to L.A. to watch Stanford win its second title in three years. 

As the riots escalated, VanDerveer and her sister, Heidi, headed to Onetta Harris. The center became a gathering place for youths who did not know what to do. Some threatened to vandalize downtown Palo Alto and Stanford Shopping Center, others were just angry and frustrated and did not know how to harness it.

VanDerveer talked to them, listened and sympathized, and even brought out the basketballs. The center became not only a gathering place, but a safe place. The late Aaron Johnson, then director of the Onetta Harris Center, credited VanDerveer for protecting the kids and helping the community at a time of crisis. 

The seven shots fired into the back of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, by police on Aug. 23 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, provoked similar outrage. 

In the days that followed, Nneka Ogwumike ’12, Chiney’s sister and also an All-American under VanDerveer, toggled between phone calls and Zoom meetings as president of the WNBA Players’ Association trying to figure out a response that was fair to her players and forceful in impact. 

The Milwaukee Bucks were the first major professional sports team to strike in protest of police brutality and racial injustice and the rest of the NBA followed. Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer postponed some of its contests. But in no league was the call for justice so united as in the WNBA.

Ogwumike, a Stanford psychology graduate, spoke to players, administrators, and union reps. Some wanted to play, some didn’t, but Ogwumike kept the conversations alive until every player and every team agreed to take a stand. 

On sports’ day of reckoning, the WNBA stood tallest, and it was Ogwumike, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants and a ninth-year forward for the Los Angeles Sparks, who brought the league together. 

“With our platform there’s so much more that we feel that we can do to create some serious change,” Ogwumike said to ESPN’s Holly Rowe. 

Ogwumike addressed all the players gathered in the WNBA bubble in Bradenton, Florida. She also spoke to them at a candlelight vigil, encouraging them to speak from their own hearts. For the next day or two, she answered questions on the national news. Ogwumike did exactly what was needed. 

“The players in the WNBA recognize an authentic person when they see one,” VanDerveer said. “Nneka is an incredibly unselfish team player. Really mature, a really caring person. She is an absolute Stanford treasure. To see what she’s doing now, we’re proud of her.”

TO BE BLACK in America is to live with rage. It can simmer, but returns with every atrocity, and melts into fatigue. Dreams are repeatedly shattered. However, there always must be hope.  

Twelve days after Floyd’s death, Dodson joined a multi-racial crowd of 900 in front of Georgia’s Forsyth County Courthouse to protest racial injustice.

Dodson understood the significance of that peaceful afternoon in Cumming, Georgia, in light of the region’s loathsome racial history. In 1912, 1,098 Black residents were forced out of Forsyth County almost overnight by mobs who committed a series of lynchings and pillaged properties. In 1987, Black people and white people alongside each other in a “walk for brotherhood,” were jeered and pelted by rocks and bottles. 

For decades, Forsyth was among the most racist counties in the country. Citizens took pride in the claim that no Black people lived within its borders. As late as 1980, the U.S. Census Bureau recorded one Black resident. In 1997, there were only 39.

Today, there are 6,370 Black residents of Forsyth County, including Dodson’s parents, who moved there in recent years. Maya, who has opted out of this season, has been living in Forsyth County during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

With Dodson in attendance, there were no incidents at a June 6 protest on the same streets that Black people were vilified not long ago. On a tiny scale, the “I Have a Dream,” speech that Carolyn Anne Dodson long ago witnessed in Washington, D.C., seemed just a bit closer to reality. 

Less than two months later, Blake was shot. The cycle never seems to end.

Though frustration and anguish is ever-present, there are those who remain determined to take steps forward. By doing so, they shoulder the burden of so many others before them. A group of Stanford’s Black student-athletes are taking those steps. 

“It’s not time to be scared,” Maya Dodson said. “We have to capitalize on the moment.”

That’s why, at Stanford and elsewhere, change draws a little bit closer.