Jim Brown, NFL Star, Actor, and Civil Rights Figure, Dead at 87 – Rolling Stone

Jim Brown, the legendary NFL working again, actor, and civil rights activist, who was additionally the topic of quite a few allegations of violence, died Thursday night time, Might 18. He was 87. 

Brown’s spouse, Monique, confirmed his dying in a put up on Instagram, although no reason behind dying was given. “It’s with profound unhappiness that I announce the passing of my husband, Jim Brown,” Monique Brown wrote. “He handed peacefully final night time at our LA dwelling. To the world he was an activist, actor, and soccer star. To our household, he was a loving and great husband, father, and grandfather. Our hearts are damaged.”

Brown was probably the most completed soccer gamers of his technology. After a profitable school profession at Syracuse College (the place he additionally excelled in basketball, monitor, and lacrosse), he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns within the first spherical of the 1957 NFL draft. He rapidly began setting data, dashing for 237 yards within the ninth sport of the season, an general single-game report that stood for 14 years, and one for a rookie that lasted till 1997.

Brown stayed in Clevelent for his total nine-year NFL profession, serving to to ship a pre-Tremendous Bowl period NFL Championship in 1964 (the Cleveland Browns haven’t gained an NFL league title since). Together with profitable Rookie of the 12 months, Brown was named the NFL’s MVP 3 times and chosen for the Professional Bowl each season he was within the league. When Brown retired in 1965, he held a plethora of NFL dashing data, a few of which have been damaged since, others of which haven’t. In 1971, he was inducted into the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame.

After retiring, Brown labored as an actor, showing in over 30 movies. Amongst his most well-known components: A job within the World Conflict II motion flick, The Soiled Dozen and a starring half in 100 Rifles, a Western that was one of many first main Hollywood movies to characteristic an interracial romance (Brown starred reverse Raquel Welch). Brown continued to behave by the Eighties and Nineties, popping up in flicks just like the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring 1987 movie The Working Man and the 1999 soccer movie, Any Given Sunday.

Brown was additionally a distinguished civil rights activist, and helped set up the well-known 1967 “Ali Summit,” after Muhammed Ali introduced he wouldn’t battle within the Vietnam Conflict. The assembly and subsequent press convention — which largely centered round voicing help for the embattled Ali — featured a few of the most distinguished Black athletes of the day, together with Invoice Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then often called Lew Alcindor), Willie Davis, and John Wooten. 

There was a small enterprise conservative bent to loads of Brown’s advocacy. He prioritized financial self-sufficiency as a method of uplifting Black communities and preventing racism, which even led him to endorse Richard Nixon within the 1968 presidential election. Many years later, he would voice his help for Donald Trump and was notably current for that notorious 2018 White Home assembly between Trump and Kanye West.

As The New York Occasions notes, Brown additionally confronted quite a few allegations of violence and abuse, particularly towards ladies, over the course of his life. He was first arrested in 1965 when an 18-year-old girl stated he assaulted her at a Cleveland motel; Brown denied the allegations, and a jury cleared him the next yr. In 1968, police suspected Brown of throwing his then-girlfriend, Eva Bohn-Chin, off his second-story balcony; she stated she fell and refused to testify, so the cost was dismissed. 

Brown did admit to slapping Bohn-Chin and “different ladies” in his e-book, Out of Bounds (through the Los Angeles Occasions). He appeared to precise some remorse over his actions, saying he “by no means ought to have” slapped anybody and “I don’t assume any man ought to slap a lady. In an ideal world, I don’t assume any man ought to slap anybody … I don’t begin fights, however generally I don’t stroll away from them. It hasn’t occurred in a very long time, but it surely’s occurred, and I remorse these instances. I ought to have been extra answerable for myself, stronger, extra grownup.”

Although Brown was arrested quite a few instances, he was by no means convicted of a significant crime. He served jail time within the early 2000s after shedding an enchantment over a misdemeanor vandalism conviction in 1999. The conviction stemmed from a declare that his spouse, Monique, had known as the police to report that Brown had taken a shovel to the home windows of her automotive after an argument.