America at Large: Bill Russell was arguably the greatest but definitely the most important socially

On the night of June 12th, 1963, Medgar Evers pulled into the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. A field secretary with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), he climbed from his car carrying a bunch of T-shirts that read “Jim Crow Must Go”, calling for the abolition of the racist caste system still prevalent in the American south.

Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was hiding in a honeysuckle thicket across the street, from where he fired a single rifle shot that hit Evers in the back.

“I opened the door and there was Medgar at the steps, face down in blood,” said his wife, Myrlie. “The children ran out and were shouting, Daddy, get up!”

Evers died that night in a hospital that initially refused him entry because of the colour of his skin. When finally admitted he became the first ever black patient to be treated there.

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[ Boston Celtics great Bill Russell dies aged 88 ]

Shortly after his death, his brother, Charles, received a phone call from Bill Russell, the 6ft 10in centre who had just led the Boston Celtics to their third successive NBA title, asking how he could help.

“Get down here,” said Evers, “and we’ll open one of the playgrounds and we’ll have the first integrated basketball camp in Mississippi.”

Regardless of threats to his own safety, Russell headed to a convulsed, still segregated state where African Americans were unable to use certain water fountains or bathrooms and were prevented from voting.

Defying the prejudiced laws, the biggest star in basketball gave a clinic that crossed colour lines and infuriated local racists. He coached those kids in the fundamentals of the sport even as members of the KKK (including the not yet charged Beckwith) watched on from across the street.

“Daddy told me he never listened to the boos, because he never listened to the cheers”

—  Karen Russell

That night, he slept in a motel room on a bed too small for his frame, as Charles Evers sat on a chair, keeping vigil, facing the door with a rifle in his hand.

When US president Barack Obama awarded Russell the presidential medal of freedom in 2011, it was not for the incredible 11 NBA titles he won in a span of 13 seasons with the Celtics. Or for breaking the colour barrier to become the first African American to coach a team in any major sport here. Or, indeed, for transforming the game by showcasing a panoply of defensive skills never seen before.

No, Obama singled him out for the nation’s highest honour in recognition of the fact he was keenly involved in campaigns for voting and civil rights and “stood up for the dignity and rights of all men.”

It’s a measure of how he lived his life that the lengthy obituaries following his death at the age of 88 last Sunday have been equal parts gauging his impact on sport and society. The first NBA player to visit Africa (where he invested in Liberia to create jobs), he revolutionised the art of blocking shots and catching rebounds in a career that led the legendary coach, Bobby Knight, to once say, “Bill Russell was, by far, and will always be, the most valuable player ever in sport.”

Before Michael Jordan came along, he won every bar-stool debate about the identity of the greatest basketballer. Even still, old-timers will fight his corner on that score.

Off the court, in a way the more commercially-savvy Jordan never did, he always used his platform to help others, so much so that Martin Luther King invited him to stand beside him as he delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech in Washington.

Russell declined, believing others more deserving but kept his shoulder to the wheel on social issues. Befitting somebody whose second autobiography was subtitled, “Memoirs of an Opionated Man”, he wrote an essay denouncing racism in the NBA, called out the owners for maintaining a quota system to limit the number of black players, and invited the commissioner to kick him out of the league if it wasn’t true.

He did all this while playing in Boston, a city he described as “the most racist in America”, a place that didn’t even spare its most talismanic athlete from bigotry. The Russells lived in the Irish Catholic neighbourhood of Reading, where they were the only black family and the target of regular intimidation.

This included a break-in where the culprits smashed his trophy cabinet, daubed “NIGGA” on the walls, and defecated in his bed. None of the hatred dissuaded him from constantly lending his voice and considerable public presence to various protests on behalf of Beantown’s beleaguered African American community.

He never signed autographs because he preferred to shake hands and talk to fans, a quirk his FBI file (that they had one on him sums up his seriousness as a campaigner) somehow interpreted as evidence he was an “arrogant negro”.

[ Dave Hannigan's America at Large weekly column archive ]

The same type of guff the G-men used to write in reports about Muhammad Ali, and, just like his old pal, it was only decades after he retired that Russell started to belatedly receive the acclaim and adulation he deserved, evolving into the grandiloquent old man of the sport. Finally respected and beloved in equal measure.

“Daddy told me he never listened to the boos,” wrote his daughter Karen in a beautiful essay for the New York Times back in 1987, “because he never listened to the cheers.”

Ní bheith a leithéid ann arís. Truly.