Two Beautiful Black Quarterbacks starting in the 2023 Super Bowl?  Yes, it is “A Big Deal.”

As two Black quarterbacks prepare to compete against each other in the Super Bowl, you best believe Jalen and Patrick appreciate history, as well as the shoulders upon which they stand.  Read in depth about these two gridiron superstars:  Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes.

Why Do We Celebrate?  The Odyssey of Doug Williams, the first Black QB starting in a Super Bowl

(Or, What Americans were doing while Doug Williams was developing into manhood and preparing to win a Super Bowl)

Growing up, Doug Williams lived in Zachary, Louisiana in a rural Black community that sat between two intersections where crosses were burned every Friday night. The year he was born, 1955, was a highly consequential one:  In August, 14-year-old Emmett Till was mutilated by Mississippi racists who could not find the humanity to coexist with a little Black boy, but instead chose to engage in an act of breathtaking brutality.  Not quite five months later, in Alabama, on December 1, a magisterial Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a White passenger in segregated Montgomery, sparking the yearlong Bus Boycott that threatened to bankrupt the city.

(Read the rest of this story in the Healing section below.)

More on Doug Williams

Super Bowl Royalty:  35 years ago Doug Williams became the first Black QB to win the Super Bowl. 

Doug Williams celebrates two Black quarterbacks starting in the Super Bowl.  He marvels again on NPR.

This is a fascinating and illuminating documentary about Williams, the America he grew up in, and the horribly racist history of the Washington Redskins — Skin Deep:  The Doug Williams Story

Playing for the then Washington Redskins, now Commanders, Doug Williams didn’t just win the Super Bowl, he was electrifying—performing with an injury and winning the MVP award

The meaningful significance of Doug Williams’ victory 

Doug Williams’ alma mater, Grambling State University, reflects on his “culture-shifting” Super Bowl performance

Learn what Doug’s legendary college coach, Eddie Robinson, told him after he won.

Culture

Arts

In Fashion:  Forever Flotus, Michelle Obama, and Vice President, Kamala Harris, have worn Pyer Moss pieces, so what’s happening with Kerby Jean Raymond, and is there a problem with the Pyer Moss brand?

Looking for Black owned beauty and fashion brands?

Entertainment

Hit-maker, Burt Bacharach, has died at the age of 94.  He was, along with his partner, lyricist Hal David, a prolific composer and songwriter.  The singer they often wrote for, the legendary Dionne Warwick, translated their songs into ethereal magic, and helped make them household names. Bacharach was also an inspiration for the Austin Powers film franchise.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

On the hills of authoring the best-selling book, Finding Me, the super talented, Viola Davis, won a Grammy for Best Audio Book Narration and Storytelling Recording, and became the third Black woman in entertainment history to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, earning her “EGOT” status.

History

Learn more about the historical presence of Blacks in Montana.  For more on this hidden history, here’s a video.

Black quarterbacks and racist history

Black quarterbacks, creativity, and “the pocket”

Books and Literature

A Black-owned business manufactured automobiles in 1915.  The Davenports is a fictional work based on the wealthy family of C. R. Patterson, a formerly enslaved man who became the first and only owner of a Black company that morphed into an automobile manufacturer.  Starting off as a carriage-maker, by the 1890s, Patterson employed an interracial workforce of 35-50 people.  After he died in 1910, his son, Frederick, took over, and by 1915, the C. R. Patterson & Sons Company was manufacturing the Patterson-Greenfield automobile. (The link contains a picture.) In the best-selling new YA book, The Davenports, author Krystal Marquis imagines, and gives an escapist rendering of, what the lives of the daughters and son of a wealthy Black man could have looked like back then.  (Fun Fact:  In keeping with this edition’s Super Bowl theme, Frederick Patterson was the first Black man to play football for Ohio State University.)

Science

What causes deja vu?

What do near death experiences tell us about the brain?

Sports

In the Spotlight

All about King James:  LeBron James’ family (“The James Gang”) congratulates him.

A look back:  This is LeBron beautiful

Rihanna, Steph Curry, Kendrick Lamar, and other celebrities big up LeBron

Jamie Foxx, D. Wade, Martin, Steph, and President Biden congratulate LeBron

Another look at the magic moment when “King James” became the all-time NBA scoring leader on Tuesday night.

Finally,  Kareem Abdul Jabbar expresses what it means to him to have his record broken and what it means to the culture when sports records are broken.

Scholar’s Corner:  Policing

Formally, and low-key, Black people have long studied the psychology of Black police officers in the world of policing

Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. formally expels three former Memphis police officers involved in the Tyree Nichols case

Policing in America is a serious problem, yet obscene police budgets continue to billow out of control, while real changes in policies and procedures, as well as official challenges to outsized police power, are severely lacking.

This is why abolitionists, and long-time activists, like the deeply enlightening Mariame Kaba, insist that policing cannot be reformed. 

And what about these so-called “elite” police gangs?  Like the Scorpions.

The “broken windows” theory of policing and how it went all wrong

Cops in a documentary:

Colin Kaepernick’s devastating docuseries, Killing County, with a focus on policing in Bakersfield, California, is now streaming on HULU.  Bakersfield is in House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy’s, congressional district, which is majority White and has a high homicide, crime, and officer-involved death rate.  Also, here’s a piece on growing up Black in Bakersfield.

Education

After a long protracted fight waged in the 1960s and 70s, Black scholars are still writing in defense of African American Studies in 2023.

In the United States, education was never intended for the masses, so no one should be surprised about the current assault on public education. It is not new.  It’s easy to manipulate, exploit, and abuse an uneducated populace; and making a college education cost prohibitive is just one way to undermine and discourage the pursuit of higher education. Some trace the current all-out assault to the 1960s. No one should turn away from the attempts to dismantle public education, which is absolutely necessary for the well-being of this country.

Mental Wellness

A Black psychologist wrestles with Black police officers attacking a Black man

 Toni Morrison was everything as it relates to a healthy Black self-concept

Paying attention to your feelings

Humor 

Michael B. Jordan on SNL

 Find Peace

Steps toward finding inner peace

Healing

Two Beautiful Black Quarterbacks starting in the 2023 Super Bowl?  Yes, it’s “A Big Deal.”

(Or:  What Americans were doing while Doug Williams was developing into manhood and preparing to win a Super Bowl)

Growing up, Doug Williams lived in Zachary, Louisiana in a Black community that sat between two intersections where crosses were burned every Friday night. The year he was born, 1955, was a highly consequential one:  In August, 14-year-old Emmett Till was mutilated by Mississippi racists who could not find the humanity to coexist with a little Black boy, but instead chose to engage in an act of breathtaking brutality.  Not quite five months later, in Alabama, on December 1, Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a White passenger in segregated Montgomery sparking the yearlong Bus Boycott that threatened to bankrupt the city.  Mrs. Parks told Mamie Till Mobley, years later, that she thought about her young son, Emmett, as she quietly, but resolutely, refused the indignity of being forced from her seat. 

The year before Doug William’s birth, in 1954, a national crisis erupted when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, decreed that racial segregation in taxpayer-funded (public) schools was unconstitutional.  The ruling effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had created the fertile legal ground in which idiotic Jim Crow segregation laws and customs were seeded.  The Brown decision rippled throughout the nation for years to come, upsetting the psychological balance of many White people all over the country, who viciously fought and outright disobeyed the implementation of the Court’s ruling.

In 1957, for example, when Doug was a toddler, the 101st Airborne—commanded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had also federalized the National Guard—flew into Little Rock, Arkansas to escort nine Black students into Central High School. The president had issued Executive Order 10730, to countermand the shenanigans of Arkansas’ segregationist governor, Orval Faubus, who had previously ordered the state’s National Guard to block the Black students’ entry.  In 1959, just before Doug entered elementary school, officials in Prince Edwards County, Virginia engaged in a campaign called “Massive Resistance,” and simply closed down the whole public school system for five years rather than integrate. (It’s important, however, to note that the County continued to receive tax dollars (public funds) for the “private schools” they operated for White children, while Black parents had to scramble and use their own meager dollars to educate their children while still paying taxes that went into the general public fund and educated white kids!)

This is the country that little Doug Williams’ family, and Black families everywhere, were navigating as he was growing up. Locally, in Zachery, Black parents had to do scary and inconvenient things like marshal their children home on nights when LSU played teams like Ole Miss in football, for fear that the celebrating, Rebel flag-waving Whites might attack their children with impunity.  By the time Doug graduated from Chaneyville High School and headed to Grambling State University in 1973, Boston, Massachusetts was in chaos.  

White Bostonians, still resisting school desegregation, and other Court rulings, by 1974, were, essentially, at war. “Riots,” mayhem, and attacks on Black people occurred all over the city for years.  Stanley Forman, of the old Boston Herald, snapped a photograph, called The Soiling of Old Glory, which captured a young, Black, Yale-educated attorney, Ted Landsmark, being assaulted with an American flag as he was nearing Boston City Hall…and the picture won a Pulitzer Prize.  The Massachusetts State Police spent three years in Boston trying to help restore and maintain order.

Part II — Sports and Race in America

Meanwhile, that same year, Hank Aaron was chasing the home-run record in the National Baseball League, inching closer and closer to breaking Babe Ruth’s seemingly unsurpassable record that had stood for almost 40 years.  By the time Aaron broke the record in 1974, he also broke the record for most mail received in one year—an estimated third of which was filled with hateful comments, and even death threats—just for breaking a White man’s athletic record.

So, those who want to downplay the magnitude of this moment, when two brilliantly talented young Black men are the starting quarterbacks in, perhaps, the most exhilarating annual sporting event on earth, simply do understand what Black people have endured.  Nor do they understand the sociology and psychology of sports, and how Black athletes, with their magnificent gifts, have been instrumental in this struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.  Athletic arenas have been the very locus of the dreams of Whites and Blacks who have been locked in an epic battle since before the founding of the Republic. 

In sports venues all over the country, Blacks have been perennial winners, much to the chagrin of many White people.  In Black communities, watching the sublime talents of Black athletes, excelling and winning at the pinnacle of success, where the competition is straight up (even as White referees have made biased calls), has been a thing of exquisite beauty with cosmic implications.  So, when legendary Grambling coach, Eddie Robinson, told his star pupil, Doug Williams, that his Super Bowl victory was akin to Joe Louis defeating German boxer, Max Schmeling, in 1938, he was referencing crucially important sociopolitical and cultural history. 

Joe Louis had defeated Max Schmeling, with stunning skill, while Adolph Hitler was on the international stage menacingly propagating lies about White Aryan supremacy.  This had been an awkward time for many White Americans who clearly wanted to cheer for Schmelling, a White man, but who also clearly understood the implications of supporting someone Hitler supported.  Joe Louis was well aware of what was at stake, both racially and internationally, as he asserted, “White Americans—even while some of them were still lynching Black people in the South—were depending on me to K.O. Germany.”

Even before Joe Louis, many Whites had hated to see the great pugilist, Jack Johnson, mete out an Independence Day beating to The Great White Hope, James Jeffries, in 1910.  Whites had attacked jubilant Blacks across the country leaving approximately 24 (mostly Black people) dead and hundreds more injured.  Chris Lamb writes that “the fight was seen as a referendum on racial superiority.”

So, now, about that 1988 Super Bowl. Indeed, the media hype centered on the Golden Boy, and now Hall of Farmer, the blond, blue-eyed, John Elway.  And he was good—really, really good—and this was not his first Super Bowl.  Most people expected him to win. But it had been a long time coming for a Black man to start in a Super Bowl.  Many brilliantly talented Black quarterbacks before Doug, like Sandy Stephens and Jimmy Raye, II, had been told that if they wanted to play in the pros, they would have to switch positions.  After all, the role of the quarterback was wrapped in mystique and specialness.  

Only one with intellect, poise, heart, skill, and stupendous leadership quality could play this position.  So, according to the prevailing racial hierarchy, that person had to be White, and there would be no deviating from that accepted order—no matter how well Blacks played the position, even with all kinds of obstacles thrown in their way.  This racist ideology persisted even as people like All American, Sandy Stephens, helped lead his University of Minnesota team to a national championship in 1960, and to back-to-back Rose Bowls in 1960 and 61. It prevailed even as Jimmy Raye, II’s team shared a national title after an undefeated season in 1966.  (Sandy Stephens is quoted at the top of this SHE Newsletter.) 

But in 1988, it was Doug Williams who, after sustaining an injury, electrified the sports world with a stellar second quarter commanding performance that many consider as close to perfection as one can get. He had remained calm, cool, collected, and confident.  This was an athlete who had been through the fire, both on and off the field—including the loss of his beautiful wife, Janice, who had been his college sweetheart.  Perseverance,  top-level skill, grit, brilliance, leadership ability, and poise fueled Doug as he guided his team to a 42-10 comeback victory.  After enduring a crazy week, punctuated by reporters asking inane questions of this first Black quarterback who was to start in the Super Bowl, he displayed the “stuff” of which legends are made.  After all the struggle, both on and off the field, a Black man had won the Super Bowl.  He was also the MVP of the game. 

So, yes, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts stand on the shoulders of, not only greatness, but grit, hard-work, sacrifice, suffering, and pain, as well as tenacity and joy!  So, yes, Sunday’s Super Bowl is a big deal.  And may it be the game we all want to see—thrilling until the end and well worth the wait. 

Good luck, fellas.

Coda:  Oh, yeah, in the 35 years since Doug kicked the door down, seven Black quarterbacks, including a guy named Colin Kaepernick, have rushed in and starred in the Super Bowl.  Kaepernick’s San Francisco 49er team came up short against the Baltimore Ravens (34-31) in 2013, but just to be there was an awesome achievement. 

The 7 Super Bowl caliber “Quarterblacks:”

Doug Williams — Won

Steve McNair 

Donovan McNabb

Colin Kaepernick 

Russell Wilson — Won

Cam Newton —

Patrick Mahomes —this will be his third start!  He won one and lost one.  We will see what will be in 23!

And speaking of impactful Black quarterbacks here are a few more

James “Shack” Harris was a pioneer on and off the field.

“Jefferson Street Joe,” Joe Gilliam, from Tennessee State, was a beautiful, colorful, and phenomenal QB (but it wasn’t easy for him as one of the earliest Black QBs in the NFL.)

Colin Kaepernick was really good and he led his team to the Super Bowl

Michael Vick was exciting.  He talked to Shannon Sharpe about criticisms he received during his playing days about being in the pocket and the frequent indictments on his style of play, among other topics. 

Happy Super Bowl Sunday and have a fantastic week!

SHE (Surviving, Healing, and Evolving)

“Unlocking Healing, Fearlessness, and Freedom”

-30-

🤎

Please HELP us grow our distribution list and forward this email to family members, friends, and associates who might want to subscribe to The SHE Newsletter. It’s FREE. Thanks!