Muhammad Ali and the men in the back row

Muhammad Ali was one of 12 brave men gathered on a June day in 1967 to take a stand in the place where resilience is commonplace – Cleveland, Ohio.

The fuzzy black and white photo dates back nearly 50 years, but since the death of Muhammad Ali it has been featured on national TV following the Cleveland Cavaliers win in Game 3 of the NBA Finals and across front pages around the globe.

Muhammad Ali, flanked by arguably three of the greatest, most compelling social activist athletes in history: Bill Russell, Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then UCLA’s Lew Alcindor).

Their sports accomplishments are unparalleled:

• Russell – not Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky or Yogi Berra – holds the record for most championships in a North American sports league.
• Abdul-Jabbar won a record six NBA titles, three consecutive NCAA championships and 71 high school games in a row.
• The number of fans who ever saw him play dwindles by the day, but Brown remains the NFL’s greatest pro football player. Not a Cleveland thing , just an indisputable fact.
• Ali is the greatest fighter of all time – the only debate is whether he or Brown was the greatest athlete of the 20th Century.

These giants gathered in Cleveland in June of 1967 in Brown’s office, as he told NBA TV, to hold a news conference in support of Ali’s draft resistance and conscientious objection to the Vietnam War. The year 1967 was marked by racial and social unrest: urban riots, police called pigs, hippies vs. the Silent Majority Establishment, presidential candidate George Wallace decrying “pointy-headed intellectuals,” standing in the schoolhouse door (and potentially barring Browns’ great Ozzie Newsome) from the University of Alabama.

Fast forward a half century later, and while those same problems have morphed but persist, this summer the nation’s eyes once again turn to Cleveland.

As the world remembers Ali’s legacy and the iconic photo rekindles the contributions of Russell, Brown and Abdul-Jabbar, there’s been no mention of the eight lesser-known men standing behind those four famous pioneers. Their achievements extend beyond sports, beyond Cleveland and should not be lost to history:

From left:

Carl Stokes – Four months after the photo was taken, Cleveland voters elected Stokes as the first African-American mayor of major American city. In 1967, blacks comprised only 37 percent of the electorate in racially divided Cleveland and at the funeral last year of Stokes’ campaign manager, Arnold Pinkney, President Barack Obama credited Stokes for paving the way for a generation of black mayors, governors, Senators and Obama himself.

Walter Beach – An easy target for Browns fans and opposing quarterbacks, defensive back Beach still enjoys a special place as a member of the 1964 NFL Champion Browns, the city’s last  title team.

Bobby Mitchell – The speedy, soft-spoken Mitchell paired with the powerful, controversial Jim Brown in the original NFL “thunder and lightning” backfield, but made history as the first black player on the Washington Redskins. President John Kennedy pressured Washington owner George Preston Marshall to integrate, so the Redskins – they were terrible in the early 1960s – traded the rights to the NFL’s top draft pick to the Browns for Mitchell. The Browns selected Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis to replace Mitchell, but as recounted in The Express, Davis contracted leukemia and died before ever donning a regular season uniform. Mitchell starred catching passes from Sonny Jurgensen and was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame as a Redskin.

Sid Williams – A back-up linebacker on the 1964 title team, Williams post-NFL moved to Los Angeles, married long-time Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) and was later appointed the U.S. Ambassador the Bahamas. If the Browns elected an “All-Time Special Teams” team, Williams would be my kick coverage guy.

Curtis McClinton – The only man in the second row without a Cleveland connection, McClinton starred at linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl teams, studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and remains a prominent Kansas City business and civic leader.

Willie Davis – Paul Brown won seven titles coaching the Browns, but made his share of mistakes, and Davis to the Green Packers ranks at the top. A Hall of Fame defensive end, Davis played 138 consecutive games for all five Green Bay NFL title and both Super Bowl I and II teams. After football, entrepreneur Davis headed several businesses and served on corporate boards like Dow Chemical, MGM and Schlitz.

Jim Shorter – Another reserve Browns defensive back, Shorter registered a handful of tackles and returned seven punts and nine kickoffs in 1963 – like a generation of Clevelanders, just missing the title celebration.

John Wooten – (Personal disclosure a family friend). Watch those black-and-white highlight films of the 1964 NFL Championship game and you can’t miss No. 60 Wooten and fellow “messenger guard” No. 66 Hall of Famer Gene Hickerson opening the holes for Jim Brown. Wooten played nine years; served as a front office executive with the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens; and now heads the Fritz Pollard Alliance promoting NFL minority hiring – whose pioneering efforts resulted in Super Bowl championships for Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, Tony Dungy in Indianapolis and hopefully someday in Cleveland for Hue Jackson.

With Ali and Stokes now gone, 10 from that photo remain alive today with Russell and Davis the oldest at 82, Abdul-Jabbar the youngest at 69. Most are well-known, others on the back row like Shorter, Beach and Williams known only to the most ardent, and aging, Browns fans.

Twelve brave men gathered on that June day to take a stand in where else but the place where resilience gets pumped into the water supply – Cleveland, Ohio.