I honestly couldn’t imagine my life without football. I mean, football has been the connecting point within my family when it comes to traditional sports. It creates a vibrant passion within our hearts that fires us up during the week, knowing that our favorite teams are just days away from competing. If football means that much to me, I can only imagine its importance to the actual players. Most athletes have been playing football since they were children, giving their hearts, mind, and time to this passionate passion of theirs. But for many athletes, it’s not just about making it to the professional league or gaining fantasy points.
For some, it’s about creating a platform to encourage, uplift, and inspire others beyond a fan experience. For Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf, he’s taking inspire to a new level. For the 2020 NFL football season, athletes had the choice of choosing a name to honor on the back of their helmets, and Metcalf chose to honor Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was brutally beaten and lynched by a gang of white men in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman. This Black History month, Metcalf has decided to partner with NFL Inspire Change Say Their Stories: to shed light on the Emmett Till story that forever transformed the civil rights era. Metcalf’s overall intention is to help inform NFL fans, critics, and those who are willing to listen about a tragedy that still affects how society views black men to this day.
You may be asking yourself, who is Emmett Till? Well, Emmett Till was 14 years old when he came from Chicago to visit his family in Mississippi and got brutally beaten to death by a gang of white men for whistling at a white woman while walking on the street. They found him a few days later in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, which is about an hour away from where DK Metcalf grew up. When looking at the before and after pictures of Emmett Till, you would think he had an allergic reaction or worse. He was beaten, hung, and drowned. When you think about this happening to a teenage boy, it is bothersome and heartbreaking.
Why is this important? Emmetts’ life means awareness. Emmett Till's tragedy is a real and authentic American story that shows how unequal the world really is. Racism has been going on for numerous years. People believe racism only happened in the south, but little do some know discrimination occurred all across the United States. For Metcalf, this is more than football; this is an opportunity to use his platform to inspire and inform others about this historical event. Not many people know about this important event in history, and I applaud Metcalf for stepping out of his comfort zone to do something he felt was right, educating others on the truth. During these unprecedented times, more athletes are taking matters into their hands by sparking uncomfortable conversations by bringing awareness to issues and stigma that have misconstrued the depiction of America's History.
