Dr. Harry Edwards: Professor Emeritus + sociologist + civil rights activist =Athlete Activist
From athlete to major icon in sports consulting (NFL, NBA, and MLB), Harry Edwards is an icon in athlete activism, and essentially “invented the modern system of player counseling and support.” He intertwined his identities of athlete, activist, and sociologist into one of the greatest activists of all time.
In 1967, Harry was a star athlete in track and captain of his college basketball team. He was involved in black athlete activism, which led to him become the chief organizer of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. where he urged blacks to boycott the 1968 summer olympics.
Harry’s hybridity shows up in the fact that he invented an entire field of study, which is know as:
the sociology of sports, and provided the foundation for all its assertions, chief among them: that sports is a recapitulation of the power relationships in society and you can’t have a non-racist sports-industrial complex within the context of a racist society, “any more than you can have a chicken lay a duck egg,” he says.
Instead of following a career as an athlete, he felt too alienated and angry, he went on to pursue his masters and eventually doctorate.
He’s best known for being the person behind the raised fist of two black athletes on the medal stand at the Olympics in Mexico City— the most widely held protest in sports history.