The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 17

Michigan athlete creates group to 

battle racism

Last week, NBA players 

boycotted games after police 
shot Jacob Blake seven times 
in the back in Kenosha, Wis. 
This summer, the Big Ten 
created a coalition against 
hate and racism with members 
from every school in response 
to the police killing of George 
Floyd. 

But this June, amid the 

Black Lives Matter protests, 
Briana Nelson felt she needed 
to do more than protest.

The senior track athlete 

created Wolverines Against 
Racism (WAR), a student-
led group within Michigan 
athletics focused on student-
athletes coming together to 
use their unique platforms 
to help fight against social 
injustice.

“My ultimate goal would 

be for members of WAR to 
essentially go out and be the 
change,” Nelson said. “There’s 
a great variety of people we 
have. We have coaches, we 
have 
student-athletes, 
we 

have support staff members 
and there’s a lot of different 
members and each person 
has a unique opportunity to 
use their platform because 
everybody 
has 
different 

followers.”

As a track and field athlete at 

Michigan, Nelson recognized 
she has a platform that most 
don’t — and she planned on 
using it to make lasting change 

at the University.

After a conversation with 

a couple members of the 
administration 
she, 
along 

with fellow track athletes 
Jeryne 
Fish 
and 
Roland 

Amarteifio, hosted a “unity 
call” over Zoom with other 
Wolverines. Coaches, student-
athletes and support staff 
listened and shared their own 
experiences as Black student-
athletes expressed the many 
emotions they were feeling at 
the time. From there, the idea 
in Nelson’s head grew into a 
full-on plan.

“After that I felt really good 

about the community that 
we had and that space that 
we had created,” Nelson told 
The Daily in early August. 
“I felt that it should be an 
ongoing effort — not only 
just have a space to talk, but 
also a space to act, a space to 
create movement amongst my 
peers and staff that want to 
be involved and just create a 
continuous ongoing act that I 
felt was long overdue.”

On 
Juneteenth, 
Nelson 

hosted a second unity call, 
this time to help educate those 
on the call who might not 
know about the holiday and to 
discuss further ideas for what 
WAR could be. The positive 
responses and dialogue that 
came from that call affirmed 
both Nelson’s desire to start 
the 
organization 
and 
the 

importance 
of 
opening 
a 

communication among those 
interested in the cause.

“I think that we’re a lot 

stronger when we’re united,” 
Nelson said. “Everyone who’s 
interested has great ideas and 
wants to see change and that’s 
why they’re a part of it, but as 
we come together the effort 
will be a lot stronger.”

Nearly every varsity sport 

at Michigan had an athlete 
attend one of the unity calls, 
from water polo to women’s 
basketball. 
Going 
forward, 

that breadth of involvement 
will be important for WAR 
to both continue and have 
its biggest impact. Because 
those 
athletes 
will 
have 

conversations 
with 
their 

teammates, 
their 
families, 

their coaches. 

And 
right 
now, 
most 

Michigan athletes are white. 
A lot grew up in communities 
lacking in diversity. Many 
play in sports with very little 
diversity at the college level. 

So, as the country begins to 

reckon with racial injustice, 
white Wolverines will, too. 
WAR helps bring the issue 
to a level relatable for those 
student-athletes by sharing 
the 
experiences 
of 
Black 

people in a way they didn’t get 
growing up. 

“Seeing 
that 
there’s 

representatives 
and 
there’s 

people interested from all 
these 
different 
teams,” 

Nelson said, “and knowing 
they’re going to go back and 
be a leader on their team and 
then educate and lead their 
teammates and then their 
teammates are going to go out 
— it’s a domino effect.”

KENT SCHWARTZ

Daily Sports Editor

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Briana Nelson felt inspired by the Black Lives Movement and began her own group at Michigan to fight racism.

Jacob Blake shooting spurs ‘M’ and 

EMU student athletes to protest

As droves of spirit wear-

clad Michigan and Eastern 
Michigan 
student-athletes 

marched through downtown 
Ann Arbor, senior defensive 
back Hunter Reynolds and 
Eastern 
Michigan 
junior 

linebacker 
Tariq 
Speights 

belted 
“Say 
His 
Name” 

through their megaphones. 

A second passed, and then 

the names George Floyd and 
Jacob Blake rose from the 
crowd with equal emotion 
and equal volume.

Until 
Aug. 
23, 
when 

Blake was shot by police in 
Kenosha, Wis., the response 
to Reynold’s and Speight’s 
call 
would 
have 
been 
a 

resounding “George Floyd.” 
Instead, there was confusion 
over which name to chant. 

There have been so many 

names. 
That’s 
emblematic 

of why Speights organized 
Sunday’s protest.

“Just seeing all the stuff on 

social media, it’s to the point 
where I’m past being tired 
of seeing the videos, seeing 
the hate that’s in our country 
against people of my skin 
color,” Speights said.

Speights 
organized 
the 

protest, and though he had 
attended numerous protests 
near his home in California, 
the 
Jacob 
Blake 
shooting 

galvanized him into leading 
one of his own. He knows he 
has a powerful voice, and he 

felt that the time had come to 
use it to a fuller extent.

“Everyone can use their 

platform 
today,” 
Speights 

said. “There’s a lot of student-
athletes in the crowd right 
now, and we have the unique 
ability 
to 
reach 
people 

because of what we do. In this 
age of social media, we have 
thousands of people, as soon 
as we post something, eyes on 
that post.”

Athletes, like many of those 

who marched Sunday, have 
thousands of eyes on what 
they do and what they post. 
Speights wants to make sure 
they use their voices for good.

“Organizing 
it 
took 

a 
conversation 
with 

(Reynolds),” Speights said. 
“We 
just 
put 
together 

something, put it on social 
media, and reached out to our 
teams.”

Nearing 
the 
end 
of 
a 

summer 
that 
saw 
almost 

constant 
protests 
across 

the country, Reynolds and 
Speights were delighted to see 
how ready their teammates 
and fellow student-athletes 
were to join the cause.

Each 
athlete 
has 
their 

individual following — up to 
thousands on social media — 
but those are amplified when 
combined with the followings 
of other athletes, especially 
as many as marched on Aug. 
30. 

The 
number 
of 
people 

currently protesting social 
issues 
could 
be 
mind-

numbing, 
but 
Sunday’s 

protest is better thought of 
as an extension of Speights’s 
philosophy for using his own 
voice.

“If you’re able to influence 

one person, that one person 
could go influence someone 
else,” Speights said. “So you 
can really end up influencing 
a lot of people for change just 
by influencing one person.”

Almost 
anyone 
with 

social media accounts has 
seen the hashtags promoted 
by 
those 
whom 
Speights 

echoes. They’ve seen other 
names, 
names 
he 
doesn’t 

want to get lost. They’ve 
seen 
#AhmaudArbery, 

#BreonnaTaylor 
and 

#ElijahMcClain. 
They’ve 

seen 
#GeorgeFloyd, 
and, 

most recently, they’ve seen 
#JacobBlake.

The promulgators of those 

hashtags have been affecting 
change for months now with 
the goal of dismantling all 
forms of systemic oppression, 
and the change Speights is 
trying to inspire resembles 
that which people have heard 
about on repeat since George 
Floyd’s death in May. 

Speights’ 
various 

motivations for organizing 
Sunday’s 
protest 
— 

increasing voter turnout and 
education, 
ending 
housing 

segregation 
and 
police 

brutality, promoting equality 
in education — may seem 
separate, but the purpose 
boils down to the words of 
another chant he led:

“No more hashtags.”

JACOB COHEN
Daily Sports Writer

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Eastern Michigan linebacker Tariq Speights helped organize a Black Lives Matter protest in Ann Arbor Sunday.

T 

ariq Speights has 
been a Black man 
in America for 20 
years. That’s 20 

years of living the pain inflicted by 
prejudice — the pain of living in a 
country where 
he never feels 
fully welcome, 
where he’s 
constantly 
judged by the 
color of his 
skin.

The pain, he 

says, has been 
a constant in 
his life. But on 
Sunday after-
noon in Ann Arbor, Speights did 
something he never thought he’d 
have the chance to do.

He stood in the shadow of the 

Hatcher Graduate Library with a 
white megaphone in his left hand 
and began speaking.

“It doesn’t matter what we look 

like, what we do, where we come 
from,” Speights said. “Everyone 
can use their platform today.”

It’s a message aimed at everyone 

who, someday, may be in his shoes. 
On Sunday, hundreds gathered 
in the Diag in solidarity, hoisting 
signs and donning t-shirts with 
messages of support. Speights had 
been in groups like that before, 
protesting in his hometown of 
Santa Clarita, Calif. But he’d never 
been the one to take the mega-
phone and demand change.

Now, Speights, a linebacker at 

Eastern Michigan, sees his role 
changing in real time. And he sees 
that change because he’s a college 
athlete in a time when college ath-
letes have an unprecedented voice, 
whether that’s fighting racial 
inequality or fighting for their 

rights as athletes.

“Any protest, any people stand-

ing up and speaking on what they 
care about is important, but for 
me, it hit a little different, it being 
student-athlete led and I’m a 
student-athlete,” Speights said of 
Sunday’s protest. “So yeah, that 
was huge and to see how many of 
my teammates, how many Michi-
gan student-athletes came out, 
it’s big. Us student-athletes have a 
unique ability to be able to touch 
people. So being able to get people 
to come out for who we are and not 
as much of what we do is big.” 

Over the summer, college ath-

letes’ voices dominated the land-
scape of American social media 
in a way they never had been 
before. When George Floyd was 
murdered by a Minneapolis police 

officer, college athletes spoke out, 
demanding change. When the Big 
Ten canceled fall sports, college 
athletes spoke out, demanding 
transparency from the conference. 
When other conferences threat-
ened to follow suit, college athletes 
spoke out, demanding comprehen-
sive safety protocol.

Six miles away from Speights’s 

Eastern Michigan, Hunter Reyn-
olds was one of those athletes dis-
covering his voice.

Reynolds, a senior cornerback at 

Michigan, understands the voice 
playing for the Wolverines gives 
him. Even as someone with lim-
ited playing time in his three years 
in Ann Arbor, he has the ingrained 
influence that comes with wearing 
the winged helmet.

“Due to social media, you’re 

just seeing it more because there’s 
been numerous incidents over 
the course of the summer where 
something’s happened and a 
player’s just tweeted something 
out and the tweet ends up with 
50,000 likes and 10,000 retweets,” 
Reynolds told The Daily on Sat-
urday night. “In 2005, if a college 
athlete spoke about something, 
they were really just limited to the 
local press.”

For Reynolds, that’s meant 

sharing the struggles he faces as 
a Black man in America in a way 
he never has before. This sum-
mer, he founded College Athlete 
Unity, a group of Michigan play-
ers demanding an end to racial 
injustice.

So when Speights reached out 

to him earlier this month with the 

idea of an athlete-led protest fol-
lowing the police shooting of Jacob 
Blake, an unarmed Black man in 
Kenosha, Wis., Reynolds knew 
there was a unique opportunity at 
hand.

“(Speights) felt it was important 

to host something where we keep 
the conversation going and let peo-
ple know that Black men and Black 
women being killed by police isn’t 
normal,” Reynolds said. “Things 
shouldn’t just go on as normal. And 
he reached out to me and once he 
described what he wanted to do, I 
was all in for it.”

For other student-athletes at 

both Michigan and Eastern Michi-
gan, the message resonated. Alexis 
Alston, a freshman on the Eagles’ 
soccer team, was one of them.

All summer, she had protested 

in her hometown of Amherst, 
Ohio. But as soon as she heard 
rumblings of Sunday’s protest, 
she knew it had the potential to be 
special.

“A lot of people are inspired and 

look up to college athletes and it’s 
important for them to also know 
they have a voice,” Alston said, 
walking down Liberty Street amid 
chants of “No justice, No peace.” 
“And people will listen to it. Com-
ing from a college athlete, more 
people are bound to listen and take 
note of what they say.”

On Sunday, that was the mes-

sage of the day. Really, for these 
athletes, it’s been the message of 
the summer. And watch out, Reyn-
olds says, because the next time 
Michigan Stadium is packed with 
110,000 people, it’s still going to 
be the message — even if he hasn’t 
decided what form that’s going to 
take.

“Anything that’s done, it’s seen 

by millions of people,” Reynolds 
said. “So due to that, any messag-
ing that we have has an opportu-
nity to fall upon many eyes.”

Four years ago, when Colin 

Kaepernick was blackballed by 
the NFL for kneeling during the 
national anthem, doing the same 
would have been unthinkable for 
most college athletes.

But on Sunday, Reynolds wore 

an image of Kaepernick kneeling, 
his afro replaced by the outline of a 
Black Lives Matter fist. And as he 
and so many other athletes made 
their voices heard, the unthinkable 
felt within reach.

Mackie can be reached at 

tmackie@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @theo_mackie.

Student-athletes are finding their voice

THEO
MACKIE

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Michigan defensive back Hunter Reynolds leads a student athlete Black Lives Matter protest throughout Ann Arbor Sunday afternoon.

