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The Johnny Bright Incident

Back in the day on October 20th, 1957, the Johnny Bright Incident occurred. During a college football game, a white player named Wilbanks Smith from Oklahoma A&M broke the jaw of Johnny Bright, a talented African-American halfback/quarterback from Drake University. Taking place in the first seven minutes of the game at Lewis Field in Oklahoma, the violent attack underscored the racist tensions of the times. The Des Moines Register reported that the Oklahoma Aggies coach instructed his players with a racial epithet during practice to get Bright. A photographic sequence of the incident that went on to win a Pulitzer Prize was also published in the paper and showed the assault to be an intentional and late hit. Unfortunately for Bright, the injury ended his promising season which could have resulted in him being the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy.

Bright would later be drafted by the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and stood poised to become the first black athlete in the league, but chose to play in Canada instead knowing that more “incidents” awaited him in the U.S. Back then, Rush Limbaugh would have fit it just fine as an NFL owner.

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history