Jim Brown invited top athletes to Cleveland to talk about the war in Vietnam.
In 1967, some of the nation's top black athletes came to Cleveland to support Muhammad Ali: Front row: Bill Russell, Ali, Jim Brown, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor). Back row: Mayor Carl Stokes, Walter Beach, Bobby Mitchell, Sid Williams, Curtis McClinton, Willie Davis, Jim Shorter and John Wooten. The on-again, off-again, on-again so-called summit among free agents LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire and Joe Johnson is a reminder of the last time professional athletes got together on an issue that made a change.
The summit expected to happen before July 1 could change the landscape of the NBA. Because of salary-cap restrictions, no more than two of the free agents could play on the same team. It was Wade who first brought up this idea for the group to meet and discuss their futures.
This possible meeting could change the face of the NBA for years to come. For example, the promise of Bosh and James on one team could influence an owner and or GM to hire the coach Bosh and James wanted.
Not only could a team with Wade and Stoudemire make the Miami Heat an instant contender, but could that force the Heat brass to make other moves demanded by Stoudemire and Wade?
What about the balance of power in the league if all of the top free agents played in the same conference or even in the same division?
Is the upcoming so-called summit about power or money?
In 1967, Jim Brown brought some of the top names in sports together here in Cleveland for a different reason: to show solidarity in support of Muhammad Ali's decision as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Willie Davis and others listened to Ali's reasons why he would not fight in the unjust war. Their meeting was not about increasing income. This summit, unlike the one proposed by Wade, provided the kind of symbolism many Americans needed who also objected to the war.
Brown said in an ESPN.com interview four years ago:
That was a situation that had to be addressed. I was the president of the Black Economic Union, John Wooten was my executive director. I called John from London and told him to contact all of the top black athletes from around the country and have them meet Ali in Cleveland so we could discuss his situation with the draft. They all showed up and we had about a three-hour meeting with him [Ali] in the back room of my office in Cleveland. [We] realized that he was very sincere in his position and that because of his religion, he was not going to go into the Army and we backed him. … It was a very wonderful thing to have these young players not worry about risking their careers, but getting the right information from the horse's mouth so that they could make judgment on this man's action.
The so-called free agent summit will have as much star power as the Ali Summit, but the scope of that meeting appears limited to only a game.
Maybe the change these players seek will go beyond their economic increase.
Now that would be a change, and a reminder of a social consciousness past.