Major support for Cleveland Summit Two, Get the Guys Together Again provided by the NFL Foundation and the Cleveland Browns.

Additional major support by the Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Philadelphia Eagles, and Seattle Seahawks.

Additional support by Linda Alvarado, Everett Glenn, Jason Licht, Cyrus Mehri, The Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, the Buffalo Bills, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Presidio Consulting.

I was invited here by Mr.

Jim Brown and a few more great athletic dignitaries to be in a little discussion with them and what I heard on the news, as far as my reason of coming here and my coming here.

I understand from Mr.

Jim Brown the way it was promoted, it was false.

But I imagine Mr.

Jim Brown, the greatest football player in all history, would have a few words to say.

Thank you Champ.

Well, gentlemen, after an announcement in the press which was false, that we group of athletes would be here today to persuade the champ to go to the Army.

After this false statement, we were very fortunate that the champ decided not to pay that any attention and to come in and to see what the real issue was Well, basically John Wooten did all of the work.

Of course, he conferred with me in London and but of course he made all the contacts and did all the very hard work.

In the corner of Cleveland, Ohio, stands a monument to a historic but often overlooked moment in the Civil Rights movement.

In 1967, Mohammad Ali refused the draft into the Vietnam War, standing on his strong faith.

He lost his championship title, was expelled from boxing, and faced imprisonment.

However, Jim Brown, the legendary Cleveland Browns running back, refused to allow Ali to stand alone, calling on their brotherhood of athletes and activists to stand up on his behalf because Jim said, the champ needs our help.

Get the guys and tell them we'll meet Saturday night in Cleveland.

Together, these men gave Ali the public support he needed to fight for his freedom.

Today, 58 years later, old and new voices joined together in Cleveland to speak again that there is nothing in the world more important than people.

That hasn't changed.

We owe it to the American people to establish the new code of conduct.

Let us see each other as we really are.

The first time around, it was all the celebrities, the big names, the big star athletes.

And today we had a mixture of everyone in the room.

And I think that's really special as we think about our collective power to use grassroots efforts to advance our community and our overall progress.

So really, I'm happy and honored to be a part of the “Cleveland Summit II: Get The Guys Together Again” Let's talk about what brings us here today, right.

So the 1967 Cleveland Summit brought together athletes who took a stand during a pivotal moment in history.

How do you view us being here today and the legacy of that summit?

Jimmy, how can owners and teams support that kind of courage now in today's environment?

Yeah, that's a great question.

My wife has in her office and there were a lot of participants, but she has the captured four of them or the picture captures for them.

And it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali.

And not just four of the most famous athletes at that time, but of any time, and for them to take their time to work to change things for the better of the country, I think, speaks words.

And I really think our modern day athlete needs to look at that type of thing more.

They didn't just shoot out something on social media.

They came to Cleveland.

They met and they worked.

And one of the there's owning a pro sports franchise is a great privilege, a great privilege.

But the best part of it, Michele is the people you get to meet And somebody I did interview beforehand and said one word to describe John Wooten, and I said, passion.

Whenever John sends me a note that, “hey, I'd like to talk.” I think, okay, it's serious.

He's going to take a long time and it's something he cares about deeply.

And and we have great conversations.

And in football jargon, John lives life the same way he played football.

He gets his uniform dirty.

He cares about what he does.

It's also one of the other great privilege we have was getting to know the great Jim Brown.

And I had grown up in the southeast.

I started watching football in the 60s.

There were only eight NFL teams then.

There was one game on on.

It was at 1:00.

My dad was a huge New York Giants fan.

I was not particularly a Browns fan, but I always wanted to watch their games because Jim was so much better than everybody else.

And when we bought the team 10 or 12 years ago, Jim was out of favor with the previous owners, and he and Monique met D and I for dinner one night and I thought it was going to be about an hour.

Ended up talking 3 or 4 hours, and I saw what a quality guy was.

And it's just been a great was a great privilege to know him during the time that we owned the Browns before his untimely death a couple of years ago.

So you own three teams?

Yes, maam.

So you are, well steeped in professional sports across across the industry in this particular time as we navigate all of this social political unrest, how do you view sports as being able to help advance social justice and support communities?

Yeah, I think the the best thing that sports can do and it can do a lot of things.

But the great unifier is if I'm sitting with somebody and beside somebody in the dog pound here in Cleveland, I don't care who they voted for or what they do or what they like or what they don't like.

All I know we have in common is we're rooting like crazy for the Browns to win.

And I think sports are a tremendous unifier.

I think they are great at bringing communities together.

We are blessed here in Cleveland, which is a, you know, a good size town.

But it's not New York where you live to have a baseball team, the Guardians, a basketball team, the Cavs, and a football team, the Browns.

And this is a great sports community.

Football started here in Northeast Ohio.

Paul the great Paul Brown is from Massillon, which is about 30 or 40 minutes from here.

So sports can be and I think will be a great unifier for our country and for our communities.

Could you talk about the feeling you had when Jim called you initially and said, hey, John, I'm need you to get these guys together so that we could talk with the champ.

It's a feeling that I really have today that we had at that time.

When Jim called and said that he had just got off the phone with Herbert Muhammad, who was the manager of Cassius at that time, the champ, we felt that because the champ had supported us with NIEU It was no shock or surprise to get a check $10,000 from the champ.

And consequently, when he started to support NIEU moving forward.

And that is what created that relationship that we needed to support him.

They had taken away his championship and his passport, and there's no question in my mind they were intending to put him in jail or prison, as a draft dodger.

Back in those days, the draft dodger was a federal offense, and that is why the call to arms, to meet him, to sit with him and talk with him.

The majority of us, Jim is a captain in the US Army through the ROTC Willie Davis had been in the service.

Bobby Mitchell had been in the service.

We had served our time through the National Guards and so forth.

So when we called, when he said, call the guys, he didn't give me not one single name, but I knew who he was talking about.

And that's how all that came about.

If we could come now to to you, Kim and Margo, both of your fathers were there, Jim Brown, Curtis McClinton, could you talk a little bit about what you've heard about that day, the stories you've heard about that day and that movement from your father's, whoever would like to begin?

What I remember most is the respect that the fellas had for each other, and how they all came together to help a friend.

They had, you know, teamwork on the field as well as off the field.

And that was powerful.

You know, I realized that you can do anything when you have the power of your community or your family and your friends working on the for one purpose.

And it encouraged me to hear them come to the house, all these giants of a man coming to our house.

And it made me realize that, you know, they're just human beings and they want to help and give back because there was so much suffering and they were given a calling and they answered that call.

So it was always a pleasure as a, as a kid, because they were my dad would leave his door wide open and people would just come walking through and go on the refrigerator, help themselves.

And that was his way.

That was that made him happy to be surrounded by people.

So it was definitely an impact.

And I felt a responsibility, you know, to help others as well to in whatever small way that I possibly could.

But it was always a happy situation.

Even when Muhammad Ali showed up at the house and we took a picture together and we were all just smiling so big in the picture, because Ali was kidding around and joking and making everybody feel good.

So I have a good feeling and good times.

And I met quite a few of the fellas and I'm very honored to be here today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Kim.

Margo.

Thank you Kim.

I remember hearing about the passion and the sense of commitment.

My father was the son of the first black state senator in Kansas.

So he understood standing up for what you believed in.

And I remember hearing I got the call and there was no question he was good friends with John Wooten.

And they worked so hard on the Black Economic Union.

And we're very proud to this day that the Black Economic Union is still standing in Kansas City.

And so their work and their legacy continues on today.

And I remember being up in Massachusetts and walking into a poster store, and they had the famous picture, framed.

And dad goes, “There I am right there.” So it was the first time it clicked what a huge deal it was for them to make that stand.

So, counselor, we come to you.

So the first General Council of the Black Economic Union, I don't know that many people know when they look at the picture, Margo, that you're describing, that the foundation of that picture are a number of people who were committed to finding ways to strengthen economic foundation in the black community, and that's what the Black Economic Union was all about.

It was essentially at the forefront of that picture in that movement.

I'd like to come to you, sir, to talk a little bit about your work there as General Counsel, what the Economic Union was about, how it was both a financial movement, but a social and community movement.

Sure.

The Black Economic Union, as John said, grew from the NIEU And I had the the fortune to have incorporated the BEU as it was created and the purpose of the Black Economic Union was to, in fact, help economically small black businesses and ultimately got involved in housing.

But that picture alone doesn't truly express what the Black Economic Union stood for.

And you have to tie that into the decade of the 60s, because one one can certainly argue, I would argue that the 60s represents America at its finest.

It represents black folks at their strongest.

When you consider that, that's when the sit ins began.

That's when the movement really started the march on Washington.

And ultimately you ended up with the Civil Rights Act being passed, the Voting Rights Act being passed.

All that happened in the 60s.

And so therefore I say that the 60s, which was the time when BEU was getting started and was at the soul of it, as I think about that picture and I hear John tell stories of calling everybody, getting them together, and that seems to me a masterclass of networking and utilizing networks.

And so I come to you.

I mean, that's your expertise.

Can you talk a little bit about about that?

I cannot even begin to tell you how lucky I was at 22 years old, having come to Cleveland from New York.

I'm 22 and 1967, and this occurs in my life.

And I'm looking at this event.

I'm looking at the brothers around the table again.

I'm in the peanut gallery.

I'm not there.

But it was very public.

And I'm going in the quiet of my own mind.

Wow, this is unity.

This is collaboration.

This is what human relations are about.

This is what has to happen in our culture.

And here I am observing.

And as I look back over my life, as I'm preparing to write my autobiography, this is one of the two things that occurred in my life that informed my entire life.

I happened to get it just at the right time, from the right models and the right people.

It went deep into my subconscious mind, just observing it and experiencing the impact that it had.

Because without impact, there is no change.

And change is important.

If you're not changing, you're choosing.

These brothers decided we are going to make this change happen or facilitated.

I'm in the peanut gallery observing this behavior from what are now giants in our culture, as this moment is a giant moment in my life.

One of the things that informed my life to write about, to give my life and to speak about all over the world.

The power of the human connection, the power of the human connection.

So this was a profound experience in combination with my first experience, and it changed my life.

And it's one of the reasons I am who I am today, and I'm doing what I am doing today.

Speaking.

Writing about the power of unity, collaboration, importance of relationships, relationships, relationships.

There is no success that you can attain, sustain or maintain on your own by yourself in a vacuum.

All right.

This is doubly and profoundly true when it comes to us.

And so I want to turn to you, Mr.

Bashir, if we could.

All right.

So you've done so, we talked you know, we're talking in the greenroom You've done so much work with youth.

You've done work with youth football with youth and boxing, with youth in all sorts of respects.

Work in Flint, Michigan, with youth.

Thinking about the youth, how do you think something like this 1967 day, this meeting, the pictures, the stand, the courage it took, how does that speak to the youth?

Looking back and coming forward, When I was a young man.

And before I get too far, I was still in the peanut gallery with Frazier, but he didn't see me.

Okay, because many things he said.

He's very articulate.

He can say much better than me, but I felt you from the heart, and it was like you were speaking for me.

And I appreciate you and I pray that God bless you to continue.

I was looking for something.

I was a hopeless person that only had had schooling education.

I didn't have a full year of school in my life.

Until I was 12 years old when I came from Mississippi, a dirt farmer, my daddy, in 1950 who came to Michigan and came and got us in 1951.

We didn't have a television because we had seven of us children, and my dad had just got laid off from a place called Chevrolet and General Motors.

So we were suffering.

We didn't have anything.

And so I'm going to school like patches, really very little hand-me-downs and so forth and so on.

And I saw Jim Brown playing the Cotton Bowl from a friend.

They had a television.

We didn't have one, and Jim Brown did them in that day.

And boy, it resonated with me.

Jim Brown was my guy at that time when that happened.

It was amazing to me because I hadn't ever seen in my life.

12 black men with an attorney come together for anything perfectly.

I had never seen nothing like that and it was earthshaking to me.

I cant I cannot find any adjectives or anything like that to describe how I felt at that time as a young man.

That's two years difference between me and John Wooten.

He's 88 and I'm 86.

We were right there, and when I was called to be at this summit and I thank God for asking me because I had no idea that I would be called.

But when that happened, I said, wow, there was a hope for me because of what we were suffering as a people.

They put Muhammad Ali, another one of my guys, along with Jim Brown for his stint.

They put him and taken him away.

But my top guys was John Wooten because his stand, because that's all I knew at that time when he called him together and he was leading block, when Jim Brown turned that corner, it was John Wooten knocking him down, and Jim Brown would drag him in the end zone.

If you back, then you know what I'm talking about.

And you know, John, because you were there, you were doing it okay.

And you stop me and you make sure you tell them if I say anything false.

Okay.

And so when that happened, I'm looking forward and hoping, even though I didn't understand it, that this was the beginning of something new.

And going forward, we need a summit like this all over the country.

And I don't want to take up too much time because I haven't touched the surface on what's going on.

Where do we go from here?

Offer your wisdom please, Where do we go from here?

I know the statistics, but I also know the human spirit.

I know that if we work together, move together as a unit of all colors, I know that we can accomplish it.

I saw us do it in 1967 when we stood with Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, or whatever you want to call him at the time.

We did it then, and I felt that we can do it again with this summit.

That's why we wanted to come back to Cleveland and do it here in Cleveland.

And that's why I don't want us to get into any other numbers other than how do we come together as a people.

And save this country from the divisiveness that is involved right now?

That is what all of this is about to me Im ahead of my closing argument by talking right now.

But this is what it's all about.

I don't want us to break this panel without understanding that's what we're about.

That's what this whole thing means.

The moral compass.

That everyone has to know what is right to what is not right, and the respect for human dignity.

That's what we're about.

That's what we can do.

We are here for a couple of other panels to continue that legacy with a critical conversation rooted in one of the most important challenges we face today respect and human dignity.

I'm curious to hear from each of you what human dignity means to you and why it's so important, especially in today's state of affairs for freedom and democracy.

Human dignity is so important, and that's something that I feel there's not enough of today.

And what it means to me, it means respect and honor and grace for other human beings.

It means access to resources so that you can live well and live.

I mean, have food, shelter, education, all the resources that you need to live well for yourself, but also to contribute to society.

I think it's human dignity and respect for it is important for freedom and democracy because those things, once human dignity is suppressed or there's a lack of knowledge, then those other things are not possible.

So freedom means that you have access, equal access and have options to all of the resources we were talking about.

Democracy is having options.

And without the regard for human dignity, you won't have those things.

One of the things that I just talked about, a big line, is respect.

But I think even a bigger word is value.

How do you value the individual that you're dealing with?

And I think that's where we get lost in society here, because as African-American culture, we are not valued.

We're just out here, you know, when you look at it as as what we've done from an entertainment side to a sports side to an education side, it never i valued in today's world.

It's only if we do something bad in the street.

That's the value as seen.

And when you look at human dignity, it's about trying to really talk about the respect of the individual you're dealing with.

And if we could get a society to really build in and understand, don't look at my color, look at what I bring to the table.

We have a whole different concept.

And this whole thing about human dignity, we don't teach it anymore.

It's not a value of our politics.

It's not a value of our society.

It's not a value.

Money is the value.

Now power is the value.

Now, I certainly wish that human dignity had been written into the US Constitution.

It's not there.

And if it is, we ignore it because we're trying to get something out of it.

We, meaning whoever those people are, in positions of authority and positions of power, we make decisions nowadays.

Absent human dignity, we don't think about how they're going to affect other people.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And so often we look at how we treat people based on how we want them to be treated, and not think about how we would feel if we were treated the same way.

And as Kellen said, because we're not taught the basic principles of decency and respect, it's hard for people to internally see themselves as on the other side.

So oftentimes we do to others things that we would never do to ourselves or want done to ourselves.

And so what's not being taught and what's not being perpetuated are those types of characteristics that used to be a part of the fabric of humanity.

And so human decency no longer exists in the same manner, because humans have failed to remember that we are all human, and therefore we all need to be treated as such.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's not happening in our schools.

It's not happening anywhere.

How do we teach this next generation at this moment, in this time when it's not in anybody's curriculum?

I mean, what do we do?

So, you know, me and my wife homeschooled our kids, and we homeschooled them up until high school and then sent them to high school.

And the reason why we did that, and it was a sacrifice.

Yeah.

I'm not making light of it.

Anybody have kids?

Yeah, it is a sacrifice.

It is.

But my my youngest one, baby Sierra, I still call her baby Sierra.

She's not a baby anymore.

But that's what I call her.

She's always your baby.

Yeah, she's always my baby.

So maybe Sierra.

She started a summer enrichment program before she goes to high school, she's going to visit McNamara.

And so during the program, I guess somewhere the the topic of the Tulsa Race massacre came up, and she said, you know, a lot of the kids didn't know about what happened.

They told us race massacre.

Well, we taught them that at home, very young.

They had to write a book report about it.

They had to write a documentary about it.

And yes, it's because part of it is because I'm from Tulsa.

But the point of what I'm saying is that we have to teach our children at home.

We cannot rely on the school system to teach them about their own history.

Right.

So you have other groups that don't rely on the school system to tell their young people, whatever reality they want to tell them and to teach them at a young age.

And that is what we have to do.

The school system is not going to educate our kids properly.

Right.

And I want to just piggyback on that because I want to commend Etan and Kellan and other athletes and even this gathering, because the idea of athletes having a platform to utilize to begin to share these messages is so critical, because I think the value in even what happened in 1967 was that the athletic world gathered together with some of their giants, to address a societal problem where all you thought they could do was shoot a basketball and run and run for touchdowns.

I think today I appreciate folks like you, folks like you, who have used your platforms as a place of voice and bringing value to an audience that wants to hear about slam dunks and touchdowns.

But when you use your platform to impart truth and speak truth to power and values, and you're speaking to children that are very impressionable and want to hear from their heroes, but instead of just hearing about how can I do a crossover dribble, I learned how to advance myself academically, educationally, through technology, through Stem, through all the things that I need to learn, including my history.

I think that that's part of why today's gathering is so significant, because, again, we're bringing the guys back together to reclaim a stage and a platform where we can speak.

We as athlete supporters, we who are involved with athletes, who support athletes can say, you all continue to do what you're doing because it's far more than what you do on the field.

What you do off the field that speaks to our children, speaks to our culture and speaks to our community.

We have to look at things in its totality.

And sometimes we look there's revisionist history sometimes.

So back in the 60s, when the athletes were, you know, in the summit, when they when Mohammad Ali made his stance and said that he's not going to go to the war when he was hanging out with Malcolm X, when he was talking about the white man and the way that he was not embraced by everybody, the way he is embraced now, now.

Right.

He wasn't embraced then.

You got to remember he was like public enemy number one, right.

And the way that John Carlos and Tommie Smith, you know, the iconic 1968 Olympics and everybody has that, the Black Power salute and everybody is talking about it.

And he's glowing terms.

That's not the way they were embraced after they did it in 1968 and they came back.

So I equate that to in the present time.

You know, Kyrie Irving went through a little bit of an issue a few a few years when he shared a link that made a lot of mainstream America very upset.

He wasn't embraced, wasn't supported.

Everybody kind of pushed him to the side.

So you have those those those pioneers that are kind of standing alone.

And I think that what we need to do as a society is it's easy to support people after the fact when everything is kind of calmed down.

And now you could look at them in a, in a different type of a symbol that you created that is not as offensive and everything like that to mainstream America.

The important thing in the that would really help is to have that support when they're in the middle moment, you know what I mean?

We do.

Our roof was banned from the for the NBA for it, you know, not wanting to stand for national anthem.

And he prayed when Craig Hodges was blackballed for the NBA because he because he gave because he gave Bush a letter, which is like how could that be offensive to give somebody a letter to the white House.

But those are the times when athletes really need more support.

So human dignity and higher education.

We just talked about the fact that, you know, this is not showing up in school and all the things.

How are the two connected?

Well, first of all, you have to start with one of the basic human rights is education.

Free education.

Yes.

And so when you're talking about human dignity and access to resources, improving oneself to then later improve the community that we're in, then you're talking about advancing into higher education.

So dignity, respect, resources elevating, uplift, it's all related and higher ed is at the top of that, knowledge is power.

Knowledge is power.

Yeah, money is power.

But knowledge is too well you get the money with the education.

Exactly the knowledge.

So that's how its tied in.

And then also, you know, we have to we have to be able to compete on a world front now.

Yeah.

Yes we do.

You know.

And there's not enough education is declining.

We're behind on a lot of the big time.

And so dignity and being able to thrive and succeed.

It's under attack.

Yeah.

It's under siege.

All right.

Callen, coming to you.

So we work together a lot on the FDA.

Yes.

And we know that, you know, our efforts are really focused around helping advance inclusion across the league.

How do you think the league, professional football and all of the people in and around it can help us with this human dignity and respect?

Movement messaging.

Nobody has a bigger platform than the National Football League.

It's just be honest about it.

I love baseball, I, I grew up watching hockey, going to hockey games in Saint Louis, I love basketball.

Some of my, you know, greatest athletes in the world are basketball players.

But that messaging from the NFL and when they are clear and they do not succumb to threats from outside powers, that this is something that's good for everybody, that we have open opportunity.

And yes, it's the ultimate game of whether or not you're good enough or not.

So we need to we need to use the league to help us with messaging and kind of getting the word out there about this is how we become a better place.

This is how we can control messages about human dignity, because this is what we do.

We treat our individuals who are involved in this game with human dignity.

Yes, the world is competitive, but the more people we have with the ability to compete, the more competitive we become as a nation.

In every industry that we do.

I'm sitting here and my brain is just processing all of the tidbits and insights of information you shared.

I've heard that we have a lot of work to do.

I want us to each think about what each person sitting up there and around here, what each of us can do individually leaving here in spite of all the things to help improve dignity and respect in our own communities where we live and navigate every day.

So I'm going to ask each of you to share your thoughts again.

Call to action for everybody sitting here on a personal level.

So I want to start with you.

It's what I said earlier.

We have to model ourselves.

We have to model it.

We have to be out there talking about it and bring people back to the basic.

We are human beings with basic human rights that we're fighting for.

Turn off the TV.

Turn off the TV.

Turn it off!

Stop scrolling.

Right, turn off the TV and stop scrolling.

There are people out there trying to influence you because they want you to do something that benefits them.

They are not out there for your benefit.

Do your own homework.

Go back to the basics that you were raised with as a child.

Yeah, everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten.

Act on it.

Yeah.

Joseph, see the best in yourself and look for the best in others.

I think so many times we operate from a place of extreme negativity.

And if I can look at myself and see the hope within myself, the possibilities within myself, and be positive about my future, even with all the things around me that may be against me.

If I can believe in myself and then hope the best to see the best in other people and treat them as such, at least in my small world, I can begin to create something that is beautiful because I think we live in a world now.

We're being negative and being diminutive and bringing people down is the norm.

And so I would encourage everybody to shift from shade to shine, I think that.

Doctor Brian just said it earlier today.

I said, you got to treat people like they want to be treated.

And that's where I grew up.

And and I think that's what the world needs to look at, because we don't treat everybody like we should be treated.

And I think on top of that, I would add, is that we should improve our messaging.

Don't just stop.

Don't just start with one thing, you know, continue to bring that messaging out on a regular basis.

So I'll close with something that my mother would always say to us.

We were younger and it was a phrase she always used.

She said, you have to know who not to listen to.

You have to know who not to listen to, not to listen to like that.

So it's not that necessarily that social media or the TV is bad.

It's what you're looking at on social media and who you're watching on TV that you might not need to watch.

Now, there's a lot of positivity.

There's a lot of motivational people that are that are teaching about your culture, teach them about educating the things that are not being taught.

All of those things exist on social media.

But then there's also that other side that exists.

So you have to know who not to listen to.

And I think that is a key thing through life you're going to have for young people.

You're going to have teachers that literally you have to know not to listen to them.

When they tell you that you're not good enough, they tell you that you're not going to be able to make it, or you're not going to be able to go here.

You have a guidance counselor that says, okay, you can't make it here.

So you should think of, you know, whatever.

You have to know that you can't listen to them.

You have to look at your friends or the people close to you, because sometimes the haters are the people closest to you.

You know what I mean?

Theyre the ones that don't want to see.

So you got to know that you can't listen to them, right?

You know, you got to know that when you see the images of of yourself that are, that are perpetuated throughout society on whether it's the music or whether it's the, you know, I'm gearing up towards girls because I have young girls.

You have to know that's not who you are.

That might be what they're pushing.

That might be what they're telling you that you have to be in order to be successful in in life.

And those images that, that you're seeing or whether you have to be half naked, you have to be vulgar, you have to have them.

And that's what they're pushing to our young girls.

But you have to know you can't listen to that.

You know what I mean?

So.

So in all aspects, I can go down the list with everything.

You have to know who not to listen to.

As we come to the close of today's powerful summit, we turn our attention to what's next.

This final panel focuses on the strategies and systems that will carry us forward, rooted in legacy, driven by action, and committed by lasting change.

I'd like to start with a general question of how far you think we've come since the 1967 summit and what you each think we have to really focus on to move forward.

I know that wasn't quite in the script, but based on what I'm hearing today, this is what I'm kind of being called to ask all of you, given your really important roles across your institutions.

Sure.

So, you know, I think I think we have come some ways forward in 1967.

You had no black man, had been named a starting quarterback prior to the beginning of a season.

You didn't have any.

Well, since Fritz Pollard, you had no black head coaches.

I think you had 1 or 2 black executives in the National Football League.

So you had you had moved to the point where there was there was some integration, but in the thinking positions, in the decision making positions, you know, you were nowhere.

So so I think that the fact that we have moved forward in those circumstances is something that that is worth noting, celebrating to some degree.

But we look over and over again, you know, the coaching situation, which is something I spend a lot of time talking about.

You know, we've done a lot, and Troy has been a tremendous asset in pushing these initiatives, but we still really haven't made any progress when it comes to the offensive coordinator.

And that is the most critical position in order to get to a head coach.

And so so why is that and what are the challenges there?

So, you know, there's still much work to be done.

When I think about it in reference to sort of the worlds where I spend my time, but I do try to recognize and celebrate that that certainly progress has been made.

I like that I'd agree with Jim a lot on progress, and I think sometimes we want progress to kind of work in a straight line.

But obviously if you look at the time from 1967 to now, there's been peaks and valleys, ups and downs.

What I think is so important about what happened in 1967 is these athletes realize the platform that they had and the power that they had for change.

So that's something in our organization with the Browns and with the NFL that is really, really important to our ownership group.

We have this spotlight on us 24 seven, 365 days a year.

Sometimes that, spotlight's like too much for me because I work in the com space.

It's really about the power that you have to make an impact across our country.

And I feel like more and more our players and our organizations need to understand that, and they need to always use it for the power of good.

I think we've come light years from where the model that the 67 summit was the catalyst for athlete activism.

And you look at today, Jim referenced it.

Just who's in the landscape from not just participating.

You know, you look at the job opportunities or career opportunities across the football ecosystem, the advancement of women, which nobody still doesn't get, the exposure and the awareness that it is just, you know, there was a saying when I first came in in the early 90s, the closer you get to the playing field, the least opportunity they are for women.

And you just look at the advancement of women in the sport of football has just been tremendous.

And I would just say it's a time for us to slow down so that we can speed back up again.

Just listening to the panelists, seeing what's happening in the space.

And then what is our role as a sport?

Right.

Because we are in the business of football.

So I think it was for me and it was bigger than football.

With all due respect, it was a catalyst for an economic movement.

I see Muhammad Ali, I see a variety of men who worked in.

They were in sports, some were in sports from were political figures, but it was the black Economic union, and it was about economic mobility.

And I think as I move into my next phase, it is about economic mobility in the for me, in the black community, working with everyone, you're working with the broader community to to give opportunities, particularly to black business owners and to encourage our youth to go into business.

So that's kind of where I see being intentional about that of, of not just it's wonderful to work for someone and to to move up the corporate ladder, but owning your own business and really impact our community.

I think that was part of the message of what the summit was saying ownership, how do we advance and that sort of thing.

Jim Brown and John Wooten stressed, you know, back then, communities needing to build an economic base.

Question is for you on that topic, what do you think that your organizations or what we can do in our communities to help with that economic empowerment and economic mobility?

I know a lot of you.

I know the Browns are doing great things in the community.

The NFL is doing great things in the community.

But specifically as we think about, like you said, that entrepreneurial readiness, financial awareness and things of that nature, thoughts from any of you around what we can do to strengthen the economic power base that Jim and John were really focused on, you know, earlier on when they came together that first time, what I would say, and I wish some of the children from Cleveland State were here earlier, J. Edgar Hoover said there are there will not be any more Black Messiahs.

So I've always felt with the people that I'm standing on their shoulders, like George Frazier, his his famous saying when I met him 20 years ago and asked him to come help us at the Call and Post newspaper, it was each one must reach one and teach one.

So I would say start with the person in the mirror.

We don't need to follow that one person.

Be the leader that you would follow.

I would say take control of yourself and your family.

That's what we do in our family.

We we help each other.

Those that have problems, we solve them to use the word what's out there now when you're acting ratchet, we get that out of the family.

We're all born and we know right and wrong, right?

So do the right thing.

When you talk to younger people, listen to what they have to say, what you talk about with human dignity.

Everybody has value.

Everybody's important.

Listen to them.

Support their dreams.

Give them that voice.

There's no monolithic leader in the black community, and I don't think we need one.

Right.

There are leaders in industry, their leaders in business, their political leaders, their leaders in nonprofits.

And we need to collaborate with everyone because our success only enhances the success of the whole.

And that's a message that everyone doesn't want us to know that when we collaborate.

And I'm talking about in terms of business, in terms of politics, we can change the trajectory of the broader community.

Because when I'm talking about we black folk are part of the broader community.

So when we rise, you rise, right?

I want to ask each of you, what keeps you inspired?

What keeps you inspired as you think about the future?

I'm going to turn it over to you first, Jim.

Well, I think you know what what we were saying when you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, it was different than the movement of the 60s.

And, you know, my kids were in the streets in Washington, D.C.

they were students.

Georgetown.

You know, I would like to believe that my family would have done that 50 years ago.

But I think there was reticence.

I think we were more afraid as folks who I think were tried to be pretty good allies.

That was not the that was not the case with with my children.

They were out there.

They've been been part of this.

And, and I think that that the idea that we talk a lot about the challenges young people are facing and they're real and we have to talk about them.

But there is something about their willingness to to show love and compassion for each other in a way that that is unbridled and, and, you know, isn't, isn't bought into some of the stereotypes that I think our generation holds.

So that's something that I think is extremely helpful.

Yeah, I just say I'm really excited about like two things.

We talk about the next generation.

We see a lot in our kids.

I have two boys, one just graduated from college.

He's headed to grad school.

I have a younger one that's a junior in college.

And just to know the world that they are going to be in, there are great challenges that they need to face.

When I hear my boys and their group of friends talk about what they want to do, we hear a lot about the bad.

But there are a lot of community leaders.

There are a lot of great organizations in Cleveland that want to do good at the Browns.

If you ask us what's way more than important what we do on Sundays, it's what we do in the community.

We've talked about education and how important it is for students to get quality educations.

That's something we at the Browns are really passionate about because to all of us, I think education is kind of the the key to our our, our, our kids and the next generations future.

So I'm I'm excited about that.

I love that excellent.

Easy for me.

I have 11 grandchildren today.

And I look at when I look at my granddaughters and grandsons, it's really about legacy, family legacy.

And I ask myself the question, I challenge you all.

What does your silence imply when you look yourself in the mirror?

Every single day is just you and the mirror.

What did your silence imply?

Awesome.

Thank you so much, Troy.

I'd say what I'm hearing is it's family and it's the youth.

So we talked about the negative, but there's so much positive.

And there is a, in a sense, mushy.

But there's a love quotient that I see with the younger people, and they're open and they're vulnerable and they will cross lines.

And I look at my adult- they're adults, my children are firm adults, they're starting their own businesses, theyre charting their own path.

And their friends are charting their own path.

But guess what?

They're giving back already.

So sometimes I'm like, you know, we didn't do too bad.

That's right.

Because they understand the value of community.

And and so I'm seeing that.

So that gives me hope.

And the young entrepreneurs in Cleveland who are just doing doing wonderful things.

Awesome.

So so that gives me gives me hope.

Thank you very much, Andre.

That's easy to answer.

Same thing brother.

Those grandchildren will keep you motivated to keep it moving forward.

And I get inspired by answers to prayer.

And I get inspired by these women in Cleveland that have taken the mantle and running the show.

Vanessa, Renee, my sister Shontel Brown, our congresswoman, our judges.

They haven't looked back.

They don't take no for an answer and are pushing it forward.

So I'm inspired that with them.

And, you know, the family members and the children were going to be in good hands.

That's awesome.

Thank you so much.

So can you join me in giving our panelists a round of applause for an excellent discussion?

You can do better than that.

Come on.

It's the last panel of the day.

Major support for Cleveland Summit two.

Get the guys together again.

Provided by the NFL Foundation and the Cleveland Browns.

Additional major support by the Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Philadelphia Eagles, and Seattle Seahawks.

Additional support by Linda Alvarado, Everett.

Glenn, Jason.

Light, Cyrus, Mary, the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, the Buffalo Bills, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Presidio Consulting.