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Lately I've thought a ton about Jim Brown. We all came out against Ray Rice once the video tape of what he did surfaced, but not many talk about Jim Brown's awful past. He is also a man who has been accused of and investigated for beating or raping women at least six times over several decades, a period of time spanning from the 1960s through 2000. Of those cases, three resulted in charges that were tried before juries; the three other cases were dropped when the women said they didn’t want to pursue charges or witnesses stopped cooperating. It makes me wonder how much different it would be in today's day and era. Would those women drop those charges today? He admitted in his own memoir to slapping women, and in another case blamed violent outbursts on his wife having her period. He was found guilty once—of vandalism—and jailed when he refused to attend domestic violence counseling ordered by the judge in that case. Here is a history of that violence, done with the help of a CNN timeline on his life. I truly had no clue he admitted to such things. It makes me question how do you separate the athlete from the person? I know he's done great work for African American youth in our country as well. It's hard to see shades of grey on this for me. What about all of you? Source
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Joined: Nov 2006
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Legend
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Legend
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 15,188 |
Hes a human being with faults like all of us ... his fault is despicable ... as u pointed out he’s also done a ton of good like the work he’s done with gangs (all races) and within the black community ... Amera-Can or sumptin like that is the name of his org. That helps troubled youth ...
Today he’d be JUNK as would a lot of atheletes from back in the day ... different world back then .. today it would be on the headlines ... back then none of the local reporters would even mention it ... im not sure anyone ever knew til years later .... it simply wasn’t reported as far as i can remember ..
For me its easy .... one of the greatest athletes of all time that was a POS when it came to his treatment of women while also doing whatever he could to help out troubled youth and the black community ...
Jim Brown was also one of the first black atheletes to come out and say that the black community needs to help itself and not rely on whites or anyone else for that matter to help them with there lives ... he said why should any other community want to help us until were helping ourselves ...
Being the man of action he was he was a part of a group of black atheletes back in the late 60’s that promoted opening businesses in the black communities ... there was 3 or 4 prominent athletes in the group ... it didnt get much traction but Magic took the concept and he made himself an awesome business man while providing much needed services to the black community ...
And back then ... that put them in a much worse spot than it did Magic when he did it .. when they did it it was frowned upon to say the least ... by the time Magic did it he was praised ...
Mr, Brown was a complex man ... i try and learn from his courage to speak out on social justice issues while at the same time think he was a coward when it came to his treatment of women ...
I try and learn from his strength at standing up for himself and his community while at the same time calling his community and the other black “leaders” for their faults and at the same time think he was a very weak man when it came to his treatment of women ...
I admire the man and give him nothing but credit for the time he gave to helping others while wanting to punch him in the face for how he treated women ...
Kinda like my “relationship” with Bobby Knight ...
LOTS TO RESPECT while at the same time having a HORRIBLE PROBLEM .... in Jims case it was his treatment of women ...
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Joined: Mar 2013
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Legend
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Legend
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The stories of Jim Brown that aren't public make my skin crawl. So glad we built a statue for this guy. It makes me question how do you separate the athlete from the person? It's simple. You don't.
At DT, context and meaning are a scarecrow kicking at moving goalposts.
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Joined: Mar 2013
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Legend
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Legend
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he's a once in a generation player, and top 3 player of all time.
he's absolutely not a hero. for me personally, crimes have different degrees.
Diam is right with what Brown did for the AA community. so if his crime was something like insider trading or got caught with some prostitutes, i really wouldnt care.
but the guy was beating and raping women? nah man, i dont care what he did for AA's, it doesn't override the crap he's done to women. those were somebody's mom, sister, aunt, cousin, something.
when i look for athletes to admire based on how they played, yes, look at jim brown. for anything else? i stay far away from him.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
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Practice Squad
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I'm going to take a more fluid and dynamic approach to fielding this one as opposed to writing my thoughts in stone. My opinion may change the more I think about this, but here are my thoughts on the subject as of now:
I'm a younger (millennial) Browns fan. I know next to nothing about Jim Brown the person and only know what I've seen on highlight reels regarding Jim Brown the athlete. A cursory glance of the link you provided presents a lot of questionable activities to be sure.
So, how do I separate the athlete from the person? Simple answer - I don't need to.
Reading about what Jim Brown did in the past doesn't affect my life. It doesn't change the way he played football. I therefore don't feel personally compelled to learn more about him at this time. Even if I did, would it change my opinion of him as I originally formed it? The answer is "no" as I never considered him in any other light than being an athlete. I do understand he was active on some social issues, but again I only speak from my personal experience. If he starts claiming moral high ground in some of the areas cited for personal benefit, I could say it would appear he is worthy of chastisement.
We're all human and have done questionable things, some perhaps to a more subjective degree of harm than others. Bottom line for me - no one is perfect, and just because you have done harm in some areas doesn't mean you haven't done good work/advocacy in others.
Some final thoughts:
1. I really, really hesitate to use a term I am not well versed in, but I will try it - cognitive dissonance. As I understand this term, it's having inconsistent/conflicting thoughts on persons or ideas. I feel we as humans want to form concrete thoughts and statements, and many certainly seem to want to hold other people/groups to this standard. We aren't in the outhouse so I will withhold any political/theological correlations for the time being. These unfortunately tend to be the better comparisons, but the next best example I could provide would be: Your father/grandfather did horrible/questionable things in their lifetime - how could you love and support them (and still call yourself X)? Love in this example does not mean I condone these actions and to conflate the two would be a fallacy.
The pattern remains the same: "You did/think/believe ______, therefore you must do _____________." "You did/think/believe ______, but you did not do _____________, therefore you are not a true_____/good person/etc."
It's natural to think like this and I am guilty of doing so. But when I really step back and analyze it I find I disagree with these types of statements in general,
2. What was "acceptable"/tolerated in year XXXX is now/will be abhorrent in the future. I don't think there's any way to get around this phenomenon. Judging the past by today's standards will almost certainly result in derogatory views.
3. In regards to #2, "tarnishing" an individual's legacy because of one or a few aspects of their life while ignoring the great benefit to mankind/society/etc they caused seems to be missing the bigger picture in my opinion. I am not necessarily saying this applies to JB or athletes in general, but it does seem to be rather popular undertaking in recent times.
4. People change. Again, not claiming that to be the case here, because I don't know what's in JB's heart; I can only formulate an opinion. But actions in the past don't always provide an indicator of current or future actions/beliefs.
Can't believe I am saying this - Big Ben allegedly did some repugnant acts as we all know, but I personally have moved on from it. By all appearances, he has grown and done so too.
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Joined: Sep 2006
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Legend
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Legend
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1965
Then-18-year-old Brenda Ayers says Brown assaulted her in a Cleveland Howard Johnson motel. Brown was charged with assault and battery. According to an Associated Press report at the time, Ayers said Brown “plied her with whiskey, slapped her face, hip and stomach and forced her to have sex relations with him on two occasions.” She broke down while testifying in court, saying Brown called her days before testifying asking, “Why was I doing this to him?” Brown denied having sex with her and assaulting her; his defense lawyer called it a shakedown plot for money. A Cleveland jury found him not guilty. Ayers later sued Brown for paternity and lost and sued for civil damages, the latter of which she asked to be dismissed. 1968
Neighbors of Brown’s in Hollywood hear an argument and call the police. When police arrived, they found Brown’s then-girlfriend, model Eva Bohn-Chin, 22, semi-conscious beneath the balcony of Brown’s second-floor apartment. Brown was charged with assault with intent to commit murder, felony battery on a peace officer, and obstructing justice. From Pete Dexter’s essential 1981 profile of Brown:
“The police is just another cat,” he said. The first sheriff’s deputy who came through the front door that day also went through the closet door.
“Listen,” he said, “you got to have something, goin’ out dealing with 270-pound linemen for a living. You quit playing, but that doesn’t just go away.”
The charge of assault with intent to commit murder was dropped when Eva Bohn-Chin told police she had fallen trying to get out when they showed up.
The charges by the cop were changed to resisting a deputy. Brown was fined $300 and that marked the beginning of his problems with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
“Those suckers knew a little about my head,” he said, “and they waited for me to do something so they could shoot me. For two months they came by most every night to tell me to turn down my music.” 1971
Battery charges are dropped against Brown due to a “lack of witnesses,” according to a report from Jet magazine. A deputy city attorney told the magazine that Brown was accused of “beating and then throwing two women, Claudia Anne Lemary and Carol Virginia Williams, both 22, out of his apartment and down a flight of stairs, allegedly because they refused to perform a sex act together.” From Jet’s recap:
During pre-trial proceedings, the two alleged victims, however, appeared with Brown and left with him, indicating all was forgiven, if indeed anything had occurred. At the trial, Miss Williams answered five questions put to her by Adajian before her attorney advised her to remain silent. She alleged she was injured at Brown’s apartment when “I fell down a flight of stairs.” But when asked if Brown was responsible for the fall, she purred, “Not to my knowledge.” Miss Lemary failed to appear. 1985
Brown is charged with raping and assaulting a 33-year-old woman in his home. The woman testified in court that she was friends with Brown, who invited over to his home one day, but that when she tried to leave, he beat her, then raped her with the help of his then-girlfriend, Carol Moses, 23. Moses told a grand jury that she got in a physical fight with the woman, who clearly had been beaten, after the woman “made a lesbian advance toward her,” and that Brown had tried to break up that fight, the Los Angeles Times reported. Brown told reporters, “This is ridiculous. Everybody is lying.”
The charges were dismissed by a judge, according to reports, due to “inconsistent testimony,” with changes in details such as whether Brown fully or partially penetrated her and whether he had tied her hands or forcibly held them. Research done since has shown that rape, like other traumatic events, takes a toll on a person’s memory, especially their memories of the event itself. This is why police now are advised to handle the interviews in sexual-assault cases differently than other crimes.
“We have a societal expectation that both the victim of a major crime and any witnesses to that crime ought to be able to remember with perfect clarity exactly what happened,” psychologist Rebecca Campbell told the Washington Post in 2014. “It is not an expectation that has any scientific merit.”
The year after this case, Brown told journalist Diane K. Shah that he was “very vulnerable and that “I don’t have much chance if someone wants to get me.” 1986
Brown is arrested and charged with assaulting live-in girlfriend Debra Clark. Clark, 22, told police the fight was “about a jealousy thing that happened a few days ago,” the Los Angeles Times reported, and at one point she locked herself inside a bedroom with a gun. The charges were later dropped after Clark said she did not want Brown prosecuted. “It was definitely overdramatized,” Clark said afterward. If a telephone call goes to the police station and they arrive, naturally the media’s going to get into it. Basically, we had a lovers’ quarrel, and everything is fine now.”
Speaking to Shah, Brown said he probably will marry Clark but concedes he doesn’t know how to spell his future wife’s first name. 1989
Brown’s memoir, Out of Bounds, comes out. In the book, he again said that Bohn-Chin fell from the balcony and that they had a “minor domestic dispute.” He did admit to slapping women, including Bohn-Chin, in the book. As quoted in a review in the Los Angeles Times:
“I have also slapped other women,” he wrote. “And I never should have, and I never should have slapped Eva, no matter how crazy we were at the time. I don’t think any man should slap a woman. In a perfect world, I don’t think any man should slap anyone. ... I don’t start fights, but sometimes I don’t walk away from them. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but it’s happened, and I regret those times. I should have been more in control of myself, stronger, more adult.” 1999
Brown is charged with two misdemeanors, making terrorist threats against his wife and vandalism, after his Monique Brown called 911. The first officer to arrive to the scene later testified to seeing Brown’s wife, Monique, 25, looking nervous, shaken, and like she’s been crying. Monique Brown said she and her husband got a in a verbal fight after she confronted him about his cheating. At one point, she said, he told her “he was going to kill her by snapping her neck.”
Monique Brown went to the garage, Brown followed her, picked up a shovel and began attacking her car, leaving dents and breaking the windshield, the officer told the court. She went to their neighbors and called 911.
Operator: “Monique, do you need a paramedic?”
Monique: “No. He hasn’t hit me.”
Operator: “He didn’t hit you today?”
Monique: “Not today.”
Operator: “OK. But there is a history of domestic violence, right?” Monique: “Yes.”
Operator: “And he threatened to kill you today?”
Monique: “Yes.”
During the trial, Monique Brown recanted her own statements to the police and said what she told 911 was misinterpreted. She said she told the dispatcher she had not been hit, but that those parts were in the section of 911 tape labeled “inaudible.” A jury found Brown guilty of vandalism for smashing the car with the shovel. He was sentenced to three years of probation, one year of domestic violence counseling, and 40 hours on a work crew or 400 hours community service.
Three years later, in an almost literally unbelievable story in USA Today, Monique Brown would mention her husband’s jail time due to this case in the same sentence as the incarcerations of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., while Brown himself blamed the couple’s arguments on PMS, claimed to be a victim of political persecution, and assert that what happened that night was “the opposite of domestic violence.”
“In anger-management training, they teach you never to hit a person—hit an object,” he said. “That’s what they teach you.” 2000
Brown is sentenced to six months in jail after he refused to attend domestic violence counseling as part of his sentence for smashing his wife’s car, the Los Angeles Times reported. Browns lawyer argued to the court that the counseling and other probation terms were “unconstitutional and dehumanizing.” Judge Judge Dale S. Fischer wasn’t swayed.
“The fact that Mr. Brown is refusing to get help with anger and violence only indicates to me the necessity for significant punishment,” Fischer said as she imposed the sentence.
Brown served less than four months of the sentence in 2002. When my colleague Drew Magary brought up the jail time with Brown in a 2009 interview, Brown said, “I chose to physically go to jail rather than take an assignment that was undignified to me.”
Brown, it should be noted, has beaten up men as well. While he was found not guilty of charges that he assaulted a West Hollywood man in 1969 after a traffic accident, in 1978 he was sentenced to one day in jail for beating and choking his golf partner, golf pro Frank Snow, over the placement of a ball.
I AM ALWAYS RIGHT... except when I am wrong.
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Practice Squad
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This should go without saying but since I am still new-ish to posting here I feel the need to say it - those allegations/incidents are awful. I read through the posted material and most of my original post would not apply here. I stick by my thoughts in general however.
He wasn't a hero of mine before, he won't be a hero of mine now as we have very different definitions of what being a man is. That said, in all likelihood I won't think about this further once the discussion concludes.
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Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 75,105
Legend
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Legend
Joined: Sep 2006
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Not a hero for me. An unbelievable football player and athlete ... and an icon for our franchise ... but his life has been marked by so many negative actions it's tough for me to look past
"First down inside the 10. A score here will put us in the Super Bowl. Jeudy is far to the left as Njoku settles into the slot. Tillman is flanked out wide to the right. Judkins and Ford are split in the backfield as Flacco takes the snap ... Here we go."
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~ Legend
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~ Legend
Joined: Mar 2013
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people are humans, not heroes.
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Joined: Oct 2006
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Legend
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Legend
Joined: Oct 2006
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I used to have a Jim Brown jersey, as soon as I uncovered his history with women, I sold it on eBay.
![[Linked Image]](http://www.dawgtalkers.net/uploads/Punchsmack/punch.gif) “...Iguodala to Curry, back to Iguodala, up for the layup! Oh! Blocked by James! LeBron James with the rejection!”
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Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Jim Brown, Domestic Violence, and
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