More Than an Athlete

Jim Brown, a first-round NFL draft pick, played fullback for the Cleveland Browns until 1965. Born in 1936 in Georgia, Brown was a child of the Great Migration who faced racial discrimination throughout his football career. His desire to work toward civil rights led him to form the Negro Industrial and Economic Union (NIEU) in 1966, later known as the Black Economic Union (BEU). The BEU combined elements of the civil rights and Black Power movements with a call for African Americans to accumulat