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Article

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem  

Marty Dobrow

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

basketball player, was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, the son of Ferdinand Lewis “Al” Alcindor, a police officer with the New York Transit Authority, and Cora Alcindor, a department-store price checker. The almost thirteen-pound baby arrived in Harlem one day after the major league debut of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn; as with Robinson, fiercely competitive athletics and the struggle against racial injustice would define much of his life.

From a young age Alcindor was introspective and intense He had an artistic sensibility drawn in part from his father a stern and silent cop who played jazz trombone and held a degree from Juilliard An only child in a strictly Catholic household he moved from Harlem at age three to the Dyckman Street projects on the northern tip of Manhattan a racially mixed middle class community In third grade he was startled to see a class photo that featured him not ...

Article

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem  

Robert Fay

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., in Harlem, New York. Raised in a middle-class household and educated at Catholic schools in Manhattan, the young Alcindor was introduced to Basketball at age nine and played competitively throughout elementary and high school. Alcindor was six feet eight inches (2.05 meters) tall by the time he was fourteen years old and became a star center for Power Memorial Academy, leading the high school to two city championships. He continued his dominant play at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he led the university's team to three consecutive National Collegiate Athletic Association championships. He lost only two games in his college career. An outspoken political activist who was influenced by the Black Power Movement, Alcindor changed his name in 1971 after converting to Islam. A popular NBA star from 1969 to 1989 Abdul Jabbar thwarted opponents ...

Article

Bwalya, Kalusha  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
19 May 2022

was born on 16 August 1963 in Mufulira, Zambia, and came from a family of footballers. His brother, Joseph, had a professional football career, and his younger cousin Robert Earnshaw also became famous as a footballer in Wales. Bwalya’s father was an administrator in the Zambian soccer federation and trained his sons in the game. Bwalya also became a ball boy with the local team. He excelled with the youth Mufulira Blackpool team from 1977 to 1979 and was called up to play with their adult professional team in 1979. A year later the young player joined the more successful Mufulira Wanderers FC.

In the early 1980s he became a national star, and was named the Zambian football player of the year in 1984 Two years later Bwalya left Zambia to play with the Belgian professional club Cercle Brugge K S V A Belgian scout had seen Bwalya ...

Article

Grier, Rosey  

John Hanners

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

football player, social activist, author, singer-actor, and ordained minister, was born Roosevelt Grier on a farm in Cuthbert, Georgia, the seventh of Joseph and Ruth Grier's eleven children. At age thirteen he moved with his family to Roselle, New Jersey. Offered an athletic scholarship to Penn State University, he enrolled in 1950 and studied psychology, music, and education. His college athletic career was exceptional. Not only did he receive first-team All-American football honors in 1955, but he also set an Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletics of America shot-put record (fifty-eight feet) in track and field.

In 1965 Grier signed with the National Football League's New York Giants for a $500 bonus and a yearly salary of $6,500. During a long career that lasted from 1955 through 1968 Grier was a dominant defensive tackle in an era known for excellent defensive players His size ...

Article

Jabbar, Kareem Abdul  

Maud C. Mundava

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

basketball player and coach, actor, and author Born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr and known early on as Lew he was a very big baby about 13 pounds and 22 inches He grew up in a racially mixed middle class neighborhood in Manhattan as the only child of Al Alcindor and Cora Alcindor Al Alcindor was originally from Trinidad and he was a fairly successful jazz musician and a New York City Transit Authority police officer Jabbar grew up a Catholic and attended St Jude s Elementary School and a boys only Catholic school Power Memorial Academy He was a shy and withdrawn child because he was taller than most of the kids his age but he showed a lot of determination in pursuit of excellence He always wanted to be the best As a result of his values and upbringing Jabbar was well spoken stayed out of ...

Article

Jordan, Michael  

David F. Smydra

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

basketball player, was born Michael Jeffrey Jordan in Brooklyn, New York, the fourth of five children of James Jordan and Deloris Peoples. The family soon relocated to Wilmington in the parents' home state, North Carolina, where Jordan's father rose to supervisor in a General Electric plant and his mother worked as a bank teller. James Jordan's air force pension boosted the family into the middle class, and they instilled in their children a solid work ethic with an emphasis on loyalty and commitment.

Like his brothers and sisters Jordan was a relatively short child but exceptionally quick He preferred baseball to basketball and pitched several no hitters in Little League Although he was initially a lazy child who bribed his siblings to do his chores Jordan was invigorated by athletic competition Regular one on one basketball games against his older brother Larry fueled a fiery competitiveness in him since ...

Article

Jordan, Michael  

Jill Dupont

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

basketball player, businessman, and NBA owner. It is always something of a mystery how those born in unremarkable circumstances achieve transcendence within and beyond their fields of expertise. By whatever alchemy of talent, hard work, and historical circumstance, perhaps no one in recent history has better embodied the earthbound problems and gravity-defying aspirations of the United States than Michael Jordan.

Growing up in Wilmington, North Carolina, Michael Jeffrey Jordan took to heart his parents lessons in diligence and human relations Instructed to treat everyone equally and with courtesy he experienced relatively few of the racial incidents that had occurred routinely in previous generations Jordan s anger flared once as a boy though when in response to a girl s racial slur he planted his popsicle on her head He acquired his work ethic like his height over time fueling himself with the real and imagined slights of ...

Article

Jordan, Michael  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the fourth of five children born to James and Deloris Jordan. The family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, when Michael was still a young child. As a teenager, Jordan became well known for his baseball skills, and he was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the Babe Ruth League after his team won the state championship.

Jordan attended Wilmington's Laney High School, but failed to make the varsity basketball team. Laney's coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring, decided that Jordan could improve his skills with more playing time on the junior varsity team. As a sophomore on the junior varsity, Jordan, then 5 feet, 11 inches (1.8 meters) tall, averaged 25 points per game.

The following summer Jordan worked diligently on his own and at basketball camps to improve his game During this early period in his career Jordan ...

Article

Simpson, O. J.  

Steven J. Niven

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

football player, sportscaster, and actor, was born Orenthal James Simpson in San Francisco, California, to Jimmie Simpson, a cook, and Eunice Durden, a nurse's aide. The child disliked his unusual first name, which was-given to him by an aunt who had heard of a French actor named Orenthal. Sometime during his childhood—accounts differ as to when—he began using his initials “O. J.,” which friends later adapted to “Orange Juice” and, later, to “Juice.” When O. J. was four, Jimmie Simpson abandoned his wife and family, leaving Eunice to raise four children in a two-bedroom apartment in the run-down Potrero Hill public housing projects near San Francisco's Chinatown. Eunice Simpson worked long hours to provide for her children but it was often a hard struggle When O J contracted rickets as an infant for example he was left bowlegged and in need of leg braces that his ...

Article

Simpson, O. J.  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

O.J. Simpson was born in a poor neighborhood of San Francisco, California, the third of four children. His father left the family when Simpson was a child. At a young age Simpson wore leg braces to correct weakness in his legs, but as a teenager at Galileo High School, he was a star athlete, participating in baseball, track, and football. At the same time Simpson received several suspensions from school for misbehavior. He graduated from Galileo in 1965, but his grades kept him from attending a major university. Instead, he enrolled at City College in San Francisco, where he had a remarkable first season of football and was offered several athletic scholarships. He remained another year at City College before meeting the admissions standards for the University of Southern California (USC), which he entered in 1967. That same year, he married his first wife, Marguerite.

Article

Soubise, Julius  

Erin D. Somerville

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Equestrian and man of letters, favourite of the Duchess of Queensberry and contemporary of Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano. Born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, he was brought to England at the age of 10 and given to the Duchess of Queensberry as a gift. Under the Duchess's direction Soubise became an accomplished fencer and equestrian, serving as assistant to the Italian fencing master Dominico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo.

Soubise is best remembered as a fop in London high society. Claiming to be an African prince, he was known for entertaining audiences in fashionable London clubs with comic songs and amateur theatre. He often escorted aristocratic women to the opera and was rumoured to be sexually engaged with the Duchess—a relationship depicted in an engraving by William Austin of the pair fencing (1773).

While Soubise regarded himself as a talented letter writer and poet of ...

Article

Yarbrough, Manny  

Jahaan Martin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

sumo wrestler, judo and mixed martial arts competitor, and football player, was born Emmanuel Yarbrough in Rahway, New Jersey, and holds the Guinness record as the largest living athlete in the world Affectionately known as Tiny a nickname he earned at Morgan State University because of his large size he stood six feet seven inches and at one point tipped the scale at well over eight hundred pounds In sixth grade Manny was already five feet eleven inches and 260 pounds Coaches and school administrators wanted him to play football but at age eleven he was not ready for the intensity of the game and refused to play However by the time he entered high school his confidence had grown and so too had his body in ninth grade Manny was six feet four inches and weighed 320 pounds As a high school senior starting tackle ...