Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Lapchick.
Hi Richard, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I was raised in a family where social and racial justice was a major factor. My Dad, Joe Lapchick, signed the 1st Black player in the NBA when he was the coach of the NY Knicks in 1950. I witnessed the hate directed at my Dad for doing that.
I wanted to play in the NBA and was pretty heavily recruited as an 8th grader in NY. While I chose not to go to Power Memorial, the top basketball school in the US, I became friends with its coach who invited me to his summer basketball camp in 1961. There were five of his white players there and his only Black player, One of the white players was dropping the “N” word on the Black player for the 1st three days.
I challenged him and he knocked me out. The Black player, then known as Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I started a life-long friendship. I suddenly had a young urban Black lens through which to see what racism was doing to his community and other communities of color. I decided as a 15-year-old that I would spend the rest of my life working for civil rights for all people.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I became the American leader of the sports boycott of South Africa in 1975. In 1978, I led the protest against a South African Davis Cup team playing in Nashville.
When it looked like the matches would be canceled, I was attacked in my college office late at night and had liver and kidney damage, a concussion, a hernia, and the “N” word carved in my stomach.
Laying in the hospital that night, I decided I would spend the rest of my life using the sports platform to confront racism and other social justice issues. That is what I have done for the last 44 years.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have worked at universities for most of the past 52 years. That was broken up by six years at the United Nations from 1978-84.
Since then, I have used the sports platform to address social justice issues, first at Northeastern University and from 2001 to now at the University of Central Florida where I directed the DeVos Sports Business Management Graduate Program and The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. I also am President of the Institute for Sport and Social Justice.
Since 1988, I have authored and co-authored the Racial and Gender Report Cards which measure who the major pro and college sports organizations hire to put pressure on them to hire more women and people of color. I have also written 17 books on various social justice issues.
It is hard to pick one thing I am most proud of but if I had to, it would be that I was Nelson Mandela’s guest when he was inaugurated as President of South Africa.
What matters most to you? Why?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion for everyone because it is right and long overdue.
