Wrexham’s Paul Mullin Joins Long Line Of Political Protests By Sports Stars
Wrexham star Paul Mullin was the talk of social media when it was revealed that he planned to wear a pair of boots that said ‘F*** The Tories’ on the side of them. It caused some controversy, which was then stoked further when Wrexham released a statement saying that the player would not be allowed to wear the boots whilst playing.
Owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, Wrexham said that they took a ‘neutral position’ when it came to politics, even though banning him from wearing them was anything but neutral.
It is, of course, far from the first time that a sports person has decided to get involved with politics. Indeed, compared to the likes of Colin Kaepernick, it is positively tame. Kaepernick famously knelt during the playing of the American national anthem whilst a player for the San Francisco 49ers. He became a free agent at the end of the season and, at the time of writing, remains without a club.
Sports are one of the most popular pastimes with working class people, making them ripe for political protests from some of the participants. Indeed, sports themselves are often used for political purposes so it is not surprising that players sometimes use the platforms for themselves too.
Sports Protests Over The Years
In 532 A.D., drivers from the blue and green chariot racing teams appealed to Emperor Justinian to pardon two followers who had been condemned to die. He refused, leading to the Nika Revolt, which took place for six weeks and resulted in 30,000 deaths. In other words, political protests are not a new thing in sport, as what happened in Constantinople proves.
Indeed, there have been countless such protests over the years, taking place for any number of topics, from race to gender via age and even money. It isn’t new, but some protests have become more famous than others.
How many of you have hears of Moses Fleetwood Walker, for example? The African-American catcher for the Blue Stockings was at the centre of a row when Cap Anson took his Chicago White Sox team to Toledo for an exhibition game in 1883. He said that they wouldn’t play if the Blue Stockings selected Walker, not realising he was injured at the time.
Despite this, Toledo’s manager Charlie Morton selected him anyway, leading Anson to say, “We’ll play this here game, but won’t play never no more with the n—–.” Walker later became the first African-American Major Leaguer.
Mack Robinson
When it comes to famous sporting achievements, there are perhaps none quite as well-known as Jesse Owens. Whilst the likes of Milton Green, Albert Wolff and others chose to protest against Adolf Hitler’s virulent anti-semitism and other offensive policies by not taking part in the games in the first place, Owens and his fellow track star Mack Robinson decided to protest against the Nazis in another way. Owens won four gold medals during the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, putting a lie to the idea of white people being a ‘master race’.
Owens will forever be remembered for his incredible success in Germany, but it is Robinson who made a more eloquent protest at the manner in which African-Americans were being treated in the United States of America.
Having come second behind Owens in the 200 metres, Robinson returned home with his silver medal wondering what sort of job he’d be able to get after that achievement. The answer was that he could only work as a street cleaner in Pasadena, protesting eloquently by wearing his Olympic jacket whilst doing the work. Locals responded by getting the police to make him take it off.
Kathrine “Kathy” Switzer
Sometimes, protests can be elegant. Sometimes, however, they need to abandon subtlety in favour of direct action. That is what Kathrine “Kathy” Switzer decided was the case in 1967 when she took part in the Boston Marathon.
That might not sound like a particularly big protest, but no women had taken part in the event before then. In 1966, Bobbi Gibb had applied to take part but her application had been rejected, leading her to run the course secretly after jumping over the barrier into the middle of the pack and finishing with a time of three hours, 21 minutes and 40 seconds.
That was an unofficial entry, however, so Switzer put forward an application under the name of K. V. Switzer. She paid the full entry fee and used her assigned Amateur Athletic Union number. She then asked a male runner to collect her bib, number 261, and ran with members of her running club with her hood pulled up.
When her hood slipped down a few miles in, John “Jock” Semple jumped off the following press bus and attempted to force her to stop, trying to rip her bib from her. He failed, with Switzer eventually finishing in four hours and 20 minutes. The AAU soon officially banned women from taking part and the Boston Marathon established a women’s race in 1972.
Muhammad Ali
‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ was one of the most famous things that Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, said during his fighting career. Widely considered to be one of the best heavyweight boxers of all time, Ali actually lost a lot of his prime years when he was stripped of his boxing titles and not allowed to take part in bouts as a result of his decision to refuse to be drafted into the military. Ali was supposed to join the US Army and head to Vietnam, but he refused to do so on account of his religion and his ethical opposition to the war.
Whilst most of the other names on this list did an actual physical thing as a protest, what Ali did was willingly sacrifice his boxing titles. He was found guilty of draft evasion but was able to stay out of prison whilst appealing the decision. He won his appeal in 1971, but by that time he had lost most of his best years as a boxer.
He eventually retired from boxing in 1981, choosing to focus on his activism, revealing publicly in 1984 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In the end, he fought 61 times and won 56 of those fights.
Tommie Smith & John Carlos
If what Jesse Owens achieved in Nazi Germany is one of the Olympic Games’ most noteworthy moments, few things offer a clearer image than the protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Summer Olympics in 1968. During the medal ceremony, in which Smith was receiving his gold medal and Carlos a bronze one, the pair stood in black socks and wearing a black glove, raising their fists in the air during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Black Power move is considered to be one of the most overtly political statements in Olympic history.
Nearly 30 years later, Smith published an autobiography entitled Silent Gesture. In it, he said that the protest was not a Black Power salute, but instead a ‘human rights’ one. Peter Norman, who won the silver medal, is sometimes pointed to by racists as an example of not ‘following the crowd’. In actual fact, it had been discussed that he would also do the salute also but it was felt it would be more powerful without him. All three athletes wore human rights badges. The sporting world ostracised all three of the runners.
Arthur Ashe
To many, the decision of Arthur Ashe to head to South Africa and play tennis in 1973 was the greatest of betrayals. At the time, South Africa was under apartheid rule and it was felt that heading there legitimised a racist regime.
What they didn’t realise was that Ashe was planning something bigger, which is why he applied three times for a visa. Once he was eventually granted it, he began work to negotiate with the South African government in order to get them to put integrated seating in place, allowing black tennis fans to watch him play.
That was in Johannesburg, where he made his critics, who had been calling him ‘Uncle Tom’, look rather silly. Such was the impact of the gesture that the black fans who saw him win the doubles title called him ‘Sipho’. That is a Xhosa word meaning ‘gift from god’, showing just what it meant to them to be able to attend a sporting event and not have it purely limited to white people.
Though not a political act in the same way that wearing a t-shirt or taking a knee might be, it was hugely influential in a country known for its racist policies at the time.
Toni Smith
In 2003, Toni Smith was an athlete at Manhattanville College, a Division III basketball side. She created something of a media storm when she chose to turn her back to the American flag during the singing of the national anthem. Initially, it was felt that she was doing it specifically as a protest against George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, but years later she set the record straight.
Speaking about the matter, Smith-Thompson, as she had become, said that ‘the anthem had really taken on a different meaning with a culture of obedience that was really opposed to dissent’.
She decided that it should not be a ‘benign ritual’, with her action soon creating headlines and becoming something of a national debate. As so often happens with such things, of course, the world soon moved on.
In May of 2022, however, students at Manhattanville College ensured that she was invited back to give the commencement speech, as well as to award her an honorary doctorate. They learned of Smith’s actions in their Sports and Social Change class, with the professor, Amy Bass, teaching them about her.
Colin Kaepernick
In terms of protesting things via sport, perhaps only Muhammad Ali can come close to matching Colin Kaepernick when it comes to sacrifice. Having played college football for the Nevada Wolf Pack, Kaepernick was selected by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2011 National Football League draft. He became their starting quarterback in the middle of the following season and made the place his own, leading the side to its first Super Bowl appearance in nearly two decades when the made it in 1994.
In the third pre-season game of 2016, Kaepernick chose to sit down during the US national anthem, protesting against racial injustice and police brutality.
From the following week onwards, he knelt during the anthem, much to the disgust of the racists in America. Donald Trump, the former President and law-breaker, stoked the flames of the situation when he said that NFL owners should ‘fire’ any players that protested during the national anthem. After the season’s conclusion, Kaepernick became a free agent and has failed to sign with a team since.
Lewis Hamilton
As the only black driver in Formula One, Lewis Hamilton has never shied away from his position in terms of anti-racism messaging. Perhaps that was most evident in the wake of his win at the Tuscan Grand Prix in 2020, when the Mercedes driver wore a t-shirt pre-race that was emblazoned with the statement, “Arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor.”
It was in reference to 26-year-old Taylor, who was shot dead by police in Kentucky whilst in her home. He also wore the t-shirt after the race and during post-race interviews.
Speaking about the matter, Hamilton said, “I have been wanting to wear that and bring awareness to the fact that people are being killed on the street and someone was killed in her own house. They were in the wrong house and those guys are still walking free.”
Though the FIA investigated, they decided that no action would be taken and Hamilton announced that he would keep speaking out and ‘challenge the world on every level of injustice, not only racial’. He also helped to set up a foundation to help improve diversity in the sport.