Sunday, April 19, 2015

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr.; 1947) is a retired American professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. NBA coach Pat Riley and players Isiah Thomas and Julius Erving have called him the greatest basketball player of all time.
Playing in Los Angeles facilitated Abdul-Jabbar's trying his hand at acting. He made his film debut in Bruce Lee's 1972 film Game of Death, in which his character Hakim fights Billy Lo (played by Lee).
When he converted to Islam he stated that he was "latching on to something that was part of my heritage, because many of the slaves who were brought here were Muslims. My family was brought to America by a French planter named Alcindor, who came here from Trinidad in the 18th century. My people were Yoruba, and their culture survived slavery...  My father found out about that when I was a kid, and it gave me all I needed to know that, hey, I was somebody, even if nobody else knew about it. When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. And that's a terrible burden on black people, because they don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted."

3 comments:

  1. I love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar bibi....i grew up watching him, and here is a little known fact about him....did you know that when he began to lose his hair it was not Gradual? He lost it in clumps and patches and this is what led him into a beret wearing lifestyle! Little known fact, i know, but it is always a pleasure to share it with my boina wearing borothers in the Beret and Boina Blogspot! I love you Daan, i love your selection of berets and i hope you keep up the good work forever more!!

    Cheers my good friend!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, I don't know who you are, but comments like yours make my day! Thanks very much for sharing that, and the kind words about the web site!

      Delete
  2. Kareem is correct when he identifies how minorities are kept without power through tactics such as making them invisible, keeping their history unknown, reinforcing stereotypes, and deciding for them about who and what they are as a group. He is a hero for the American Black community.

    ReplyDelete