May 19 (Reuters) – Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs in the history of the National Football League who quit the game at the height of his career to act in Hollywood movies and add his voice to the civil rights movement, has died. He was 87.
Brown died on Thursday night, his wife Monique Brown said on Instagram.
“To the world he was an activist, actor, and football star. To our family, he was a loving and wonderful husband, father, and grandfather. Our hearts are broken,” she wrote.
As an explosive fullback for the Cleveland Browns, Brown combined power, speed, intensity and size (6 feet 2 inches, 230 pounds) in a way not seen in the NFL before he joined the league in 1957. He announced his retirement in July 1966 while in London filming his second movie, “The Dirty Dozen.”
He was a prominent figure in the Black Pride movement of the 1960s and a friend of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan as well as Huey Newton, co-founder of the militant Black Panthers group.
Brown was dogged by allegations of violence against women over the decades though never convicted. Brown admitted in his 1989 memoir to slapping women.
“In a perfect world, I don’t think any man should slap anyone,” Brown wrote. “I don’t start fights, but sometimes I don’t walk away from them. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but it’s happened, and I regret those times. I should have been more in control of myself, stronger, more adult.”
Brown led the NFL in rushing in eight of his nine seasons and was voted the league’s most valuable player four times. He held 20 league records when he retired at age 30, including most rushing yards and most rushing touchdowns. In 1999, the Sporting News put him atop its list of the 100 greatest players of the 20th century.
Brown summed up his style by saying: “Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.”
“I didn’t retire because I was broken down and slow,” Brown told Sports Illustrated in 2015. “I retired because it was time to retire and do other things.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement on Friday that Brown was one of the most dominant players to ever step on any athletic field and also a cultural figure who helped promote change.
“During his nine-year NFL career, which coincided with the civil rights movement here at home, he became a forerunner and role model for athletes being involved in social initiatives outside their sport,” Goodell said.
“He was certainly the greatest to ever put on a Browns uniform and arguably one of the greatest players in NFL history,” Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam said in a statement.
