Dr. Gary F. Green II grew up in a football family in San Antonio, Texas, the namesake son of Gary Green Sr., who played for years in the NFL. He was recruited to play at the University of Kansas, saw the inside of the recruiting apparatus at major programs across the country, and eventually traded the field for the seminary, the classroom, and now a published book that reframes everything most people think they know about Black athleticism.

Green joins host Charles Hallman on Blacklight on Sports to discuss his book, “Playing the Game: Embodied Brilliance Beyond the Moral Limits of Race and Sport,” his work as a faculty member at United Theological Seminary, and why he believes Black athletes have always been geniuses that the dominant culture simply refused to name as such.

Green structures the book around three athletes, each representing a different layer of how white supremacy inscribes itself on Black male bodies, and how those athletes disrupted that inscription through their brilliance: Marshawn Lynch and the criminalization of Black men in public, Steph Curry and the economic logic of athletic evaluation, and Deion Sanders and the psychospiritual refusal to shrink. Green also previews an upcoming essay bringing Black women, including Serena Williams, more fully into the conversation, and reflects on his own path from Division I football to pastoral theology.

Watch the full conversation for a framework that will change how you watch sports.

Zantavious Graham came to the Twin Cities from a small town in Georgia to play football at Concordia University St. Paul. Four years later he has a college degree, a published book, and a growing wellness community reaching hundreds of people across Minneapolis. None of it was part of the original plan.

Graham joins MSR Digital Editor Aaliyah Demry on MSR On the Radar to talk about FRM, Forever Remain Motivated, the wellness community he founded, what drove him to build it, and why he believes community is the most important thing missing from people’s lives right now.

He shares the story behind FRM’s name, born from a near-violent encounter before college, how a single flyer during finals week grew into a viral run club and eventually healing circles, group therapy access and a 100-backpack giveaway for neighborhood youth. Graham also opens up about stepping away from football after losing his grandmother, becoming vegetarian, the challenge of staying mission-focused as FRM grows, and his vision for bridging the gap between Black elders and young people.

Watch the full conversation for an honest look at what it takes to build community from the ground up.

Former world boxing champion Devon Alexander is putting fitness in the corner of St. Louis children. Through his foundation, he uses recreational boxing to help young people build strength, confidence and discipline while learning lessons that extend beyond the gym.

Read the full story: https://www.stlamerican.com/online-features/boxing-champ-devon-alexander-puts-fitness-in-kids-corner/ 

✒️ Jihad Hassan Muhammad
📹 Video by Lawrence Bryant

#DevonAlexander #YouthFitness #StLouisYouth #Boxing #stlamerican

Join us TONIGHT for Week 4 of our 8-week podcast & leadership spotlight series! We are charting our future, strengthening our communities, and building our legacy together.

📍 THIS WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT: Mid-Atlantic Section

👤 GUEST:Imam Salahuddin A. Muhammad (Mid-Atlantic Section Convener)

🎯 TOPIC:Strengthening Our Masaajid and Key Institutions

🗓️ Date: Monday, September 28, 2026

⏰ Time: 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST

📻 Where to Listen Live:YouTube, Facebook & IWDM Community Radio

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

Don’t miss this crucial conversation on institutional growth and community development across the Mid-Atlantic region!

💻 Register online & learn more:www.IWDMcommunity.com or bit.ly/IWDM50forward

🗓️ Save the Date: 2026 Community Development & Leadership Conference | Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2026 | Norfolk, Virginia Beach Area

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Hashtags:

#BeyondIWDM50 #WeCannotStopNow #ImamWDMohammed #MidAtlanticSection #CommunityDevelopment #Masaajid #Leadership #IWDMCommunity

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Standing up to a bully requires more than slogans, press releases, or carefully staged outrage. It requires looking power in the face, refusing intimidation and saying, plainly, no. Congresswoman Joyce Beatty has that courage.

The Ohio Democrat and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus is standing virtually alone inside the Kennedy Center’s governing structure against Donald Trump’s attempted seizure of a national cultural institution. Trump has installed loyalists, pushed aside dissenters, and tried to plaster his name onto a building Congress designated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy.

Beatty sued. And she won, not once, but twice. She did not merely issue a statement; she used the law, reminding Trump and his enablers that public institutions are not presidential playthings and that a board vote cannot erase an act of Congress.

Trump answered with insults and threats. During a virtual board meeting, he reportedly called Beatty “destructive,” claimed she had “never built anything,” and threatened to hold her responsible if the deteriorating building caused a death. That was not an argument. It was intimidation dressed up as authority.

Beatty did not fold. She has been pepper-sprayed while protesting police violence and arrested while demanding voting rights. She knows what it means to put her body, not merely her name, behind a principle. Now she is defending a public institution from a president who thinks anything touched by government belongs to him.

Audacity means boldness, nerve, even temerity. It is neither virtue nor vice until we ask: audacity in the service of what?

Trump’s is criminal audacity: the brazen nerve to privatize public memory and turn a national memorial into a vanity project. It is audacity in the service of ego, domination and theft.

Beatty’s is righteous audacity: the moral nerve to confront illegitimate power and refuse to be muted. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “I have the audacity to believe,” then spoke of food, education, culture, dignity, equality and freedom for people everywhere. That was audacity in the service of justice. That is the tradition Joyce Beatty claims.

Coming out of Congressional Black Caucus Week, her example provokes a larger question: What is Black political power for?

The CBC was founded in 1971 by 13 members who understood that representation without collective action was insufficient. They boycotted President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address and demanded a meeting about Black America. They were not invited to power’s table because the powerful developed good manners. They organized, insisted, and disrupted.

Today the CBC is larger and more institutionally powerful than its founders could have imagined. Black members hold seniority, key committee positions, and party leadership. Hakeem Jeffries could become the first Black Speaker of the House. But proximity to power is not power, and titles are not transformation.

CBC week brings urgent policy debates about voting rights, economic justice, health, education and Black political power. It gathers ambitious young people, seasoned public servants, advocates and entrepreneurs, along with more receptions than any human can reasonably attend. Yet we must not confuse access with action or networking with movement-building. The measure of the gathering comes after the ballroom lights go dark.

Will voting rights be defended and predatory redistricting challenged? Will Black unemployment, Black maternal mortality and the racial wealth gap be treated as emergencies rather than perennial panel topics? Will elected officials confront authoritarianism when it is risky?

Joyce Beatty has answered with her actions.

Her fight is about more than a building. Cultural institutions tell us whose history is honored and whose names endure. Trump’s desire to rename the Kennedy Center is part of his effort to rewrite history, punish dissent, and place himself at the center of every American story. He does not simply want power. He wants tribute. Beatty refuses to pay it.

Black women have often supplied the labor and backbone of American democracy while others received the credit. They organize voters, steady institutions, defend the Constitution, and are told to lower their voices. Beatty’s voice was literally muted during a Kennedy Center meeting. She found another microphone: the federal courts. Resistance is not always a march. Sometimes it is a lawsuit, a vote or a refusal to consent. Sometimes it is one woman in a hostile room saying, “You may have the votes, but you do not have the law.”

Courage deserves to be named. We saw it in Barbara Lee, standing alone against the sweeping 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and warning against a blank check for endless war. We saw it in Barbara Jordan, a freshman on the House Judiciary Committee, making the Constitution thunder during Watergate. We see it in Maxine Waters, using her financial leadership to confront predatory lending, discriminatory finance, and attacks on consumers. And we see it now in Joyce Beatty.

The CBC has long called itself the conscience of the Congress. Conscience is not a ceremonial title. It is a duty. At a moment when too many people accommodate the outrageous, normalize the abnormal, and calculate the cost of speaking, Beatty has chosen to fight. Her righteous audacity is not simply that she challenged a president. She refused to let public memory become private vanity.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C. based economist, author, and commentator. Visit www.juliannemalveaux.com.

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

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