“You n*****!”
Early one evening a few days ago, Powell stood on the Dunbar practice field with a couple of his assistant coaches and recounted that recent call.
“It was an old lady and it was some of the nastiest things I heard,” he said quietly. “She used the ‘n’ word a couple of times. She told me I was teaching the kids wrong and they’re gonna end up dead.”
Line coach James Lacking then took out his phone and brought up the Facebook comment made by a woman preacher from Cincinnati:
“You’re so right,” she had responded to another online naysayer. “Got to hold up patriotic values and teach those n***** kids they got no say.”
Lacking said some of the Dunbar parents managed to contact her and voice their dismay.
“She tried to apologize,” he said. “But it was more like damage control.”
In a follow-up post, the woman claimed she was “irritated” by the other comments and was trying to be satirical and “it didn’t come off in print.”
While her intent might be muddled, other commentators left no doubt.
One person said everyone should boycott the team. Another said the coach should be fired. A woman called the players “dumb-asses.” A man said: “Scum is getting younger and younger these days.”
So what fueled the wrath heaped onto the Dunbar football team?
Like several other high school football teams across the nation — including the players of Aurora Central in Colorado, Garfield in Seattle, Madison East and Madison West in Wisconsin, Omaha Central in Nebraska, San Francisco’s Mission High, Woodrow Wilson High in Camden, N.J., and Auburn High in Rockford, Ill. — the Wolverines followed the lead of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has taken a knee or chosen to sit during the national anthem before his NFL games as a protest against racial injustice in this country.
Although the move has been polarizing, it has managed to launch a debate about race, police response and what it means to be patriotic in America.
In the process the discussion has been carried onto one of the celebrated bastions of Americana: the high school football field.
“Part of our duty as a coach is to educate our kids,” Powell said. “It’s about more than football. Much more than just football. We’re trying to raise good young men for our community who are socially aware and trying to make this a better place for everyone.
“And we don’t want any confusion here. Some people have said we’re disrespecting our soldiers, people who fought for this country and love this country. But this is nothing like that. We respect our soldiers and their sacrifices.
“This is about injustices in our community that have been going on for the past several years. We wanted our voice to be heard, even though we’re doing it in silence and peacefully.”
Powell said he expected the response to be varied and it has. There have been many supporters, whether it’s been teachers at the high school, people in the community or commentators on social media.
“The first duty of an American patriot is to protest injustice,” one man responded on Facebook. “Someone is raising these young people right.”
“For all of you saying ‘love it or leave it,’ it is you who are not a proper American. Our Founding Fathers were protesting injustice and the right to protest is inscribed in our Constitution.”
“If it gets people talking, it worked,” wrote one woman. “It’s not my way, but I get it.”
Other people did not get it and Powell expected that. What he did not count on was the depth of hatred and venom that would come from some:
“I was a little bit taken aback by the intense negative reaction, the racial slurs and (veiled) threats. It was pretty shocking to see and hear the bad things about our kids. It’s just a sad state to see we’re still in a time when things are not equal. It shows we still have a long way to go.”
Dunbar, though, has not been targeted the way some dissenting players and teams have.
Rodney Axon Jr., who is black, and plays for Brunswick High in northeastern Ohio, was threatened on social media with lynching because he took a knee during the national anthem after hearing some teammates use racial slurs to refer to the rival team they were playing, Austintown Fitch, which is mostly black
In the investigation that has followed, two Brunswick players admitted using the racial comments.
In Texas, the Beaumont Bulls — a youth league team of 11-and 12-year-olds — took a knee, as did their coach, and immediately found themselves in the cross-hairs.
The coach was suspended by the league for the season and he, too, was threatened on social media with lynching.
As for the kids, it was suggested they be “killed.”
‘Gave them a choice’
At 28, Darran Powell is one of the younger head coaches in Miami Valley high school football.
He was a standout at Dunbar, both as an honor society student and an athlete. He was a three-year starter in basketball and part of the Wolverines’ state championship team as a senior.
A three-year regular in football and team MVP, he then played collegiately, first at the University of Cincinnati and then at Lane College.
His dad and his uncle, twin brothers Albert and Alfred Powell, have been pillars around Dunbar for decades. They are well-known and respected coaches, mentors and community leaders.
“My mother is active in the community too,” Darran said. “I was brought up right. Brought up to be conscious of what is going on in the world today.”
As a coach he’s tried to impart some of that to his players.
“Every week we have a guest speaker come in and talk to the kids,” said Albert Powell, one of his son’s assistant coaches. “In that aspect we‘re ahead of the curve.
“We’ve had positive people who graduated from Dunbar come in. And just a couple of days ago we had a police officer who graduated from Dayton Public Schools talk to the players about how they should react with police should they ever be pulled over: You show your hands. You be responsible, but you also have a right to ask what you are being pulled over for.”
Three weeks into this 6-1 season — before the game at Cincinnati Hughes — Darran Powell said one of his players and an assistant coach took a knee. The following week a few more players joined in and that’s when he said he called a team meeting:
“We educated everyone on the situation and told them if they decided to protest — as long as it was done the right way — we wouldn’t frown on them. And if they decided not to, that was fine, too. We gave them a choice.”
The issue resonated with the Dunbar players for various reasons. They are all within the age range of two of the best-known young men killed by police: Cleveland’s Tamir Rice was 12 and Michael Brown was 18 when he died in Ferguson, Missouri.
There’s also the proximity of the death of John Crawford III, who was shot by an officer in the Beavercreek Walmart.
“That’s the one thing that hit home with our kids — they know it can happen anywhere and to anybody,” Powell said. “It’s a scary thing.”
He said he was surprised by his players’ social awareness — “they had talked about it amongst themselves before we ever said anything” — and their response once the negative comments eroded into racial slurs:
“We told them not to respond, to just let the negative energy stay where it was, and they have. They could have become very angry and wanted to retaliate, but instead they’ve stayed focused as a team. I think it’s bonded us and made us closer. We’re family and we have each other’s back through thick and thin.”
Protests too late?
Right after the team captains met at the center of the field for the coin toss Friday night at the Western Hills field in Cincinnati, the Dunbar coaches told their players to line up on the sideline.
As they did, stellar junior linebacker and receiver Seth Arnold hustled past the assemblage of players and repeated the reminder: “Take a knee…Take a knee.”
As the public address announcer set the stage for The Star Spangled Banner with an introduction — “Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a great country like no other … we invite you to stand for the playing of the national anthem” — all but four of the Dunbar players took a knee.
Two of those left standing raised their hands in “don’t shoot” fashion.
In front of his solemn and silent troops, Darran Powell did the same. Across the way the players for Western Hills — where the athletic director is a former Dunbar player — stood at attention.
Standing behind the Dunbar players, whose right to protest I support, I felt uncomfortable and sad. I didn’t like seeing them on one knee, but I understood as best I can.
If you are not a person of color, you don’t know what it’s like. There are too many young black men killed in police shootings and that has to change for us to be a better nation.
“Just as I fear for my son getting stopped, I know he and some of his coaches have sons of their own — Darran has four (little) boys — and they worry what could happen to them one day,” Albert Powell said. “We all just want our kids to grow up safely and not be killed.”
Eric Reid, the San Francisco safety who has knelt beside Kaepernick at some 49ers games, made this observation to reporters about the quarterback:
“Some people are making it into him hating the country. But I think that he loves his country so much that he wants to bring attention to issues that need to be fixed.”
Other people vehemently disagree with him and those like the Dunbar Wolverines who follow him. And that is their right.
But then there are racial slurs and physical threats that can come from anonymous social media bullies or even a grandmotherly old lady on the phone who spews the “n” word again and again.
That truly stunned Powell and begged a final question. For the discomfort and disparagement that has come with all this, would he do anything differently?
He thought a second and finally said: “Yes.”
“If anything, I think we should have started doing this last year or even the year before that when all these incidents started popping up,” he said. “It would have gotten people talking sooner and maybe some things would have changed.”
About the Author