Black Players for Change’s Allen Hopkins: ‘We can eradicate racism in sport’

Allen Hopkins: ‘No one does sports activism like Black athletes. That should be leveraged.’ Photograph: Morgan Halford

A framed photograph of the Cleveland Summit overlooks the desk of Allen Hopkins as he logs on at work each day. It records the 1967 meeting between Black athletes – Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar among them – and politicians to consider and eventually support Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam war. That support sent a message – the fight for civil rights is a collective effort.

“When a Black player walks up to take a penalty, I can’t even watch,” says Hopkins, announced in July as the first executive director for Black Players for Change, a US-based collective of athletes, coaches, and staff working within Major League Soccer. “If he misses that penalty he is going to get his socials crushed. I can’t watch. I just never want a Black player to take a penalty … if he misses …”