Jim Brown: Words Nice, Actions Nicer

Jim Brown got a call inviting him last Tuesday to a negotiation of a “peace treaty.” So many guys he knew would be there. Guys from gangs. Guys no longer from gangs. Guys who never belonged to gangs. Guys from “the jungle” in the Crenshaw district. Guys from Imperial Courts, where the peace talks would go down. Guys who wanted to talk about keeping the city cool.

That was one night before the verdicts in the Rodney King case.

Brown understood why they were meeting.

“They already were worried that there could be a tremendous eruption,” he said. “They didn’t want things to decay. They wanted to see if there was a way to keep things from erupting.”

There wasn’t.

Talk can accomplish only so much. In the black community in particular, Jim Brown has emphasized during and after his distinguished career in professional football, leadership often is more spiritual than practical, coming principally from theologians, from ministers who have more faith than power. And an inspirational sermon isn’t always enough.

Saturday morning, with Los Angeles in embers from three hellish days and nights, Brown said: “There is too much rallying, too much speechmaking, too much philosophizing.”

And not enough action.

Jim Brown is a pragmatist. He neither preaches nor makes speeches. He acts. He reacts.

Brown doesn’t offer gang members dispassionate advice to be better citizens, to be cool, to go out and get decent jobs. He gives them a way. Brown doesn’t counsel prison inmates to get themselves straightened out, to lead more productive lives. He shows them how.

He does something.

He was doing something more than a quarter-century ago, as his Hall of Fame career with the Cleveland Browns was concluding, by helping to create the Black Industrial and Economic Union, finding financing for young African-American businessmen, eliciting a support grant from the Ford Foundation of more than $1 million.

And he was doing something last Wednesday, before the startling King-case verdicts came down. He was inside a penitentiary at Wasco, northwest of Bakersfield, accompanied by actor Blair Underwood of the ironically named television series “L.A. Law,” presiding over a graduation ceremony for men involved in his AmerICAN Program--emphasis on the “I can”--dedicated to prepare inmates for a life beyond bars.

This is not some charity. The organization is a profit-making corporation that actively solicits contracts with civic and private enterprises in pursuit of business opportunities for people in need. Not only has the AmerICAN Program educated its hundreds of constituents in both personal and professional “life-management skills,” it has at times persuaded judges to release offenders to its recognizance

rather than task an already overcrowded prison

system.

“I particularly emphasize that ‘for-profit’ part, because that’s crucial,” Brown said.

You see, Jim Brown, 56, happens to believe that the root of much evil is lack of money. His personal philosophy is that economic development “is the only

way to move up in this country.”

Because so many black leaders emerge from the clergy, there is a tendency, Brown believes, to downplay the importance of making money. In his autobiography, he wrote: “Uplifting speeches are great, when you need them . . . What I need is education: What capitalist techniques do I need to know how to make money? Because once I have money in America, if I work with other blacks who have money, I can get power. Then I don’t have to run around asking anyone for anything.”

Brown’s is an action group. The corporation now networks in 14 penal institutions, offering oft-neglected men the prospect of work and self-worth. Municipal governmental agencies have recruited manpower through Brown. So has a foundation run by musician Herb Alpert, who, like Brown, prefers to see men work for themselves than for the state.

“We save the state of California $30 million,” Brown said. “It costs anywhere from $19,000 to $45,000 per inmate, per year, to be incarcerated. If we find them work out here, they won’t be in there. “

It was upon returning home from Wasco that Brown heard about four men who would not be doing time. Four L.A. lawmen.

“I got a sick feeling in my stomach,” he said.

It brought to mind the proposed peace treaty of the previous night. “I knew we could be in for major problems. But even if some of them were let off, I thought there had to be at least some guilty verdicts. I mean, for something so blatant.

“But you know, thinking back, it was like they prepared us. There was (Police Chief) Darryl Gates, preparing his officers for trouble in case of a not-guilty verdict. There were ministers, cautioning everybody not to overreact. Everybody seemed to be prepping us for these guys being found innocent. And that kind of warning actually might have inflamed it, put the idea across that they were going to get off.”

Like other Californians, Jim Brown viewed the aftermath with great sadness. He saw many leaders. He heard many speeches.

He made none.

“We’re not chasers of cameras,” he said. “We do more than discuss. We do.”