Jamal Adams led off Seahawks remarkable meeting saying, ‘I fear for my life as a Black man’
Jamal Adams was honored the coach he’s had for barely a month asked him to speak first at such an important meeting.
Pete Carroll was beginning the Seahawks’ extraordinary, 90-minute, outdoor team meeting Saturday on race and how the team can best advance the Black Lives Matter movement into concrete action. Carroll did not ask Russell Wilson to lead off the unforgettable session to his teammates. Nor did the coach ask Bobby Wagner or K.J. Wright.
He asked Adams, the team’s new All-Pro safety, who joined the Seahawks in a splashy trade from the New York Jets in late July, to walk first to the bottom of the grass berm adjacent to Seattle’s practice field.
Adams walked down the hill and turned to face all 79 other players, plus Carroll and dozens of assistant coaches and staffers who were on it. He took the head coach’s place in front of them all. They looked down upon the 24-year-old as if he was center stage in an amphitheater.
This is what Adams told them:
“I’m afraid. I fear for my life as a Black man. And I shouldn’t fear for my life.
“It’s tough to continue to do what I do. When I take off my Seahawks gear, I’m just another Black guy in the community, another Black guy in the street. It’s a tough concept to swallow.
“I’m afraid every time I walk by a cop. I’m afraid every time a cop pulls me over. I’m afraid when I walk into a restaurant or a bar and they tell me that I can’t have those pants on or I can’t have those shoes on.
“I’m afraid. That was the gist of my talk,” Adams said Sunday.
He was wearing a Malcolm X shirt and speaking in halting, solemn tones one day after the team meeting he and perhaps all 79 of his teammates won’t forget.
Adams told his fellow Seahawks of the incident years ago while he was on a recruiting visit to a university. He and his group left the immediate area of campus in a car. That’s where police pulled over the car and ordered him and his fellow football recruits plus a couple of players at that college at the time all to the ground.
“I did once have a gun drawn to me. And I did nothing,” Adams said. “I was on the ground. I once felt that. I felt that pressure. I was scared. I was terrified. I never go anywhere without my wallet, because I don’t know if they know my name.
“Three cop cars pulled us over. And I’ll never forget the day. I’ll never forget the guy put us on the ground, found out who we were and said, ‘This is how we treat our players. You don’t want to come here.’”
Adams went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and signed with LSU. That’s where he starred before the Jets selected him sixth overall in the 2017 NFL draft.
“It’s always been like that. I’ve always been stereotyped my whole life,” said the native of Lewisville, Texas, a city of about 100,000 in the northern suburbs of Dallas-Fort Worth. “I grew up in a diverse area. I went to a diverse school. I’ve seen the all the jokes. I’ve seen it all.
“And, again, I fear for my life, man. I fear for my niece’s life. I fear for my nephew’s life. I fear for my brother’s life. I fear for my parents’ life.
“I fear for my brothers. Because I don’t know when my time is up. I don’t know if I’m next.”
Leaning in
Adams spoke after a week of renewed push by the Seahawks in their months-long lean into racial inequality and police brutality in America. Carroll’s team has been, as the coach has said, “on it” since Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee during national anthems at NFL games to protest the problems. That was in 2016.
The Seahawks’ talks and momentum for the cause intensified in the past week following a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooting a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back in front of his family.
Since May and before Adams joined the team, the Seahawks have held remote team talks on race during the coronavirus pandemic. The talks began in earnest after Black man George Floyd died when a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee into the back of Floyd’s neck into pavement for several minutes. In March, Breonna Taylor was shot dead by police in her home in Louisville.
“I don’t know, is enough enough?” Adams said. “Will I be the one that has to be the guy for people to understand that they are killing unarmed people? Do I have to be a top athlete, does a top athlete have to go down for people to really listen, and understand why?
“There’s no justifying anything, man. There’s no justifying, ‘Oh, he had a knife. He was on drugs.’ There’s no justifying.
“Murder is murder, right?” Adams said, his voice growing louder. “Wrong is wrong. And right is right. It’s simple as that.”
Adams bowed his head.
He also bowed in respect to his new coach.
Impressed by his coach
After Adams led off the meeting, other Seahawks spoke out, forcefully, on that grass berm.
Then Carroll took the pre-practice Zoom press conference that was supposed to be for running back Chris Carson, cornerback Tre Flowers and defensive tackle Jarran Reed on Saturday.
The 68-year-old coach instead delivered a 14-minute, 26-second monologue. He demanded white Americans finally listen to Black people.
“Black people know the truth. They know exactly what is going on. It’s white people that don’t know,” Carroll said.
“It’s not that they’re not telling us. They’ve been telling us the stories. We know what’s right and what’s wrong. We just have not been open to listen to it. We’ve been unwilling to accept the real history and been taught a false history of what happened in this country. We have been basing things on false premises. And it has not been about equality for all. ...
“This is a humanity issue that we are dealing with. This is a white-people’s issue to get over it and learn what’s going on and figure it out the issue to get over. And start loving. Everybody.”
The players voted to cancel Saturday’s practice. They chose instead to ensure every Seahawk was by the end of Saturday registered in his home state for the general election Nov. 3.
It was the players’ first action to push their cause into results.
Adams was all for that.
“The system has never been for us, if we are being honest,” he said of Black people. “It’s never been fair. So we’ve got to continue to work. We’ve got to continue to educate.”
Adams was blown away by his new coach.
“I saw a leader. I saw a man that wants to learn, even more. I saw a man that understands the pain that the Black community is going through,” Adams said.
“I saw a guy that’s willing to listen. That’s what I saw in Coach. I take my hat off to him.
“He wanted to start off the meeting by speaking. I thought that was really powerful, you know, coming from him to me, and him having the trust to have me start it off with some many high-caliber guys here: Russ, Bobby, K.J. So I didn’t take that lightly, man.
“I think I set the tone. I think we had a great talk. And we are going to educate. And we are going to continue to learn.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2020 at 6:29 PM.
