Rayos Regression – BLOX/Field59: Test Article 4 (DO NOT MODIFY)

Today's Gay Liberation Movement can trace its routes directly to the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969. The famous impromptu demonstrations, which occurred after a nighttime police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City, lasted several days. Soon after, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed, joining the many gay activist organizations that had been springing up in previous decades. From there, the movement caught fire and spread rapidly.

Stacker put together a timeline of LGBTQ+ history leading up to Stonewall, beginning with prehistoric events and ending in the late 1960s. As you read, keep in mind that LGBTQ+ is a relatively new term and, while queer people have always existed, the terminology has changed frequently over the years. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic and to accurately describe the experiences of these historical figures, we have chosen in some instances to use the terminology of the time.

Keep reading to discover some significant moments in LGBTQ+ history.

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Although rock art dating as far back as 9,600 depicts what some scholars have interpreted as homosexual love scenes, one of the first sets of skeletal remains of an LGBTQ+ person was a body thought to be a transgender woman discovered in 2011. The archaeological remains, which were found outside Prague, were of a skeleton that was assigned male at birth but arranged in a burial ritual that was reserved strictly for women. “We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a transsexual or third gender grave in the Czech Republic,” archaeologist Katerina Semradova said at a press conference.

Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were ancient manicurists who worked for the royal court in a city called Saqqara, Egypt around 2400 B.C. In 1964, archaeologists unearthed a joint tomb in which the men were buried face to face in the same fashion that many married couples at the time were. Although the site is called the Tomb of the Brothers, and there is debate as to its significance, many historians have interpreted it as evidence of early gay relationships “Same-sex desire existed just behind the ideal facade constructed by the ancients,” said Egyptologist Greg Reeder in a 1998 speech in Dallas.

The lesbian poet Sappho, who hailed from the island of Lesbos (the root of the word lesbian), was born sometime between 630 and 621 B.C. Though her sexuality has been an ongoing subject of debate, she wrote commonly about seemingly lesbian desires, and her only complete surviving poem, “Ode to Aphrodite,” features the female speaker begging the goddess of love to help her get over her unrequited love for a woman.

In 27 B.C. Augustus established the Roman Empire under which the first recorded same-sex marriage ceremony reportedly took place. At this time, laws around homosexuality were also formed—among them that gay prostitution would be legal, but taxed. When Nero became emperor a couple of decades later, he married two men— one of whom Nero allegedly dressed in the clothing of one of Caesar's wives and even castrated to make the man seem more “womanlike.”

In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established, which resulted in the stoning and castration of many gays and lesbians, then dubbed “sodomites.” Decades later, it is estimated there were nearly 1,000 sodomy trials before the Aragonese Inquisition.

The Holy Roman Empire in 1532 made intercourse between two women a crime punishable by death. In 1533, the “abominable vice of buggery” for both sexes was made a capital crime, a law that remained mostly unchanged until 1861 when it was changed to life in prison. The last people executed for the crime were Londoners James Pratt and John Smith, who were hanged after the landlord claimed to have seen them through a keyhole having sex.

It is well-documented that King James I had a lover named George Villiers whom he called his husband and the one he loved “more than anyone else.” In 1623, he went to the length of appointing his “sweet heart,” as he also referred to him, to the nobility as the Duke of Buckingham, a move that made him the highest-ranking subject outside the royal family.

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During the French Revolution, the penal code outlined new crimes and their respective punishments in an effort to take sweeping power away from judges. Along with the new code came the legalization of sodomy, which was the first lift on the ban in Western Europe and one that paved the way for others to follow.

In 1811, The Netherlands was the first major European country of the 19th century to decriminalize homosexuality. The Dominican Republic followed suit in 1822. Over the next decade El Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, Portugal, Argentina, Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire), Honduras, Italy, and even The Vatican did the same—all before the turn of the next century. By contrast, Russia, Poland, and Germany enacted new laws against gay and lesbian activity.

Amelia Earhart and openly gay reporter Lorena Hickok are just two of the women whom First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was rumored to have had closeted affairs with, the latter of whom she exchanged more than 3,300 letters with over a 30-year period. There has been extensive speculation about the First Lady's sexuality over the years, though some have argued it's irrelevant when discussing her contribution to the gay rights movement, particularly given her position of power. “(Roosevelt) did more than almost anyone in the pre-Stonewall era to model acceptance of gay relationships—and she did it in the White House,” wrote Marc Peyser for the Huffington Post.

In 1886, a mixed-gender Zuni Native American named We'wha took part in a delegation to Washington D.C., where they were introduced to President Grover Cleveland. We'wha was a famous Lhamana, a person in Zuni culture who is assigned a male gender at birth, but takes on ceremonial roles and attire typically reserved for women. Today, the Lhamana gender identity is referred to as “two-spirit” or “third-gender.”

Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician who spent most of his career studying sexuality with a focus on homosexuality. He became a champion for gay rights and co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee—the world's first gay rights organization. Being both Jewish and gay, he was frequently targeted in his home country, yet he continued his work. He said he became interested in activism after observing many of his gay patients committing suicide.

A contemporary of Hirschfeld's, Emma Goldman was an American feminist and anarchist who served as an early ally to gay rights activism. The Russian-born Jew, who emigrated to America as a teenager, was heterosexual, but spent much of her life championing for various minority causes. In a letter to Hirschfeld, she said: “It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”

Dora Richter was a transgender woman under the care of Magnus Hirschfeld who received the first known vaginoplasty procedure in 1931 (though Hirschfeld did not perform the surgery). Along with a number of other transgender women, Richter worked at the Institute for Sexual Research where she was given special permission by police to wear women's clothing. Two years after her affirmation surgery, the Nazis burned the library of the Institute and began sending homosexuals to concentration camps.

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In 1936, Spanish police raided the Granada home of Federico Garcia Lorca, a famous poet they described as a socialist prone to “homosexual and abnormal practices.” He fled to a friend's house, but they caught up with him and surrounded the home, arresting him and taking him to an interrogation spot called the Fuente Grande. According to documents published in 2015, they executed him after he gave unspecified confessions, and they buried him on site in a “very shallow grave, in a ravine.”

When biologist Alfred Kinsey published “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948, he asserted that approximately 37% of men at the time had engaged in homosexual activities at least once. That, along with other findings in his book, acted as the “opening salvos of the sexual revolution,” according to some, and brought the conversation about sex of all types to the mainstream. “During the Twentieth Century, no one individual did more to bring homosexuality into the public forum than Alfred Charles Kinsey,” wrote Alan Branch, professor of Christian Ethics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “... Prior to Kinsey, people were generally considered to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Instead of this binary approach, Kinsey saw sexual behavior as existing on a continuum, which rarely described individuals as either strictly homosexual or heterosexual.”

Gender confirmation surgeries (then called “sex reassignment”) had been performed prior to Christine Jorgensen. However, the transgender woman from the Bronx was the first person to become famous for it, bringing awareness and resources to the trans community that previously had very little access to information. After completing two operations in Denmark, she returned to New York to instant fame and began touring, writing, and speaking to advocate for transgender rights.

In 1955, there weren't any lesbian political rights group in the United States—that is until the Daughters of Bilitis formed in San Francisco, making history as the first group of its kind. What began as a safe space for women to meet without the risk of police raids at gay bars quickly morphed into a full-blown political organization that created other political offshoots including The Ladder, which encouraged women to “take off their masks.” For 14 years, DOB, as they were known, helped women come out of the closest and offered resources to anyone who needed it.

James Baldwin published “Go Tell It On The Mountain” in 1956, offering the world a novel that was “pivotal in American gay literature,” according to many critics. Although the theme of homosexuality is never outrightly expressed, the subtext is hard to miss.

One, Inc. v. Olesen was the first U.S. Supreme Court case that involved gay rights and it won, marking a triumphant moment for the emerging liberation movement. The ruling occurred in 1958 when the high court overturned a federal district court's decision to label gay magazine “ONE: The Homosexual Magazine” as “obscene” and ban it from being distributed through the United States Postal Service.

In 1962, Illinois became the first state in the nation to remove sodomy laws from its criminal code. The historic legislation occurred after the American Law Institute put together a list of recommendations called the Model Penal Code in an effort to create more legal uniformity across states. Illinois was the first state to adopt the full set of recommendations which omitted sodomy from the criminal code.

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Although it's hard to say for sure given the burgeoning nature of the gay rights movement at the time, the protests outside the U.S. Army's Whitehall Street Induction Center in 1964 are generally considered to be the first public demonstration for gay rights. The demonstrations occurred after the confidentiality of a gay man's draft record was broached, prompting an activist named Randy Wicker to organize the protest to speak out against the military's anti-gay policies.

In 1965, a group of young people in San Francisco got together to create the Vanguard, the country's first gay liberation organization. The group, which was co-founded by Adrian Ravarour and Billy Garrison, also produced an accompanying news publication, the Vanguard Magazine, which was created by Jean-Paul Marat and Keith Oliver St.Clair.

When the New York State Liquor Authority banned bartenders from serving alcohol to gay people, an activist group called the Mattachine Society responded in 1966. Large groups turned out at Julius Bar in New York City to host a “Sip-In,” as they called it, promoting the issue to land in court. “The importance of this, I think, was that until this time gay people had never really fought back,” said Dick Leitsch, head of the New York Mattachine Society at the time. “We just sort of took in everything passively, didn't do anything about it. And this time we did it, and we won.”

After plain-clothed police officers raided the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles on New Year's Day in 1967, beating up staff and patrons alike, a group of gay rights protestors began demonstrating out front. Organized by P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education), the crowd was the biggest civil rights demonstration the LGBTQ community had produced at the time, leading some historians to call it the “birthplace of a worldwide movement.”

If progress is born from many small moments in the margins cresting into a public sea change, the impact of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem during the 2016 football season presaged and charted the course for the huge wave of athletic activism seen in 2020 and carrying through to 2021.

When Kaepernick protested police brutality and racism with a peaceful protest, he incited a harsh backlash and wasn’t signed back to the San Francisco 49ers after the season ended. Five years later, players are not only kneeling, but speaking out about systemic racism with calls for action to end police brutality and systemic racism, building on and adding to Kaepernick’s earlier activism.

Kaepernick wasn’t the first athlete to use his platform to peacefully protest racist violence—or the first to be punished for it. Muhammad Ali was perhaps the first Black athlete of the modern era to risk his career and white approval for standing up for what he believed in, refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War on religious and ethical grounds. He was subsequently banned from boxing and stripped of his titles, losing his income. Ali set the groundwork for future protest, showing athletes what could be gained—and potentially lost—with political activism.

Ali likely influenced two sprinters: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, whose protest was captured in the now-iconic photo of the athletes holding raised fists while the national anthem played during the 1968 Olympic Games. They sought to bring attention to the plight Black Americans faced against structural racism in the U.S. To do this, they wore socks but no shoes to symbolize poverty of African Americans, and black gloves on their raised fists to symbolize unity. The third man in the photo, Australian Peter Norman, joined Smith and Carlos in wearing a human rights badge. They were expelled from the Games and faced harassment and ostracism when they returned home. Reflecting on the protest in Smithsonian Magazine, Carlos said, “We had to be seen because we couldn't be heard.”

In 1996, NBA’s Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem, calling the flag a “symbol of oppression, of tyranny.” He was suspended from playing until agreeing to stand for the anthem with his eyes closed.

These are only a few of the most notable examples of 20th-century athletes on the forefront of peaceful political protest. Kaepernick brought the legacy into the 21st century when he kneeled during the national anthem during his 2016 games, bringing national attention to inequality in America. “People are dying in vain because this country isn’t holding their end of the bargain up, as far as giving freedom and justice, liberty to everybody. That’s something that’s not happening,” he told media when it was noticed he wasn’t standing for the anthem. “This is because I’m seeing things happen to people that don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard, and effect change. So I’m in the position where I can do that and I’m going to do that for people that can’t.”

His protest resulted in being all but blacklisted from the NFL. But it also resulted in wider recognition of police brutality in America, and the backlash among white team owners and politicians—Donald Trump said his protest was “a terrible thing” and that “he should find a country that works better for him”—highlighted the reality of how angry and uncomfortable peaceful protest makes some people in America.

Other athletes followed Kaepernick’s example in 2016 and 2017. First teammate Eric Reid joined him. Then other football players across the NFL refused to stand, including Jeremy Lane of the Seattle Seahawks; Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos; and Arian Foster, Michael Thomas, Kenny Stills, and Jelani Jenkins of the Miami Dolphins. Marcus Peters of the Kansas Chiefs and Martellus Bennett and Devin McCourty of the New England Patriots held up fists. Soccer player and Olympic winner Megan Rapinoe kneeled during the national anthem in solidarity with Kaepernick. High school teams started to kneel, then university players and cheerleaders, and then even more NFL players kneeled or stood with raised fists during the anthem. The entire Indiana Fever women’s team kneeled, bringing Kaepernick’s protest to the WNBA. In 2017, Seth DeValve of the Cleveland Browns became the first white player to kneel during the anthem.

And so the activism and strikes that swept the sports world after the police shootings of George Floyd and Jacob Blake in 2020 didn’t come out of nowhere. Along with massive demonstrations that took place across every state in the U.S. (and quite a few countries around the world), athletes, in particular Black athletes, drew on both recent and more distant history. And while it can be argued that owners and corporate sponsors are commodifying the movement—the NFL releasing statements against racism is, after all, the very same institution that blacklisted Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem—the widespread messaging that Black Lives Matter shows how players are pushing their institutions toward change, using their power and influence to force a reckoning at the national level.

Stacker attempted to capture the player activism, dissent, and messaging with 50 photos showing how the sports world, and some specific teams and athletes, have shown support for Black lives.

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Soccer player Serge Gnabry, a midfielder for Bayern Munich, wears an armlet reading Black Lives Matter in solidarity with protests across the U.S. as he warms up before a match on June 6, 2020. His team, FC Bayern Munich, all wore the armbands in solidarity with protestors in the U.S. reacting to the police killing of George Floyd.

Bubba Wallace, the driver of the #43 McDonald's Chevrolet, wears a T-shirt reading "I Can't Breathe Black Lives Matter" under his fire suit during the national anthem prior to a NASCAR race. Wallace, who is the only Black driver in NASCAR’s top racing series, has vocally supported the Black Lives Matter movement and called on the NASCAR organization to ban Confederate flags at its events. Two days later, NASCAR did just that.

When the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted their game in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in nearby Kenosha, it set off a chain reaction in the sports world. Pictured here is the empty Oracle Park stadium, where home team San Francisco Giants were to play the Los Angeles Dodgers on Aug. 26, 2020. Instead, the teams postponed their game and issued a joint statement that read, “Throughout our country’s history, sport has been a powerful vehicle towards change. The Dodgers and Giants proudly join our players in the shared goal for a more equitable and just society.”

Danish teams FC Nordsjalland and Fortuna Hjorring kneeled in solidarity with the Black Lives Matters protests on June 6, 2020, in Farum, Denmark. Pictured in the foreground is Brianne Reed, an American currently playing for FC Nordsjalland, who organized both teams to kneel after the death of George Floyd and subsequent nation-wide protests. “I explained that as a member of the Black community this was something that has been on my heart the past few weeks,” she wrote, noting that she felt it was important for the Danish teams to kneel because “racism is not just a problem in the U.S., but a global problem as well.”

Nicola Bennett, a professional golfer, wears a hat in support of Black Lives Matter during The Rose Ladies Series on July 30, 2020, in Barnet, England. "You don’t see many people from BAME [Black Asian and Minority Ethnic] backgrounds out on the course, and I think there are a couple of reasons for that, both social and economic,” Bennett told Women & Golf. “I hope that I can be an example and role model for Black girls and female golfers and demonstrate to them that things are changing and progress is being made.”

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Baseball’s 2020 Opening Day witnessed professional baseball’s entrance into the kind of political player statements that had long been the norm in other professional sports. Current and former Black baseball players formed a nonprofit called the Players Alliance, and some teams kneeled for 60 seconds before the national anthem played. Pictured is the Black Lives Matter base during a game between the Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox on July 24, 2020, at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.

Philadelphia 76ers players kneel in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement during the national anthems prior to an NBA game against the Toronto Raptors on Aug. 12, 2020. While the NBA’s board of governors announced the creation of the NBA Foundation, pledging $300 million to "create greater economic empowerment in the Black community,” players have taken more direct action, like Sixers players joining protests and Mike Scott and Tobias Harris calling for the arrest of the police who shot and killed Breonna Taylor.

On Opening Day the coaches and players for the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees held a long black cloth and kneeled for 60 seconds of silence. They stood for the national anthem. The MLB has been less engaged than other sports leagues in protesting police violence, though the Milwaukee Brewers followed the Bucks in August, refusing to play a scheduled game after the shooting of Kenosha, Wisconsin’s Jacob Blake by police. Pictured are members of the Washington Nationals kneeling and holding the black ribbon.

A Black Lives Matter banner is seen in front of AdventHealth Arena at ESPN Wide World Of Sports Complex on Aug. 27, 2020. Players pushed back against the “bubble,” the socially distant protocols allowing the season to play out in Florida, for the hampering effect on their activism efforts.

Tom Brady signed a petition calling on Congress to end police immunity—one of 1,400 athletes, coaches, managers, and other staffers across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Qualified immunity shields police officers from misconduct, making it nearly impossible to hold the police accountable for violence and unwarranted killing. Pictured is Tom Brady wearing a helmet with “End Racism” stamped on it before a game against the Carolina Panthers on Sept. 20, 2020.

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Basketball players have protested police violence on the court and off. On Juneteenth, Washington Wizards’ Bradley Beal and Natasha Cloud, a player for the Washington Mystics, led many of their teammates in a protest against police brutality. In this picture, the Washington Wizards players stand behind a Black Lives Matter logo on the court before an NBA basketball game against the Phoenix Suns on July 31, 2020.

The Black Surfers Association has organized surfers to protest police violence. On Aug. 22, they paddled the distance of 13 blocks, representing the date, March 13, that Breonna Taylor was killed. “We don’t want to do just the typical paddle out,” said Lou Harris, the founder of the East Coast Chapter of Black Surfers Association. “Those 13 blocks that you paddle, it’s going to make you think how she was asleep in the house, dying for no reason.” The Association had previously paddled the equivalent of eight blocks to protest the killing of George Floyd—one block for each minute that police kneeled on his neck, causing him to asphyxiate. Pictured is a drone shot of the surfers paddling out from Rockaway Beach in New York on Aug. 22, 2020, to protest the killing of Breonna Taylor by police.

Austrian soccer player David Alaba took the opportunity of his team’s win to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Many athletes outside of the U.S. have shown support by protesting, kneeling, and wearing clothing supporting Black lives. In this photo, Alaba kneels next to the UEFA Champions League Trophy following his team's victory in the final match on Aug. 23, 2020.

British racing champion Lewis Hamilton is the first and only Black driver in the history of Formula One, the international racing sport. The 2020 racing season sees him attempting to win his seventh championship, which would tie him for the record. He unveiled a new helmet for the season, with Black Lives Matter on the front and the text on the back, which had previously read “Still I Rise,” tweaked to “Still We Rise.” He is pictured here as he celebrates winning the F1 Grand Prix of Spain on Aug. 16, 2020.

Pictured here is "End Racism" displayed on the scoreboard prior to Game Three of the Western Conference Second Round during the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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The MLB has existing partnerships with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the Jackie Robinson Foundation and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. And after the killing of George Floyd by police, the MLB launched new initiatives with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In this photo, the patches are pictures on the sleeve of a New York Mets jersey prior to the game against the Atlanta Braves on July 24, 2020.

Though the cricket stadium was empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, players took a knee and raised a fist in support of the Black Lives Matter movement prior to the start of the third Test cricket match between England and the West Indies on July 24, 2020.

In another game played without spectators because of the pandemic, tennis players and officials took advantage of empty seats to stretch two Black Lives Matter signs across swaths of vacant seats in Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, New York City. Pictured here is Angelique Kerber of Germany playing Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia during their Women's Singles first-round match on Day One of the 2020 US Open.

After the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the Baltimore Ravens released a strongly worded statement on Twitter, the first NFL team to break ranks with the blander official line and make explicit demands, including the arrest of those who shot Blake and those who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, as well as the demand that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell allow the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 to be brought to a vote in the Senate. In this photo, Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens waits for the snap in front of a Black Lives Matter sign on Sept. 28, 2020.

As part of its “Be Open” initiative, the US Open selected 18 Black and BIPOC artists to contribute to an art installation put front and center in the Arthur Ashe Stadium on Day One of the 2020 US Open on Aug. 31, 2020.

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Pre-pandemic, Manchester United fans display an anti-racism banner prior to the Premier League match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace on Aug. 24, 2019.

The Pittsburgh Pirates unfurled large, segmented Black Lives Matter banners on a walkway inside PNC Park. The team tweeted “Use your platform. Make a difference” when it went on display. It’s pictured here prior to the Major League Baseball game between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates on Sept. 5, 2020.

The WNBA, long on the forefront of athlete activism, opened their season with games dedicated to victims of police brutality, with jerseys displaying Breonna Taylor’s name. Pictured here is Layshia Clarendon of the New York Liberty, guarded by Aerial Powers of the Washington Mystics, with Black Lives Matter emblazoned on the court on Aug. 7, 2020.

After the Milwaukee Bucks went on strike to protest the police shooting of Wisconsin resident Jacob Blake in August, the Milwaukee Brewers followed suit, canceling their game with the Cincinnati Reds. The teams put out a joint statement reading: “The players from the Brewers and Reds have decided to not play tonight’s baseball game. With our community and our nation in such pain, we wanted to draw as much attention to the issues that really matter, especially racial injustice and systemic oppression.”

Later, baseball players added Black Lives Matter language to their fields and jerseys, as seen on this Milwaukee Brewers player during warm-ups before the MLB game between the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers on Aug. 5, 2020.

Despite the NFL’s blacklisting of Colin Kaepernick for protesting American racism, the league entered the Black Lives Matter movement with the message to “End Racism” printed on field end zones. Pictured here is the message printed in the end zone at SoFi Stadium during the game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Los Angeles Rams on Sept. 13, 2020.

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In a more pointed gesture, several Detroit Lions players took a knee during the national anthem, while others stayed in the locker room. The kneeling during the national anthem echoes Colin Kaepernick’s protesting of racism in 2016, when his kneeling was met with widespread derision and a lack of support from the NFL. Pictured here is Detroit Lions players kneeling during the national anthem before the first quarter at Ford Field on Sept. 13, 2020, in Detroit.

Athletes have been able to tailor parts of their uniforms for causes in the past, like when pink highlights adorned jerseys and gear to raise awareness of breast cancer. Jerseys, helmets, shoes, and other accessories were outfitted with Black Lives Matter messaging. In this photo, Devin McCourty of the New England Patriots wears custom cleats before a game against the Buffalo Bills.

Women’s soccer players wore shirts in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and kneeled prior to a game between Utah Royals and Houston Dash on June 30, 2020. The Utah Royals had recently ended its contract with coach Craig Harrington. Investigators looked into the Utah Royals organization over sexism and racism.

Earlier, players issued a statement that read in part, “We’ve had enough. Enough of the racist systems excluding Black and brown people. Enough of sexist stereotypes infiltrating conversations about our talents and achievements as athletes. Enough of a work environment that is not open and includes for all.”

A Jumbotron at the top of Red Bull Arena says "Black Lives Matter" with a raised fist during the Major League Soccer match between New York City FC and Columbus Crew SC at Red Bull Arena on Aug. 24, 2020. Earlier in August, the New York City FC announced a partnership with the Jackie Robinson Foundation. In July Red Bull’s CEO and CMO were fired after a racist presentation slide was leaked.