Richard Lapchick, Educator, and Activist born

Richard Lapchick

*Richard Lapchick was born on this date in 1945. He is a white-American educator, human rights activist, sportswriter, and author.  

Richard E. Lapchick is from Yonkers, New York, and he is the son of Joe Lapchick, a college and professional basketball coach who helped integrate the NBA when he signed Nat Clifton in 1950. At the time, as a five-year-old, he witnessed an image of his father swinging from a tree across the street from his house where people were picketing against the inclusion of a Black athlete in a "white" team.

His life passion began at the age of 14 while touring the Nazi internment camp Dachau. While in Europe during the 1960 Summer Olympic Games, he discovered the profound impact that sports can have across all lines of race, color, creed, and religion. In his home, discussions helped him better understand racism. Inspired by Malcolm X's and Bill Russell's autobiographies, Lapchick set out to seek social change. It was then that his dream to use sport as a vehicle for social change was born. In the 1970s, Lapchick started fighting apartheid and led the boycott of South African participation in international sports events, the Davis Cup in particular.

Lapchick was an associate professor of political science at Virginia Wesleyan College from 1970 to 1978 and a senior liaison officer at the United Nations between 1978 and 1984. He then served as director at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society for 17 years. Lapchick founded the Center for the Study of Sport in Society (CSSS) in 1984 at Northeastern University and is now Director Emeritus. In 1993, Lapchick co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention program. One year after the center's inception, Lapchick wanted to take its mission national and established the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS).

Lapchick helped create the National Student-Athlete Day in 1988, recognizing more than 2.6 million high school students as citizen-scholar-student-athletes. His activism led to a personal invitation from Nelson Mandela upon his presidential inauguration in 1994. Lapchick accepted the endowed chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida's College of Business Administration in 2001. In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, Lapchick, his wife Anne, daughter Emily, and a group of DeVos students worked to help rebuild New Orleans. In 2009, the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition honored him for "lifetime achievement in working for civil rights." Lifelong friend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presented the award to Lapchick.

Lapchick received a doctorate in international history from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Lapchick was engaged with the NBA in 2014 against the ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers by Donald Sterling after his racist remarks became public. He remains President of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS) at the University of Central Florida. He has established The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), which serves as a comprehensive resource for issues related to gender and race in amateur, collegiate, and professional sports, and publishes the Racial and Gender Report Card (RGRC). Lapchick works against human trafficking and has added Shut-Out Trafficking to the NCAS's effort to combat human trafficking programs on NCAS campuses.

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