A call for unity: Why Mizzou athletes organized a peaceful march for racial equality
Cason Suggs almost started tearing up.
There were about a thousand people in the Faurot Field stands, all of whom made the trek from The Columns to Memorial Stadium as part of a peaceful march. The crowd was hanging on every word of Suggs, the president of Missouri’s Black Student Athlete Association, as he made his opening remarks.
Suggs admitted he rehearsed his speech numerous times in front of the mirror, visualizing the crowd. But the junior track and field athlete said once he finally got up there, no amount of practice could have prepared him for that moment.
And once he saw the support and crowd, he said he almost couldn’t hold back his emotions.
“When you start something like this you do wonder, ‘How many people care?’” Suggs said. “Because we were very passionate and curious how many people were gonna be invested. It was clear people wanted to see change in their own ways.”
Hundreds of Mizzou athletes, coaches, administrators, students and others joined together Wednesday evening in a peaceful march and sit-in “to promote unity against the injustices that continue in the nation.” It was organized as the first event staged by the newly founded BSAA, with a goal of standing up to racial injustice.
The march started at Mizzou’s historic Columns and ended about a mile away at Faurot Field, where the crowd sat socially distanced for five minutes in a moment of silence. They chanted “Black Lives Matter” and other refrains as they temporarily shut down the streets of Columbia.
“Mizzou is Black and Gold; it’s bigger than even I imagine, apparently, because people from all walks of life showed up,” Suggs said. “To see that with my own eyes, it warms my heart.”
MU athletic director Jim Sterk, football coach Eliah Drinkwitz, men’s basketball coach Cuonzo Martin, women’s basketball coach Robin Pingeton and other MU administrators and staff marched alongside athletes and students alike. Numerous Mizzou student-athletes from different sports and walks of life also took part.
Suggs was joined by his fellow BSAA board members on the field: vice president Keiarra Slack (women’s soccer); social media and community outreach organizer Arielle Mack (women’s track and field); treasurer and secretary Atina Kamasi (women’s track and field); public relations chair Olivia Evans (women’s track and field); and ambassador Kobie Whiteside (football).
BSAA was launched, Suggs said, when some Tigers started talking to their fellow student-athletes at Mizzou and other schools. Once they saw there was a need for an inclusive, diverse organization, BSAA was founded.
“We as athletes, we’re seen only as athletes,” Mack said. “We’re more; we’re layered. You heard in all of their speeches, we are Black first. We go to school Black, we wake up Black. So it was important to use the platform that we were blessed with, because people only think we’re only going to talk about our sport. But obviously we’re more than that.”
The peaceful march was organized solely by the student-athletes without any outside help. BSAA members conducted Zooms and other meetings in preparation, diligently planning the pace of the march and other factors to shine light on social injustices and police brutality against Black people.
Slack said she wanted to make one important distinction during her speech in front of the crowd:
This is a human rights issue, and it’s not political.
“We are people,” Slack said. “We have our different skin tones. We have different parts of us and our identities, but we’re people. It’s not about one side or the other what you side with. It’s about who you are as a person. That’s why we believe this is the standard: It’s a human right’s issue, nothing else.”
While BSAA started with a bang by organizing the march, the group’s officers noted they’re still looking toward the future.
“For us, it’s just keep talking,” Kamasi said. “Keep having this conversation. As we’re saying, it’s not a moment, it’s a movement. For us, it’s let’s keep talking about it. We’ll do everything to keep that conversation going.”
It wasn’t the first time, even within the past few months, that Mizzou student-athletes had organized a peaceful walk as the nation continues to experience a reckoning around issues of race. The MU football team held its own march from The Columns to Boone County Courthouse, where 62 student-athletes registered to vote. The Tigers also canceled practice last week to make a statement and stand up to racial inequality.
Wednesday’s march was just the first step, BSAA officers said, in their efforts. They called the fight against systemic oppression a movement, one that must spread from person to person to make a lasting impact.
“Being Black in America, we can’t hide from the things that are going on because it looks like us,” Suggs said. “So when I see the injustice, I connected with myself. We didn’t even need to connect with different groups. It was almost as if the suffering itself connected all of us.”