From Serbia to CoMo: Why a Mizzou athlete is a driving force behind racial justice
Atina Kamasi was immediately met with culture shock when she touched down in the United States. Everybody spoke English — her second language — and she missed her mom’s cooking, living thousands of miles away from her homeland of Serbia.
Kamasi, then a track and field athlete at Washington State, needed to adjust quickly as she soaked up a new culture.
But as she acclimated, Kamasi said she witnessed chilling truths about her new home: racial inequality and social injustice. While serious issue, this wasn’t something that directly affected her as an international student. But once she spoke with her teammates — her new family — about their experiences with hate and prejudice, Kamasi wondered:
“Why does the color of a skin of another person, of a Black person, offend people so much?”
Once Kamasi transferred to Mizzou, she put action behind those thoughts. She was a leading force, along with teammate Cason Suggs, in the creation of MU’s Black Student Athlete Association. The BSAA started its tenure organizing a peaceful march Sept. 2 from The Columns to Memorial Stadium to stand up to social injustice.
And Kamasi, an international student-athlete, was in the middle of the movement.
“You might be wondering: Why? Why are you fighting for a country you’re not from?” Kamasi said after the march. “I’ve been here four years. This country means a lot to me. When I wake up in the morning and see those things on the TV and see friends standing by my side, my peers, why wouldn’t I want to stand by their side?
“So if I — as an individual, as an athlete and an international person — can stand with those that stand by my side, why wouldn’t I do it? I would do it today, I would do it tomorrow and I’m going to stand by their side for the rest of my life.”
Long before Kamasi became a Division I athlete, she said she didn’t have the easiest childhood. When she was 2, she said, NATO forces bombed her hometown. Kamasi said she doesn’t recall specifics, but she remembers how difficult life was for her family and country in the years that followed.
“To hear the stories from my mom from that early childhood, I’m so grateful I stand here today,” Kamasi said. “It wasn’t an easy life. Serbia as a whole, how do you recover economically, health care system, everything? We don’t have that much money; we know that. The whole country isn’t that big.”
From then on, Kamasi said, her parents instilled in her how hard she needed to work. “Invest yourself in everything you do,” they told her. That’s what she did with track and field, committing herself to throwing as a teenager. It helped that her father was a track coach as she traveled the world for competitions.
It was those athletic achievements that allowed her an opportunity to make it to the U.S. — though there was also a whole lot of trust involved. When Kamasi committed to Washington State in spring 2016, she had never visited the campus. She knew nothing about the community of Pullman, Wash. Kamasi said she blindly an old family friend who went to the university and help pave her way to the country.
Pullman, despite its perks, just wasn’t for her. Kamasi said she knew it was time to transfer, which is how she landed in Columbia. She cited her connection with Mizzou coach Brett Halter as an important factor, going as far as calling him a second dad.
She also hit it off with her MU teammates, developing a strong bond with them despite being a Tiger for only one year. That helps, she said, especially considering how Kamasi hasn’t been home in the last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of going back home to Serbia, she figured it was safer to stay in the U.S.
Otherwise she might get stuck overseas.
“I make my friends my family, and I really stand by that. That means the world to me because I can actually go to people,” Kamasi said. “To see how Coach Halter stands by our side and is there for me when I need something, it means more to me than I can express.”
That bond is why Kamasi devoted herself to BSAA, she said. The association started when Kamasi and Suggs started talking, discussing how they could create a safe, healthy environment for Black student-athletes. Their effort soon ballooned to include other members of the athletic department. And the group’s status was formalized.
In a locker room, Suggs said, athletes hail from all walks of life — especially at a school like Mizzou. An old mentor once told Suggs that sports is like an example of the “diorama” of life, one where a group of people experiences the highs and lows of competition. That helps explain why Kamasi, Suggs explained, fits right in with the BSAA, slotting in as its secretary and treasurer.
“Atina being with me, it was no surprise,” Suggs said. “At no point, was I like, ‘Oh, is she going to understand?’ because we have that bond. If we can see it in us, I don’t see why it couldn’t be displayed outside of athletics, outside Mizzou, out in our nation.”
Kamasi admitted after the march that it was going to be difficult for the BSAA to follow up such an important first event. Cabinet members said they appreciated how the Mizzou administration supported the peaceful protest, speaking with different athletic department leaders like MU athletic director Jim Sterk, men’s basketball coach Cuonzo Martin and others.
Mizzou’s BSAA is now looking forward — specifically to the November elections. They’ve been steadfast in continuing the momentum from the march, leaning on their phrase from that day: “It’s not a moment, it’s a movement.”
“Obviously, I can’t vote,” Kamasi said. “So I’m going to do it to help them with that. I think that’s really important to us with the upcoming election. That’s our next step. We still want to bridge the gap as much as we can between campus and athletics. Really get involved with the community. So many things.”