Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Travesty follows Injustice in Oklahoma



James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953)was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe became the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States.

 Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, and played American football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball.

 He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules that were then in place.

In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe


"Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma, and attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a two-time All-American for the school's football team.

 After his Olympic success in 1912, which included a record score in the decathlon, he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1913, Thorpe signed with the New York Giants, and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919. Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships; he later played for six teams in the National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians.

From 1920 to 1921, Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which became the NFL in 1922. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He struggled to earn a living after that, working several odd jobs. He suffered from alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953.

Thorpe has received various accolades for his athletic accomplishments. The Associated Press named him the "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. "

"He was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path"

 As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born."

" Apart from his career in films, he also worked as a construction worker, a doorman (bouncer), a security guard and a ditchdigger, and briefly joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1945."

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"The Jim Thorpe House is in Yale, Oklahoma, located off State Highway 51 at 706 East Boston Street."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe_House

"In 1917, Jim Thorpe bought a small home in Yale, Oklahoma and lived there until 1923 with his wife, Iva Miller, and children, one of whom, Jim Jr., died at the age of two. The house was bought by the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1968 and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The house is maintained by the Jim Thorpe Memorial Foundation as a small museum to Thorpe and contains related memorabilia."

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"The Tulsa race massacre (also called the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre) of 1921 took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."

 The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district – at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre







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