Bill Russell’s Rubber Plantation
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In 1959, a titan of the Boston Garden’s parquet floor and the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement traveled to Liberia on a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa.
While visiting a school, a student asked the Boston Celtics legend why he wanted to come to Liberia.
“I came here because I believe that somewhere in Africa is my ancestral home,” Bill Russell told the child.
“I came here because I am drawn here, like any man, drawn to seek the land of my ancestors.”
The 6′ 10″ NBA star broke down in tears as the children stood and cheered.
By the end of his career, Russell had more championship rings than fingers, all while being targeted by the outrageously racist Boston fans, who howled racist remarks, and even ransacked his house.
“Boston itself was a flea market of racism,” Russell wrote in his 1979 memoir, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man.
“It had all varieties, old and new. The city had corrupt, city hall-crony racists, brick-throwing, send-’em-back-to-Africa racists, and in the university areas phony radical-chic racists.”
In the early ’60s, Russell purchased a rubber plantation about 80 miles east of Monrovia.
As Pan-African Film and Arts Festival Executive Director Ayuko Babu recounted decades later, “he proudly told us he had 200 workers, and when he realized that his workers needed a school to increase their education and level of development, he built a school for them.”
Russell’s dream of sourcing rubber for sneakers made in the US never materialized, and his investment was reportedly far from profitable.
By the late 1970s, with political tensions worsening, many Liberians began fleeing from impending violence.
According to the Historical Preservation Society of Liberia, Russell sold his land “shortly before the 1980 coup and Liberia’s downward spiral.”
Soon, much of Bong County, including Russell’s farm in the Salala District, were converted to shelters to house thousands of refugees.
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