Hank Willis Thomas

Black bodies were spectacles in slave markets and on lynching trees and whipping posts. They are spectacles in the NCAA, NBA, NFL drafts, and combines. Their ancestors may have worked the cotton and tobacco fields that later became football fields. Their ancestors may have been lynched.

I am really trying to draw people out to talk about these very likely possibilities, so that we can think more critically about the present moment. Exploitation is what our country was founded on. It’s the American way. We should be more upfront about it. The NCAA is a multi-billion-dollar business built primarily off of the free labor of descendents of slaves. What a bargain! –Hank Willis Thomas