[10][11][12] He has been described as Hollywood's first black action hero and his role in the 1969 film 100 Rifles made cinematic history for featuring interracial love scenes.

[13] Brown was one of the few athletes, and among the most prominent African Americans, to speak out on racial issues as the civil rights movement was growing in the 1950s.

Brown later launched a foundation focused on diverting at-risk youth from violence through teaching them life skills, through which he facilitated the Watts truce between rival street gangs in Los Angeles.

[15] Mr. Brown credits his self-reliance to having grown up on Saint Simons Island, a community off the coast of Georgia where he was raised by his grandmother and where racism did not affect him directly.

It was at Manhasset High School that he became a football star and athletic legend.Brown averaged a Long Island record 38 points per game for his basketball team.

That record was later broken by future Boston Red Sox star and Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski of Bridgehampton.

He was treated differently from teammates: he was housed in a non-athlete dormitory, warned against dating Caucasian women, and the coaching staff attempted to put him at other positions, including punter, lineman, and wide receiver.

His senior year, he was named a first-team All-American in lacrosse (43 goals in 10 games to rank second in scoring nationally).

[27] The JMA Wireless Dome has an 800 square-foot tapestry depicting Brown in football and lacrosse uniforms with the words "Greatest Player Ever".

[30] In the ninth game of his rookie season, against the Los Angeles Rams he rushed for 237 yards,[31] setting an NFL single-game record that stood unsurpassed for 14 years[a] and a rookie record that remained for 40 years until Corey Dillon of the Cincinnati Bengals rushed for 246 yards in a Week 15 game against the Tennessee Oilers.

[35][36] In this MVP season, Brown led all players with a staggering 17 touchdowns scored, beating his nearest rival, Baltimore Colts wide receiver Raymond Berry, by 8.

He had expected to return to the Browns afterwards, but retired when team owner Art Modell threatened him with fines for missing training camp.

[54] Brown began his acting career before the 1964 season, playing a buffalo soldier in a Western action film called Rio Conchos.

Brown, one reviewer said, was a serviceable actor, but the movie's overcooked plotting and implausibility amounted to "a vigorous melodrama for the unsqueamish.

[57] MGM's The Dirty Dozen cast Brown as Robert Jefferson, one of 12 convicts sent to France during World War II to assassinate German officers meeting at a castle near Rennes in Brittany before the D-Day invasion.

Biographer Mike Freeman credits Brown with becoming "the first black action star", due to roles such as the Marine captain he portrayed in the hit 1968 film Ice Station Zebra.

[64][65] He would later star with Williamson, Kelly again with Lee Van Cleef in Take a Hard Ride, a western which was released the following year.

[69] He appeared opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987's The Running Man, an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, as Fireball,[70] and had a cameo in the spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988).

[77] Because Ali was a "pariah" in American society at the time because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and refusal to enter the draft, his boxing license had been revoked, and he faced up to five years in prison.

[78][79] The Cleveland Summit was later called "a significant turning point for the role of the athlete in society" and "one of the most important civil rights acts in sports history", as well as a predecessor of the 21st century protest movement initiated by Colin Kaepernick.

[80] Brown later stated in a 1968 Ebony interview, "We've got to stop wasting all our energy and money marching and picketing and going things like camping-down in Washington on a Poor People's Campaign...We've got to get off the emotional stuff and do something that will bring about real change.

[18] In 1988, Brown founded the Amer-I-Can Foundation, an organization that sought to divert gang members and prisoners from violence by teaching them life skills.

[97] In 2008, Brown initiated a lawsuit against Sony and EA Sports for using his likeness in the Madden NFL video game series.

[101] On October 11, 2018, Brown along with Kanye West met with President Donald Trump to discuss the state of America, among other topics.

In Brown's autobiography, he stated that Bohn-Chin was angry and jealous over an affair he had been having with Gloria Steinem, and this argument is what led to the "misunderstanding with the police".

[119] According to the documentary, as well as other sources and numerous interviews,[120] other perpetrators of rape and assault at the Playboy Mansion included Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby.

[129] In December 1973, Brown proposed to 18-year-old Diane Stanley, a Clark College student he met in Acapulco, Mexico, in April of that year.

Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time leader in rushing yards, wrote "He is and was a true legend in sports and in the community using his platform to help others."

Brown was portrayed by David Ajala in the London cast of the 2013 play One Night in Miami[136] and by Aldis Hodge in the subsequent 2021 film adaptation of the same name.

[145] ESPN's SportsCentury in 1999 ranked Brown fourth among their 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century, trailing only Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, and Michael Jordan.