GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, before John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised black-gloved fists to the sky in the Olympics, before Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and other Black athletes positioned their platforms at springboards for social justice, there was Julius Franks Jr.
"Sports is a microcosm of life," said Fred Franks, Julius' son. "I would challenge the researchers of this country, of this city, to find me an earlier African-American athlete who became a civil rights leader."
In 1942, Franks achieved All-American status at the University of Michigan, playing guard for the school's famed Seven Oak Posts offensive line, becoming the university's first Black football player to receive the honor.
"The only place on earth in 1942 where a Black man and a white man could be on the same field together was college football in the northeast," Fred said.
Suddenly, a standout career was cut short by tuberculosis and Franks left football entirely after he and a teammate were hospitalized for two years with the disease.
In 1951, Franks graduated from the University of Michigan Dental School and later moved to Grand Rapids at the advice of a former teammate and future president, Gerald R. Ford.
"Jerry Ford was a senior when my dad was a freshman," Franks said. "They treated him alright, matter of fact."
The Hamtramck-raised man then went to work in on the west side of the state, taking leadership positions in the Urban League, United Way, American Red Cross and other organizations. Prior to the federal ban on segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Franks and three other investors bought 20 acres of land in the Auburn Hills neighborhood in Grand Rapids. While met with resistance, the purchased proved pivotal in the racial integration of the city.
"He didn't have to use protest," Franks said. "He played football with a man that is rising up the political ladder. His buddy is the mayor. He wasn't looking for this, but it happened."
The athlete-activist, who died after witnessing Barack Obama become the first Black man to win a presidential election in November 2008, is remembered as a man who succeeded in both social and sporting life.
"He was right place, right time," Franks said. "He figured out how to most effectively give back and serve the community."
