Patriots’ Matthew Slater, Devin McCourty reflect on legacy of Bill Russell

Slater, being one of the older members of the Patriots, heard stories of his parents growing up in the segregated south. Still, he couldn’t imagine being in Russell’s position when the basketball star was drafted into the NBA in 1956.

The Celtics may have drafted the first Black player into the league, rolled out the first all-Black starting lineup (which included Russell), and hired Russell to be the first Black head coach across all of American professional sports, but the city of Boston had a lot of work to do to catch up to its basketball team.

Russell, despite enduring countless instances of racism, is responsible for some of that progress.

“You hear stories of what it was like for that generation and it’s unimaginable,” Slater said. “It’s really hard to articulate the type of courage, commitment, resolve, and integrity that those men and women, that Mr. Russell, displayed during that time. We all know what the 60s in this country looked like. As fondly as we like to think of Boston, we can think about what integration looked like in the school systems here. It wasn’t pretty, and that was kind of the makeup of our country at the time, unfortunately. But you think about people who saw that injustice, weren’t going to tolerate it, and then did something about it in a peaceful way. You talk about peaceful protests, I’m thankful for those men and women, I’m thankful for people like Bill Russell, because I wouldn’t be here doing what I am doing today without men and women like them.”