What’s In A Name?

As another season of Major League Baseball got under way in April, the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media (NCRSM) was geraing up for its annual protest at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. For over a decade, NCRSM and its president, Vernon Bellecourt, have appeared at every Cleveland Indians home opener and countless other games across America protesting the use and depiction of Native Americans as mascots and team nicknames. Cleveland's baseball team is one of the bigger offenders - thanks to its caricatured "Chief Wahoo" logo - but Cleveland is just one of many professional teams with which the coalition takes issue.

Continue reading this story in the September 2006 issue of KING (#34).