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Pete Rozelle
Pro Football Hall of Fame
You're in a strange position, because you work for these people, and yet, it's up to you to enforce the constitution and by-laws that they set up. So there's discipline involved, and you have to take issue with them on some things they might want to do, and say, "Well, you can't do that." But they were pretty good. Most of them understood. I know that George Halas was, of course, almost the founder of the National Football League, a great Chicago Bear coach and owner. And I remember, I had to call him in, and he flew in from Chicago. Called me from the airport, and asked if we could meet out there. I said, "No, I want to see you in my office. And he came in and we talked over whatever the problem was at the time. But he didn't get mad. He was very supportive of me. He had respect for authority and knew they had to have a strong commissioner. Not someone who would do just what was, at the time, the thing to do, but one that would stick to their guns and do what they felt was right.
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Pete Rozelle
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Pete Rozelle: There were reports that some players had been betting on games. It was never established they ever bet against their own team. But in the final analysis, I developed enough information through investigation that -- the big one was Paul Hornung, who was a great star with the Green Bay Packers, and Vince Lombardi was his coach. I remember when I called Vinnie and asked him to come in to see me. So he flew into New York. He was a remarkable man. Paul was the star of his championship team, and I laid out the information that we had about Paul, what Paul had been doing. And again, never betting against the Packers, but betting on football. Vince looked at it, he said, "Well, you have no choice, do you?" I said, "I don't think so, Vinnie. Let's go get a drink." He really handled it like a man. Because coaches have an inordinate interest in their football players, and he wanted that talent on the field, and they will argue almost on any case, saying, "Well, you should let him play." But Vince was outstanding in that way. He, the man in authority -- from respect for his authority with the players, with everyone in the Green Bay organization -- but he also gave authority to the commissioner.
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Pete Rozelle
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Pete Rozelle: That was a direct challenge to the NFL constitution, which said you have to have a three-quarters approving vote if you're going to move your franchise. And we had Davis challenge that in his move from Oakland to Los Angeles. And it was sitting there in the constitution, and I couldn't just say, "Oh, I'm not going to press this." I brought it to the attention of the owners, and I said, "I think we have to defend this constitution." So we had two trials over a couple of years. They were long ones. And the trial was in Los Angeles, where he ultimately won with the jury. So he was permitted to move from Oakland to Los Angeles. And that decision in itself triggered a couple of other moves. From Baltimore to Indianapolis, that bothered people in the Baltimore area of course. But stability is a great thing in sports, and the fans feel a definite loss when they lose a franchise, it's not good for a sport.
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Bill Russell
Cornerstone of the Boston Celtics' Dynasty
So he says, "I'm going to make a list of six guys, and you make a list of six guys. And we find one guy that fits on both lists, that could be our new coach." There was no match. So he says, "Well, I'm going to hire this guy." I says, "Oh no. If you hire this guy " -- he brought his name up -- " if you hire him, I'm retiring with you." He says, "You mean that?" "Yes, I do. I'm not going to play for him. I don't even want to be in the same room with him." And so he said, "What do you want me to do?" I go, "Okay. I'll take it. You offered it to me first, I'll take it. But if it doesn't work -- and we'll see whether it works or not -- we can bring in somebody else, even if it's midseason and I will never complain and I'll play just as hard for him as I play for you." Because we were both interested in what was good for the Celtics and not what makes him look good or me look good or bad or whatever. It has nothing to do with anything. That's how I became the player-coach. But one thing I have to add is that, because I'm kind of hard-headed, I refused to have an assistant coach. And one of the reasons -- not the total reason, but one of the reasons -- was I knew that to do a good job right I had to completely, totally immerse myself into the position. And if I hired an assistant coach I would start laying off things for him to do that I should be doing, things that I watched Red do for ten years. See, he never had an assistant coach. Like one time he said to me, "Do you want me to hire you an assistant coach?" I said, "Yeah, we'll just hire one of yours." He had never had one!
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
At times it was quite painful that your whiteness, whether you liked it or not, followed you all the way through. Even when I was blown up afterwards, my white body counted for more than the bodies of black people who were blown up, who were tortured far more severely than I was tortured. The world, the press, the media, controlled by people -- white themselves -- seeing the world through white eyes. Not even maliciously, just automatically. That's their standpoint, their point of reference. And so my amputation, my body counted for something. And then I had to think, "Well, what do I do about it?" And I said, "Well, it gives me access. It gives me a chance to speak." The New York Times had a full page spread, "Broken But Unbroken," with a lovely picture. At least I can be like an ambassador for all the others whose voices aren't heard. I must use this space and opportunities that they've got, even if they come with a privilege, to fight for justice in our country. But at times it was painful, even in prison.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
I might say I discovered years later, after democracy was beginning to come to South Africa, and I was interviewed by Anthony Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times, about my attitude to the white guards and the others, and I explained that I felt I ought to be more angry than I was. And I said, "There's something wrong with me." He said, "You know, I've just spoken to Nelson Mandela. He said the same thing. And I've spoken to Walter Sisulu -- said the same thing -- and Ahmed Kathrada, who said the same thing." And I realized I belonged to a culture, a generation based on the values of the Freedom Charter. We were fighting against a system, a system of injustice. We weren't fighting against a race. We were fighting for a better country, a better society. That system, which had not only oppressed and imprisoned black people in terms of their hopes and their possibilities, but imprisoned whites in fear and narrowness and inwardness and arrogance and greed. That's what liberation meant. That's what emancipation meant.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
And he (Oliver Tambo) said, "We've captured a number of people who were sent from Pretoria to destroy the organization. And we don't have any regulations about how they should be treated. The ANC is a political organization. It has an annual general meeting in terms of its statutes, and elects its leadership. You pay your subscription. You agree to the aims and objects. Political parties don't have provisions for locking people up and putting them on trial and deciding what to do with them. Can you help us?" And possibly the most important project -- legal project -- of my life emerged from that. He said, "It's very difficult, isn't it, to know what the standards are for treatment of captives?" In a rather cocky way, I said, "Well, not so difficult. We have international instruments that say no torture, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment." He said, "We use torture." I couldn't believe it. ANC -- fighting for freedom -- we use torture? He said it with a bleak face, and that was why he wanted me in there because what to do about it? The security people had captured these rascals who were trying to blow up the leadership and introduce poison and do all sorts of terrible things. They were beating them up. I didn't know at the time. I didn't know the details. They did emerge later, but he knew the details. And so we prepared our whole document, which was nothing short of a code of criminal law and procedure for a liberation movement in exile, without courts, without police force, without prisons. But how to deal with those people. The host country said, "It's your problem. Our courts are busy enough. You deal with it." So we had to establish a code of legality, and a concept of fundamental human rights. Fundamental human rights. No torture, no abuse, no ill treatment, whoever they are, whatever they're trying to do.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
The ANC had a delegates conference, basically ANC people in exile -- a few from underground in South Africa -- in a small town called Kabwe in central Zambia. And we were surrounded by Zambian troops, in case commandos from the apartheid government regime came to take us all out and destroy us. We were discussing a future democracy in South Africa and fundamental rights for everybody. But in particular, we were discussing what to do with captives who'd been sent to destroy us and kill us, and should it be possible to use what were called -- euphemistically called -- intensive methods of interrogation. And one by one, I still remember so strongly the delegates coming. Some of them were in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, young people, and saying, "No. We don't use torture whatever the circumstances, whoever the enemy is, whatever the dangers, because we're not like that. We are fighting for life. How can we be against life and disrespect the human personality even of those sent to kill us and destroy us?" I felt so proud. As a lawyer I felt, you know, we lawyers, we speak about rule of law and no torture, and it's easy for us in our relatively comfortable lives. These were people risking danger every day in their work and their lives -- from very, very poor backgrounds -- insisting on those core elements that kept us together as an organization. We didn't want to become like the others.
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