O.J. Simpson died this week at 76 years old.
Myung Chun/AFP via Getty Images
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Myung Chun/AFP via Getty Images
O.J. Simpson died this week at 76 years old.
Myung Chun/AFP via Getty Images
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1. For much of his career, O.J. Simpson symbolized a post-racial America.
Orenthal James Simpson, known as O.J., died on Wednesday aged 76 after battling cancer.
Simpson was a football icon, an NFL hall of famer and a trailblazer. He starred in commercials, like this 1978 Hertz ad. The Hertz campaign, which ran for years, was one of the first times an American audience saw a Black spokesperson for a major national company. Simpson later went on to become a movie star.
O.J. Simpson Hertz commercial.
YouTube
Since his early days in the NFL, when asked about his feelings on issues like the civil rights movement, he’d say: “I’m not Black. I’m O.J.!”
Dave Zirin, the sports editor at The Nation, told NPR that Simpson linked this post-racial idea to economic success: “It was linked in his mind to actually being unshackled by racism. And it was linked in his mind to being a celebrity first and any sort of spokesperson for a cause second.”
2. Simpson became a symbol of America’s complicated relationship to race, celebrity and justice.
In 1994, he was accused of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. The case and ensuing trial captivated the country.
It came just two years after the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police officers. The officers had been charged with excessive force in the beating and arrest of Rodney King, a Black man.
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