When the news broke that O.J. Simpson died Wednesday at age 76, I had the same feeling I often do when so-called larger-than-life figures pass away.
It’s the feeling I had in December 1976 when Chicago Major Richard J. Daley died. I was 26 at the time and Daley was the only mayor I’d ever known. I thought he’d live forever. The reality is whether it’s Mayor Daly or Simpson, figures may be larger than life but no one is larger than death.
There is of course the issue of Simpson’s enduring legacy. Simpson was acquitted of charges in the 1994 double murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman. The subsequent court action became the trial of all trials and underlined the divide between Black and white America over a justice system that often crushed African Americans.
There were so many chapters of his life: the young Black man who was saved by sports; surviving a tough up bringing in San Mateo, California; going to a junior college then stepping into stardom at USC. By the time Simpson entered the NFL in 1969, he had become one of the most visible African American athletes in this country.
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I met Simpson nearly 50 years ago in the fall of 1975 when I was a writer for Ebony magazine. I was assigned to spend a week in Buffalo and profile Simpson who was completing his seventh season with the Bills.
At the time, Simpson was transitioning to his acting career and was still married to his first wife, Marguerite, with whom he had three children.
This clearly was a middle chapter in the O.J. book.
During the visit, we played bid whist on Simpson’s living room floor and talked trash. Don’t ask me why that stands out 50 years later, but it does. Perhaps because playing bid whist has always been one of those superficial but significant measures of blackness or, at the very least, of being “down.” Given the debates surrounding the depths of Simpson’s blackness, his enthusiasm for bid whist was revealing at the time.
Simpson said a couple of things that stand out, even when I re-read the profile. He insisted that he would not be boxed in by his image. “Whatever image I have is based on the way I see things and the way I live, and I don’t want anybody to all of a sudden try to stop my personal growth and confine me to some special niche,” he said.
He also insisted that he would not be boxed in — or boxed out — by racism. His stature as an African American would not determine the neighborhoods in which he lived or even the roles he played. “I want to be a good actor in all areas,” he said at the time, “not just a good Black Super Fly.” Simpson said his Super Fly comment was not a swipe at Ron O’Neal, the star of the iconic movie, part of a genre of so-called Blaxploitation films. “Don’t get me wrong, Ron O’Neal is a good actor, but he’s been limited by his parts,” Simpson said.
Simpson and former NFL quarterback James “Shack” Harris were rookies together on that 1969 Bills team, although they were worlds apart. Harris was an eighth-round pick from Grambling while Simpson had been all-universe at USC. They got to know each other, became friends and engaged in quite a bit of back-and-forth trash talk about the ins and outs of Black players at Black colleges and Black players at white ones. “It was all in good fun,” Harris said.
“The thing about Juice is that he was rookie, but he was the biggest name in the game,” Harris said.
Shack remembered Simpson as a good teammate, affable and friendly — and as a good bid whist partner. “Coming from an HBCU school, we play a lot of bid whist,” Shack recalled. “Juice was a fan of the game so we used to play; once he saw I could play, I became his partner.”
Simpson indirectly played a major part in Harris making the Bills and, in the process, making history. The Bills had a preseason game in Detroit against the Lions in a make-or-break moment for Harris, who was behind Jack Kemp and Tom Flores on the depth chart. Harris was told that he would play the second half and would have to call his own plays. Harris had been injured and was behind in the playbook, so he called his college coach, Eddie Robinson, to get his advice.
Robinson told Harris that he didn’t need a playbook, all he needed was O.J.
“He said ‘Hell, he’s the best player in America,’ ” Harris recalled. “He said ‘You give the ball to him every kind of way you can: you hand it to him, you throw it to him. Any kind of way, get that ball to O.J. Simpson. He’s the damn Juice.’ ”
Harris followed Robinson’s advice. The Bills won the game and Harris had an outstanding performance. He became the Bills’ opening day quarterback, making him the first African American to earn that distinction in the NFL.
On a day like this, Harris didn’t want to get into the business of parsing Simpson’s legacy. A former friend and teammate died. Children lost a parent.
“It’s always sad to hear that somebody you’ve known like that passes,” Harris said. “He was a fun guy. He talked a lot, but he backed it up.”
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Although hardly regarded as Soul Brother No. 1, Simpson’s acquittal by a predominantly Black jury in 1995 was celebrated by many African Americans as a long-overdue victory over a legal system that historically had been unforgiving to them. In a twist of fate, Simpson was arrested in 2007 after he and some others took sports memorabilia from a dealer. He was found guilty of 12 charges, among them armed robbery and kidnapping, and sentenced to 33 years in prison. He served nine years and was released in 2017.
We’re all still trying to digest the meaning of Simpson’s life. He was a great athlete, a cultural icon for his day, and a breaker of marketing barriers. Was he a murderer? Did he do it? Did he not do it? The answers are secrets that will be buried with the Juice.
I suppose that’s just the way he wanted it. But what we do in life does indeed echo across generations.
