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In just a few seconds of looking at what he is wearing, you can learn a lot about DeAndre Hopkins. On game days, it starts with his helmet
He wears it to do his job, a job he does very well. The Cardinals wide receiver leads the league in receiving yards (356), catches (32), targets (37), and first downs receiving (21). While he is questionable for Sunday’s game with an ankle injury, he’s already off to a historic start for his new team.
He wears it high on his head. He is purposeful about keeping his dreadlocks. They push his helmet up his forehead, up toward the sky.
And he wears it this season with an additional decal, one for Denmark Vesey.
If Hopkins puts on his helmet this Sunday in Charlotte, he will do so about 130 miles from his hometown of Clemson, South Carolina. He will take the field about 130 miles from where he also played collegiately. And he will be about 200 miles from where Denmark Vesey was executed in 1822.
Players are able to wear approved messages or names on the backs of their helmets this season as part of the “Say Their Stories” initiative. Many players pay homage to people who were killed this year by police: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor. A few players have Emmett Till, who was lynched in 1955 at age 14. There are personal ties and profound reasons for each choice. The names span centuries.
But Hopkins’ choice of Vesey, who spent more than half of his life enslaved and was accused, quickly convicted and executed for plotting a revolt to free enslaved people, is unique.
“He’s someone who stood out in this time, and gave his life for something that he believed in, and that was equality. Obviously, his life was taken away for doing what was right,” Hopkins said earlier this month.
“Being from South Carolina and him being from South Carolina, I think it’s something that sat with me, resonated with me. Not just now, but my whole life, and it’s something that they don’t teach in history books about people like that.”
‘A spirit of freedom and equality’
Hopkins didn’t learn about Vesey in school. Most people don’t. Even growing up in South Carolina, Vesey was not a part of his education.
Now 28, Hopkins instead heard about Vesey when he was a teenager from a friend from Charleston, who in turn learned from his parents. Some people may know of Vesey indirectly through Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine Black people in 2015. Vesey was one of the church’s founders. After his execution, the church was razed.
In “Denmark Vesey’s Garden,” historians Dr. Blain Roberts and Dr. Ethan Kytle explore the ideas of how slavery is remembered, who decides what we memorialize and how that legacy influences our understanding today. Spending hours upon hours researching and writing about Vesey and his impact, they found a weekly tribute in an NFL game to be significant.
Roberts and Kytle make a point: Vesey was no longer enslaved when he planned a revolt to free others. Earlier in his life, he won the lottery and bought his own freedom. But his family, his community, were all still enslaved.
And the revolt never took place. It did not even start. Vesey and about 30 others were executed regardless, and South Carolina became more oppressive in upholding the slavery system.
“When you look at it from the perspective of a Denmark Vesey, there were people resisting, and what happened to them? They got executed,” Kytle said. “That was the reality. There were people who had the anti-slavery takes, and it wasn’t just white abolitionists peacefully hoping things would change one day. It was black revolutionaries who were willing to give their lives.”
Each time Hopkins has been asked about his choice of helmet decal, he has brought up the fact that Vesey was killed, that he lost his life in search of equality.
“I think that one way to understand maybe what Hopkins is doing is that he’s continuing in this tradition of trying to push Americans, particularly white Americans to rethink who can be a hero,” Roberts said.
“(He’s) trying to add to kind of the pantheon of American heroes and say, ‘This is a person who was acting and was motivated by a spirit of freedom and equality. And it’s important for us to recognize that.’ “
‘It’s going to take a long time’
It’s Week 1, and Hopkins has just made his Cardinals debut.
His career was already prolific before he arrived in Arizona via a stunning trade with the Texans in March. He was unable to have a full offseason with the Cardinals, but his 14 catches in the team’s upset of San Francisco showed quickly just how dynamic he can be in Kliff Kingsbury’s offense.
He’s worn an all-black Colin Kaepernick jersey on his way to and from the game, playing in hazy California. He’s donned other Kaepernick jerseys for previous games or workouts. But for this video press conference, he’s styled it a little differently. He’s wearing the jersey backwards, the last name on full display.
The moment the name Kaepernick comes up in a postgame question, he sits up very straight, making sure everyone can see the jersey. He smooths it out as he listens, and then he begins to sway.
He shimmies back and forth, a scaled version of his fluid motions on the field. He pinches the jersey near each of his shoulders and flicks it up and up. He is Zooming from somewhere in the bowels of Levi’s Stadium, the same stadium where Kaepernick last took the field on New Year’s Day in 2017.
A lot has changed since Kaepernick last played. The Cardinals stayed in the locker room for the national anthem that day, as they have every week since. Hopkins is also aware of how much is still left to go.
“It doesn’t feel any different,” he says. “What feels different is being in a city, and the forest is burning. And the clouds, the color they is — right now this world is going through some crazy times, some big crazy times. But, you know, my family, we’re from South Carolina, my ancestors are from South Carolina, so nothing really to me, what’s going on, is a surprise.
“I’m just glad that I have a platform, other than some of my siblings, some of family members that are incarcerated for petty crimes, some of my family members that have been incarcerated for petty crimes. It’s (unjust) of what’s going on, but you know, 400 years of slavery, so it’s going to take a long time for everything comes back to where it should be.”
Hopkins loves learning more and more about history. He wants to know more about who he is, about how this country was formed — even when certain parts of that are not taught in schools. He reads. He talks to others. He seeks out mentors who can teach him more. And he incorporates it into his other interests.
He loves fashion. For Week 3, he wore a shirt with a Malcolm X quote, the first half on the front, the rest on the back.
“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us,” Malcolm X said on Easter Sunday in 1964.
In the speech, Malcolm X goes on to say “We (African Americans) weren’t brought here to be made citizens today, now that we’ve become awakened to some degree, and we begin to ask for those things which they say are supposedly for all Americans, they look upon us with a hostility and unfriendliness.”
All of that resonated with Hopkins. And his quote choice resonated with others. On Instagram, he was asked where he bought the shirt.
“I made it!” he replied. “1 of 1.”
‘Your history right in front of you’
Perhaps Hopkins has more flexibility to send a message with his pre and postgame outfits, but even in an NFL uniform, he still is still telling thousands of fans every week exactly who he is.
He’s used the My Cause My Cleats weekend to raise awareness for domestic violence. His mother, Sabrina Greenlee, survived abusive relationships and is blind as a result of an acid attack. Hopkins said after his first touchdown with the Cardinals this year, Week 2 in front of a fanless stadium, that he was finding new ways to present her with the ball, their tradition, this season.
And on weeks outside of the custom-designed cleats, he weaves his life, his family, his history into team-issued uniforms with every stitch.
“My big cousin from South Carolina did 10 years in jail for $600 worth of drugs, Let that sink in,” Hopkins tweeted this June. “That’s the real reason I wear number 10. Modern Day…”
Above that number 10 is his last name, Hopkins. His name, his family mean so much. But when Hopkins is back where he grew up, there are times where his name reminds him of a painful past.
“The only thing I hate seeing when I go home is old plantations with the Hopkins name on it or something. ‘Cause it’s like your history right in front of you,” he said.
He shares this on a Wednesday Zoom press conference ahead of playing in the Carolinas. He shares it to a group of reporters, most of whom are white, most of whom he has not yet met in person. He knows the power of a name, and the importance of who holds that power.
This summer, he was outspoken about demanding that Clemson, his alma mater, changing the name of the Calhoun Honors College, named after John C. Calhoun, a proponent of slavery. In June, the Clemson University Board of Trustees approved a name change. It came during a summer of reckoning and renaming across the country. But calls for change go back centuries. They predate Hopkins, and they predate even Vesey.
“Someone like Vesey punctures the arguments that are made for Confederate monuments, undermines this notion that this is what used to be a great nation and it’s gotten away from that,” Kytle said. “This used to be a nation that kept millions of people enslaved and left them only one option and that is to rebel. There weren’t any other options for Vesey.”
When he sees the Hopkins name on plantations, Hopkins sees both the generational pain and the option to reclaim and rewrite.
“Hopefully,” he said, “One day, I can buy all those plantations.”
Speaking it into existence
He’s on the right track financially. Hopkins negotiated his own contract this year, finalizing it ahead of Week 1 with General Manager Steve Keim. He checked in with some advisers, but he estimated he did 90% of it himself. To do so, he dove into the books again.
“It was a lot of reading, a lot of nights staying up late, learning the language and terminology of everything,” he said in September.
He did those late nights reading during training camp. He did it while he was quickly picking up a new offense. He was sad it afforded him less time for yoga, but other than that, he was pleased with the process. He meditated. He talked to his mom every day. He didn’t have anything against using an agent. It circled back to bigger ideals.
“It’s ownership and me believing in myself and my abilities to study the terminology of contracts and me knowing what I want to be after football. Why not? I know that one day I want to be part of an organization and help build it,” he said. “So, I felt like this was a good time to learn it and study everything that hopefully one day I’ll be doing.”
If the idea was partially to prove his abilities to understand the contract process, it looks to have gone quite well. Hopkins’ extension reportedly made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL.
His teammates and the Cardinals front office were elated. Hopkins was thrilled to have the deal done, and done to his liking. There was one group, though, where the celebration was a little quieter, a group that knows Hopkins well and has supported him throughout: his family.
It wasn’t for lack of excitement. They’ve seen up close all that he’s overcome. They know what his trajectory means for generations before him. And they are also aware of how far he still aims to go.
He says so much of that every time he takes the field, all in the details of his uniform. He still has one more accessory, one more statement piece to add.
“They’re happy that I’m being paid what I deserve and my worth and what I put in, but they want a championship – just as much as I do,” Hopkins said in September. “I don’t think my family go a week without talking about a Super Bowl, a championship.
“We like to speak things into existence.”
And for DeAndre Hopkins, speaking out is just the first step.
Extra point
The Cardinals elevated running back Jonathan Ward and cornerback Jace Whittaker to the active roster from the practice squad on Saturday.
Ward, an undrafted rookie free agent from Central Michigan, played last week against Detroit on special teams. Whittaker joined the Cardinals practice squad after training camp. Also undrafted, he played his college career at the University of Arizona.
Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 480-356-6407. Follow her on Twitter @kfitz134.
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