It wasn’t unusual for Black people to work for universities, but the job of a mascot was a hard one. Not only did they have to cheer and clown on the field, but they also had to clean up after the players and bandage their injuries.
Robert Fraizer, called Dabble by the Auburn football team that hired him, was left behind after Auburn lost a game. So the rival team did the unimaginable.
They nailed him down to a freight box and shipped him back to Auburn. But let’s not focus on the cruelty he faced.
While we don’t know much about Frazier’s life after Auburn, we can be sure of one thing. He was part of a system that still tries to dehumanize us.
Whether incarceration, school-to-prison pipelines, or environmental racism, society has always tried to play us. We must understand our history so that we can use our stories as a tool for our liberation.