Growing up in California, Travis Johnson was traveling home from a game with his friends when he endured a traumatic encounter with police officers.
The retired Texans defensive tackle and former first-round draft pick from Florida State was 14 years old and living in the Los Angeles suburbs when he and his friends were pulled over by police, handcuffed and had a gun pointed in their faces.
“I was just lucky this guy didn’t kill me,” Johnson told Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair, his wife, Hannah McNair, the Texans’ foundation vice president and Janice McNair, Texans owner and co-founder during the first installment of a video series produced by the team called ‘Conversations for Change.’ “The only law we broke was the unwritten law of having too many black people in the car at one time. I’ll never forget it. The lights come on. All of us are nervous. The police walk up, knock on the windows. When I turn around, he drew his gun. He tosses me around: ‘Shut the f up,’ put handcuffs on me. This gun is three inches from my face. I’m slammed on the hood of the car for the next 30 minutes.
“My friends are also in handcuffs. I’m watching them with my chest on this car that’s burning me. They ransack the car. I watch my high school coach pass by in his car, I watch parents pass by in their cars. No one stopped and said: ‘What’s going on?’ No one said: ‘These guys are with us.’ I was so angry and so hurt. I broke no laws. Somebody should have said, ‘Can I help you sir?’ We didn’t get a ticket or anything. They let us go."
It’s traumatic experiences like what Johnson experienced and recounted that are part of a growing conversation and national outrage about police brutality and racism in the wake of the killing of Houston native George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery along with several other African-Americans.
During the video, Johnson asked McNair to be an agent of change through his high-profile position as an NFL owner, community leader and businessman.
“That was one of the reasons I called you, to be that person who pulls over and says, ‘He’s with me,’ and to better the situation,” Johnson said. “You have an opportunity to change the narrative because it’s your show. Cal, I need you to pull over and help me. You have the platform I will never have. I need you to help me because you have the platform I’ll never have. You have the platform that we, in our community, don’t have many of the people who do, they always scoff at them. You know, you get somebody with money that tells their story and they’re like: ‘You don’t experience that,’ but, with your help, we can achieve so much more. I thank you for listening. I thank you for pulling over per se. Your power in this city is on another level. People take your softness as a human being as weakness. I don’t look at it that way. I look at it as strength.
“There’s nowhere you can’t go and not be loved. If you sit down with Cal and talk to him and learn who he is, you’ll realize that he’s caring, he’s funny, he’s a good freaking dude. I can work with a good dude. That’s the reason I called. It wasn’t because I wanted to hear myself talk. I know Cal is a good man married to a good woman. I know that he’ll listen. I don’t want nothing from you, Cal. I know it’s hard being the son of a billionaire (the late Bob McNair), being a billionaire, being the owner of the Texans. It’s like being an athlete times one million. I don’t want nothing from you at all. All I want is your ear. All I want is your time and you gave that to me. I respect that immensely.”
During the half-hour video, McNair addressed the recent tragedies and the pain it’s caused that runs across racial lines as the Black Lives Matter movement continues to protest racial inequities with protests taking place around the country and around the world.
“There’s been a lot of hurt in our country recently, but it’s been here for a long time and for you to come out and share your experience, it’s so powerful and it really hits home,” Cal McNair said to Johnson. “The hope is that we get the truth out there. That this isn’t just one incident. There’s just untold number of incidents and it’s not right and we just have to change it, and this is a good step. Hopefully, it makes a difference. It’s hard to change the world, but we can try to make our little corner better and hopefully this is moving in that direction. That’s our prayer.”
Added Janice McNair: ‘It’s very meaningful. Travis, this is so helpful and it’s positive. We’re going to make a difference and it’s going to get better. I think it’s a turning point. I think people recognize what we need to do. These things happening, it’s so heartbreaking.”
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June 09, 2020 at 10:56AM
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Texans, McNair family host conversation about racism, social injustice - Houston Chronicle
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