INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- LeBron James will receive the NAACP Jackie Robinson Sports Award before the Cleveland Cavaliers' game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday.
The award seeks to highlight an individual in sports for his or her achievement in athletics and contributions in the pursuit of social justice, civil rights and community involvement.
"To hear that it was the Jackie Robinson award it just puts a lot of things in perspective," James said Wednesday. "So appreciative that they would even want me to be a recipient of the award, and it just goes back to what Jackie meant. Not only playing the game that he played, but what he used that platform to do. To stand up and be the man that he was through those difficult times, for a bigger cause, for obviously guys like myself that can be free and do whatever I want to do in this profession.
"To be able to walk and talk and say things that matter to me and hope that there is going to be change, he did it at a time where he wasn't even allowed. People said he wasn't allowed to speak up; you're not allowed to stand for what you believe in. You're not allowed because, these are the rules and this is how it was going to be. I just think he had a much bigger calling and obviously like I said I can sit here and be free and play the game I love, to be able to inspire so many people that's going to come after me, so it's a true honor. It's a true honor for guys like Jackie and Muhammad [Ali] to just have that vision, and if they was here today you could sit and talk to them and I guarantee it wasn't about them. It was about everybody that was going to come after them. That's pretty much it. I could speak about it for a long time, actually, but that's pretty much it."
Robinson was the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball, breaking through at a time when blacks were not afforded many civil liberties in the United States.
James' award ceremony will be aired during the 48th NAACP Image Awards, hosted by Anthony Anderson on TV One, on Feb. 11.
"Just look what those athletes before us had to go through. Just look at what Jackie, Muhammad, Bill Russell, Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] and Jim Brown and Oscar Robertson and all those guys had to go through just to play the game that they love," James continued. "They sacrificed themselves for athletes like myself today to have a platform to be able to speak out on things we're educated about. I don't talk just to talk. I'm educated on what I speak about, I'm passionate about what I speak about, but those guys sacrificed everything."
James then aimed at the "stick to sports" crowd that say that athletics should be a place free from real-world problems being discussed.
"It's almost like fans or anyone who says us athletes shouldn't speak out about issues and we should just focus on sports would be the same thing as, you know, we have our armed forces that go over and let our land be free and that would be the same thing as now people telling us we should stay inside the house," James said. "We have all our armed forces and our soldiers that go overseas every single year and every single day to fight for their lives for our freedom and as much as it sucks to have all our loved ones and people across the waters and we want them to come home, they fight everyday to make sure our land is free. We can walk outside and be social and things of that nature. People are going to have their comments about certain things, but if you're comfortable talking about certain issues then do it. If not, then don't do it. But for me, I come from an educated mind, I come from a passionate background and like I said, those athletes paved the way for guys like myself."
Past recipients of the Jackie Robinson Sports Award have included: The Harlem Globetrotters, Anita DeFrantz, Jim Brown, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Sugar Ray Leonard, Eddie Robinson and Michael Jordan.