Meet the sophomore who organized Mizzou's march
When Angie Azzanni got a phone call from Missouri safety Martez Manuel on the evening of June 2, she could tell Manuel was excited. The call itself wasn’t unusual — Azzanni has gotten to know Manuel well through her work as the co-director of Cor, a Columbia non-profit that provides academic and community resources for high school athletes, and the two still talk regularly. But during this particular conversation, Manuel talked a mile a minute as he explained that he and Missouri defensive coordinator Ryan Walters had planned a team march as a form of protest against police brutality and racial injustice.
“He was just kind of, not rambling, but he was talking a lot about it,” Azzanni said. “You could tell he had just relayed all of his heart and what he was thinking, and I think he was just excited, also, that people were taking him seriously, that they had listened to him.”
The next day, a group of Tiger student-athletes and coaches joined local law enforcement members in marching from the iconic columns on Missouri’s campus to the Boone County Courthouse. There, participants knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds to demand justice for George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for that length of time. Afterward, 62 players registered to vote.
Missouri’s march has been perhaps the most widely-celebrated example of a nationwide trend: As people across the country have come together to demand police reform and racial equality, student-athletes in particular have started to make their voices heard. Still, when star linebacker Nick Bolton revealed last week that it had been Manuel, a true sophomore, who engineered the march, some might have been surprised.
Not those who know Manuel. The Columbia native has always been drawn to advocacy and leadership.
“That’s the type of person Martez is,” Walters said during a virtual press conference Wednesday. “I was not surprised that he approached us and he had the confidence and the leadership capabilities to get the ball moving forward."
The summer between his sophomore and junior years at Rock Bridge high school, Manuel wasn’t happy. The Bruin football team was coming off a 2-8 season, so Manuel took it upon himself to organize weekly lunches at Shakespeare’s Pizza with a few teammates. Azzanni doesn’t know what exactly the group talked about, but she knows that even from a distance, the team looked more cohesive the following season, when it improved its record to 9-3.
“When that fall season hit, I think from the outside looking in, they had not just an amazing season but they had a real team chemistry that was different than the year before,” Azzanni said.
Azzanni tells this story to illustrate that Manuel has always been a leader. It doesn’t matter where he falls in the class hierarchy; if he perceives something to be wrong, he’s going to try to fix it. So it came as no surprise to Azzanni that, even though he had only been on Missouri’s campus for about a year, Manuel was the first player to address his teammates about finding a way to protest racial injustice.
“I feel like I'm kind of just like the voice of the people, the voice of my teammates in a way,” Manuel said. “A big thing for me beyond statistical goals was just to earn the trust and respect for my coaches and teammates this season, so I feel like just doing that has already given me their respect and gave me a lot of that trust.”
Manuel has also always had, as Azzanni described it, “an advocacy heart.” He’s sought out volunteer opportunities small and large, from visiting retirement homes in Columbia to joining a group from The Crossing church on a mission trip to Harmons, Jamaica. There, the group built new homes for families that had been living in “houses as big as my closets.” Manuel remembers being struck by the emotion with which something as simple as a hug could elicit in the people he met.
In the days following Floyd’s death, Azzanni said Manuel repeatedly brought up the trip to Jamaica, saying he felt called to create the same type of tangible change in his own community.
“It really wakes you up to, like, things could be so much worse,” he said. “So who am I to not (help)? And I’ve even been in situations growing up where things were not great and where there were hardships through my life. So I just feel like if I can make another kid’s life and not have to make them go through what I go through, or go through what kids over the country are going through, all over the world, then why not be that person?”
It’s one thing, however, to engage teammates about improving a football team’s record, or even to tag along on a church mission trip far out of the spotlight. It’s another to leave the comfortable bubble of campus to join protests — a few of which have turned violent — and make national headlines. But as Manuel sensed anger welling up in himself, his teammates and the Columbia community following Floyd’s death, he felt he had to back up his words with action.
“I was just thinking to myself, like, what can I do now that's different than just reposting something on Instagram or different than just tweeting about something?” he said.
The first opportunity to get involved arose when Manuel heard about a protest in Jefferson City being organized by a Lincoln University student on May 31. Manuel spread word about the gathering to his teammates and, eventually, the Missouri coaches. Walters and a group of several teammates ultimately joined him in the state capital.
The group arrived to find a heavy police presence as well as members of the National Guard, which made Manuel a little nervous, but the protest remained peaceful. Manuel said several members of the police and national guard knelt in solidarity with the protestors. Afterward, some teammates who had been hesitant to join for fear of violence voiced a desire to get involved. Manuel, too, wanted to do something in his hometown. As a Columbia native, he knew the cache Missouri football carries in town, and he felt the team couldn’t afford to stay silent.
“When it comes down to me being from Columbia, my own community, my own city, I was just like, I’d hate to see people in my community talking about hey, the football team doesn't care about us, doesn’t care about human rights,” he said. “So I just wanted to do something that could unite the community, the police department, everything.”
So Manuel continued to brainstorm. He pitched the idea of marching through Columbia to Walters, and Walters added the idea of registering players to vote. Somewhere along the line, officers from both the University of Missouri and Columbia police departments were invited to join the march. The idea made its way to head coach Eliah Drinkwitz, who not only approved it but announced at a one o’clock meeting on June 3 that he wanted to start the march at two.
Walters called the march “a powerful deal.” In the week since, players have told him they feel like they “made history.”
“Fifteen years from now, when my kids are learning about American history and they get to 2020 and all the things that have already happened, they're gonna ask me about it,” Walters said. “‘What was 2020 like, and dad, what did you do?’ And that's where our guys are like, man, we did something. We voiced our opinion and we did something.”
The fact that so many participants registered to vote set Missouri’s march apart from many of the protests and demonstrations across the country. Walters had emphasized that the best avenue for change would be through the ballot box. Manuel, who wasn’t previously registered to vote, said it was important to walk away with tangible proof that the group had made a difference.
“We can all be keyboard warriors and tweet about stuff,” he said, “but if we're not actually doing anything — like, our only thing that we can do as citizens to make a change — then what are we doing?”
Missouri held a team meeting Monday about what’s next, what players can continue to do to make a difference. Characteristically, Manuel spoke up. He asked Walters how the group of newly registered voters, perhaps a bit daunted by politics, could figure out which candidates really had their best interests at heart and what to do if they didn’t love either candidate in a race. Walters assured him that the coaching staff would help educate players on the issues, without telling anyone who to vote for. Manuel said he also approached the coaching staff about engaging in more individual, non-football conversations with players moving forward.
Azzanni is confident that this is just the beginning of Manuel’s advocacy work, in his hometown and beyond. He’s found his voice, and it doesn’t matter if the cause is big, like protesting systemic racism, or small, like visiting the current high school athletes at Cor. It doesn’t matter if he’s one of the youngest people in the room, either.
“I would be highly surprised if, when Martez graduates from Mizzou, he stops his community ties and stops pouring into Columbia, because I just think he’s passionate about it,” Azzanni said. “... It’s not shocking that even as a young sophomore, he’s taking on some leadership responsibilities and just wanting to change Columbia in general.”