Tennis star Naomi Osaka was seen Sunday wearing a mask bearing the name of Trayvon Martin before her U.S. Open match against Anett Kontaveit, and said she has a mask with the name of a Black person whose death sparked national outrage to wear for every round of the tournament.
"I have seven and it's quite sad that seven masks isn't enough for the amount of names," Osaka said earlier this month, reports The Hill. "Hopefully I'll get to the finals and you can see all of them."
She has already worn masks with the names of Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McCain, and Breonna Taylor, and said Sunday on Twitter that she remembers Martin's name clearly.
“I remember being a kid and just feeling scared," she said of Martin, the unarmed Black teenager who was killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman. "I know his death wasn’t the first but for me it was the one that opened my eyes to what was going on. To see the same things happening over and over still is sad. Things have to change."
Osaka last month sat out a semifinals match after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction,” she said, also calling for the end of the "the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police.”
Osaka won her match on Sunday and is heading to the U.S. Open quarterfinals, where she is expected to play Shelby Rogers on Tuesday.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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