Taliyah Brooks - Next Stop Oregon (© WCH Oregon22)
A social awakening surrounding race began in the United States in late May 2020, spurred by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer.
But Taliyah Brooks was calling for change long before it was the “in” thing to do.
The University of Arkansas graduate – who has a master’s degree in communications and a minor in legal studies – wrote her master’s project a few years earlier about athletes protesting.
“I wrote about Muhammad Ali, Colin Kaepernick and about teaching young kids about athletes protesting,” Brooks said. “I graduated with my master’s degree in 2018, so that was something I was passionate about before.”
As a biracial professional track and field athlete, it was natural for Brooks to lend her voice to the conversation personally, and online.
“When all of that came to the forefront in 2020, I was able to do something good for my community in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and use the platform I have on social media to share the things that are important to me, and people of color, and things that I wanted people to see,” she said.
Brooks took to social media, where she currently reaches an audience of nearly 70,000 between Instagram and Twitter as @love_tbrooks, to share the horrifying hardships her family has faced.
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As the daughter of a Black father and white mother, the now 27-year-old Brooks has unique experiences to share from the oft-overlooked lens of being light-skinned.
“I think a lot of times people think biracial people don’t go through struggles that full-blown African American people go through,” Brooks explained. “We have our own set of struggles, and we don’t really get in with either crowd.
“I think that it’s important for people to understand that, first of all, I do identify as Black, but also that my experiences aren’t lessened because I’m mixed. No matter the tone of your skin, you can still face hardships based off the color of your skin.”
Brooks is a rising star in a sport that is traditionally diverse. The Wichita Falls, Texas, native was an eight-time all-American for the Razorbacks. She won the pentathlon at the 2018 NCAA indoor championships, and made NCAA championships podiums four other times in events ranging from the long jump to the heptathlon.
She is attempting to qualify for her first World Athletics Championships team with the goal of competing in the heptathlon this summer at World Athletics Championships Oregon22 at the reimagined Hayward Field at the University of Oregon.
“It’s just an amazing space,” Brooks, who has competed there seven times already, said of the revered Eugene, Oregon, venue. “The fans are always into all of the events. If you’re somewhere else, people might not be into the multis or into the throws, but there, people are into everything, and it makes meets a lot more fun. They’re out there at 10 a.m. with us or waiting for the 800-meter with us, and so it’s a lot of fun competing in front of those fans.”
Her personal best heptathlon score is 6,252 points; it took a score of 6,610 to make the U.S. World Championships team in 2019 and a score of 6,667 points to make the team for the Tokyo Olympics.
“It would mean a lot to make it, especially coming off the year I had last year,” she said. “I would just like to show people you can keep fighting and persevere even when things don’t go your way.”
Brooks was in second place after the first day of the heptathlon at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track and Field last summer and in second place with two events remaining. However, Brooks was overcome by the oppressive heat on the final day of competition and was forced to medically withdraw from the heptathlon.
If she makes it back to Hayward Field, Brooks will likely show up sporting a Black Lives Matter patch, something she did for much of the 2021 outdoor season, including at the U.S. Olympic Trials, with the support of her sponsor ASICS.
“It’s a reminder,” Brooks said. “When I’m on camera, being announced, it’s just a simple touch for people to see on the TV.”
ASICS also supported Brooks by overnighting T-shirts for the “Fayetteville in Living Color” event she hosted in June 2020.
Brooks and former Arkansas Razorback Markus Ballengee attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Fayetteville and then, after coming up empty in a search for more events in the community, they planned their own – in just 10 days.
The event was promoted as “bringing unity to the NWA (Northwest Arkansas) area while bringing awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement and social equality for ALL people.”
“It was probably the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life, and it turned out to be a lot bigger than we thought,” Brooks shared. “We thought it was just going to be a low-key type of event, but we had the mayor there, we had a voter registration table there, the local police officers were in attendance, there were food trucks.”
The community raised over $6,000 that went directly to the Northwest Arkansas African American Heritage Association, which focuses on promoting and preserving the legacies of Black people in the area.
During the event, a group of artists painted a massive mural on the side of a building. It includes such slogans as “Black Trans Lives Matter,” “Police Reform Now,” and “The Children Are Watching.”
“It’s just a reminder that we are headed in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Brooks said. “Every time I drive past it, I think, ‘I can’t believe I was responsible for that,’ and it looks so pretty and it’s bright and people love it. I see them driving by and taking pictures – it’s just really cool to see.”
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Preparing for the Olympic Trials made it difficult for Brooks to put on “Fayetteville in Living Color” in 2021, but she still hopes to bring it back and make it an annual event.
In the meantime, with the calendar pages quickly turning to WCH Oregon22, Brooks continues to prepare for her next opportunity to make a global U.S. team – this time on home soil.
By Brandon Penny
