LOS ANGELES: Basketball icon Michael Jordan has broken his usual silence on social issues, speaking out on the gun violence heightening racial tensions in America and pledging $2 million toward finding a solution.
Throughout his legendary playing career, in which he led the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls to six titles between 1991 and 1998, Jordan has been criticized for his reluctance to wade into public comment on politics.
But the recent wave of police killings of African Americans and deadly attacks against police officers prompted a rare public stand.
"I can no longer stay silent," Jordan said in a one-page letter released via theundefeated.com, a website backed by ESPN.
"As a proud American, a father who lost his own dad in a senseless act of violence, and a black man, I have been deeply troubled by the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement and angered by the cowardly and hateful targeting and killing of police officers," he said.
"I grieve with the families who have lost loved ones, as I know their pain all too well."
His father, James Jordan, was shot and killed in 1993 not long after his son led the Chicago Bulls to a third NBA championship.
Jordan used the letter to announce grants of $1 million each to two organizations working to improve relations between law enforcement and the communities in which they work, the Institute for Community Police Relations and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The first was launched in May by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, while the Legal Defense Fund was originally established in 1940 to work for civil rights as part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"Although I know these contributions alone are not enough to solve the problem, I hope the resources will help both organizations make a positive difference," he wrote.
Jordan's statement was a watershed moment for the star athlete who once famously -- probably apocryphally -- said "Republicans buy sneakers, too" in explaining his reluctance to comment on thorny political issues.
Now the only African-American majority owner of an NBA club, the Charlotte Hornets, Jordan has joined a wave of social comment in US sports sparked by a spate of police shootings of unarmed black men -- and shootings of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Current NBA stars LeBron James, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade opened the recent ESPYs sports awards show urging their peers to take the lead in combating racial injustice and gun violence.
Anthony was hosting a town hall meeting in Los Angeles on Monday bringing together police, citizens and politicians.
Jordan had been spurred to comment in 2014 when racially charged remarks by then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling rocked the NBA.
Jordan said he was "disgusted that a fellow team owner could hold such sickening and offensive views."
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