Pro Football Hall of Fame running back and civil rights advocate Jim Brown has died of natural causes. He was 87.
A spokeswoman for Brown’s family said he died peacefully in his Los Angeles home on Thursday night with his wife, Monique, by his side.
Brown shattered NFL records as a fullback with the Cleveland Browns from 1957 through 1965. Some of those records still stand. He was named the NFL’s MVP in 1965 and enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
After retiring from professional football, Brown acted in TV series and films, including The Dirty Dozen (1967), Slaughter (1972), Black Gunn (1972) and Slaughter’s Big Ripoff (1973).
Brown was paid $200,000 for his role in the Western film 100 Rifles alongside actors Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds.
He also became a sports analyst and pursued civil rights activism.
However, Brown’s stellar sports career and civil rights activism were overshadowed by his history of domestic violence against multiple women, including both of his wives. He was arrested nearly a dozen times on aggravated battery, rape and attempted murder charges. But those charges were eventually dropped.
Brown is pictured in 1961 with his first wife, Sue and their twins Kim and Kevin.
In 1965, he was arrested for sex assault and battery against an 18-year-old woman named Brenda Ayres. He was acquitted of those charges.
When Ayres delivered a baby a year later, Brown denied being the father and refused to take a paternity test.
In 1975, Brown was convicted of misdemeanor battery for beating and choking his golfing partner.
Brown served three months in jail for making terroristic threats toward his second wife, Monique, and taking a shovel to her car windows.
