(WQOW) – Many professional sports teams, including the Bucks, Brewers and Packers boycotted games and practices in response to the Jacob Blake shooting and the civil unrest that has followed.

According to UW-Eau Claire professor Selika Ducksworth-Lawton, this is not a new stance. She said athletes throughout U.S. history have used their platform to elevate concerns about racial injustice.

Most notably in the 1960s with Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar all standing up in the fight against the Jim Crowe era.

Ducksworth-Lawton told News 18 this is an opportunity for a new generation to views athletes not only as sports heroes, but also as humanitarians.

“History is cyclical, and when we forget it we repeat it, so this is that repeating,” Ducksworth-Lawton said. “Black male athletes reap both the benefits of our society but they live the stereotype of the cruel. By doing this, they’re trying to retake their dignity and use that dignity to protect some others.”

Ducksworth-Lawton believes future generations will look back to this time and feel the same adoration about today’s athletes, as many feel about those activists from the 60s.