Bucks Legend Oscar Robertson On the Unrest of the 60's and Now in Milwaukee

The annual Fellowship Open Golf Outing weathered the storm Friday.

Its mission is that important to raise money for the groups that help inner city youth. Especially in these stormy times.

This year's Legends Award Recipient Oscar Robertson rose up out of poverty to basketball greatness.

Now he urges education to the young people he meets and spoke frankly in the wake of the violence in Sherman Park.

"No matter what you burn down, no matter if you try to shoot a cop, which I hope you won't do. You won't win."

Robertson knows well the feeling of oppression.

He climbed the ranks of the NBA to a championship with the Bucks at a time when he was kept separate from his white teammates.

He endured death threats and harassment.

Having grown up in the south, he had come to expect it.

"I often tell myself I was not the first one to go through these things. And I will not be the last. I think every experience teaches you something. You can bitter. But, what does it get you? It doesn't get you anything. I'm not going to forget. But to bitter about what happened about what cops did to me. It's a way of life."

Robertson downplays the comparisons folks have made to recent unrest with the violent riots of the 1960's.

"I don't think they were quite like that. 60's were more volatile. You couldn't ride in the front of the bus. You couldn't go to a restaurant to eat."

While his own way out and up was through sport, whenever he talks to young people, the "Big O" urges them to take the hard subjects at school, master the worlds of technology and finance. And refuse to accept what he calls a false narrative about a black community that has turned on itself. 

"Whites shoot people. Blacks shoot people. Mexicans shoot people. Indians shoot people. Blacks do not have a corner on that.  Its unfortunate. Why do we sell so many guns in America? There's got to be a way to curb the violence in America. We don't seem to have anyone other than trying to make money interested in what's happening. All the people killed. Police men killed. Innocent people shot on the streets. It doesn't seem to phase a lot of people."