Aquil Abdullah

In 2000 Aquil Abdullah won the Diamond Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta, making him the first black person to win a title at Henley. Abdullah was born Aquilibn Michael X. Shumate but his father converted to Islam when Abdullah was 6-years-old and changed his name and his son’s name. Abdullah was a high school football star and then attended George Washington University where he obtained a degree in physics in 1996. He was US singles sculls champion in 1996 and 2002. He also won the 1999 Pan American Games trials in singles and won a silver medal at the 1999 Pan Ams. Abdullah competed at the World Championships in 2001, 2002, and 2004, all as a sculler. At the 2004 Olympics, Abdullah rowed double sculls, becoming the first African-American male to compete in rowing at the Olympics for the US – Anita DeFrantz (1976) and Patricia Spratlen (1984) had previously been on the women’s Olympic rowing teams.

Abdullah was featured in a 2003 New York Times article, not long after the 2001 9/11 attacks, concerning his difficulty flying because of his name. He was frequently profiled and detained because of his name and his presumed religion. Once, asked which mosque he attended, he replied, “I’m not a member of any mosque. I’m Catholic, actually.” Abdullah settled in Boston where he worked as a consultant and software engineer, and started Mandela Crew, which exposes minority youths to rowing.