Tony Diallo doesn’t need an introduction to the issues that Black men and women face in America in 2020.

Diallo, whose father, Tely, emigrated from Guinea and mother, Tracey, from Jamaica, has been acutely aware of his identity and what it means to be Black in this country for years.

A Maryland native, he was accepted into St. Andrew’s Episcopal in sixth grade thanks to the Emerging Scholars Program — which seeks to help a diverse group of students needing financial aid to pursue private education. His school did not have a football program, so he grabbed a pole and gravitated to lacrosse.

There, he had to adjust to playing a sport in which he felt like a minority. Throughout his middle and high school careers, Diallo heard comments and endured microaggressions from teammates, opponents and friends.

“My solution when I was younger was to just walk away, but as I got older, that microaggression could be taken even further by me not saying anything,” he said. “I said, ‘If I’m not confident right now, why don’t I educate myself?’”

Diallo took to learning about the Black experience and quickly became a leader among his peers. He attended conferences around the country, facilitating discussions about life as an African American.

Last year, he joined Ryan Moran’s program at UMBC — a team that now features eight Black players, a total that exceeds that of many Division I college lacrosse programs. He played in just five games with the Retrievers in 2020 before America was plagued by a pandemic and a fight for racial justice.

By June, Diallo’s teammates were waking up to the issues with which he was already familiar. He needed to act.

“We live in a white society, and Black people need white allies,” he said. “It’s important for my teammates to understand what it means to be a Black man.”

His head coach, Ryan Moran, felt the same way. After watching the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the ensuing protests and discourse of race in this country, Moran felt the urge to make an impact.

After a series of calls with his Black players and their families, Moran knew it was time to educate this program. He enlisted the help of six former players — Ron Smith, Keith Gonsouland, Chris Morris, Al Hernandez, Maxx Davis and Benin Bembry — each of whom is African American.

Together, they developed a series of digital discussions on Google Meet, led by the alums, on a variety of topics about the Black experience in America. The first conversation covered redlining and the next on the use of the n-word in locker rooms. The UMBC men’s lacrosse team took in each lesson and broke into separate groups to discuss further.

Over the past three months, Moran and his program have taken a step toward progress — and it started with education. He didn’t want his team to operate under any type of ignorance.

“My daughters are 10, 9 and 6. I either choose to ignore talking to them about this and they grow up ignorant about it, or we could put it to light before they are future leaders,” Moran said. “Then, they know how important it is to raise and educate their children. That, in my mind, is where I feel I can have the most impact right now.”

For Diallo, the talks with alumni and teammates are just one step in a longer process. However, he’s proud to have a coach that supports him and his fellow Black players.

“It could have been very easy for him to put a statement out and give himself a pat on the back, but he’s been meeting with alumni, and as a white man, he’s understanding his position,” Diallo said. “He’s saying, ‘I don’t know, but I can ask people that do know.’ It’s been fun to see someone admit that they don’t know something and ask for help.”

Moran had been looking for a way to act for months, long before this summer, but nothing had materialized. After George Floyd’s death, he called his Black players and spoke with their families.

He spoke with friends and alumni, all of whom shared similar experiences and a common motivation for change.

“It really opened my eyes to how impactful this was for them,” Moran said. “They were driven to tears and crying just to show how appreciative they were that I reached out. This has happened a lot in our country and no one had asked, ‘How are you doing?’ That was a turning point for me. We had to do something, but we didn’t know what.”

Moran continued dialogue with the six alums who later joined the discussions. Some are still coaches, like Gonsouland, who leads the nearby River Hill High School program. Some had experiences on the frontline, like Hernandez, who is a firefighter. Others work in education, like Smith, who works in administration at Howard University.

Together, the group spent weeks coming up with a curriculum to help educate the Retrievers program. They settled on a system in which the alumni presented a topic and the team broke up into “pods” to discuss the issues at further length. The hope was that the athletes at UMBC, if only a handful, could use the info to combat racism when they encounter it on and off the lacrosse field.

“You don’t have to say to somebody, ‘You have an obligation to say something about that,’” Smith said. “What you do is create a narrative that allows them to take all this information that has been triangulated from all these different perspectives, synthesize it for yourself, and hope that you can come to the conclusion that you have an obligation.”

The first discussion dealt with redlining, a practice of refusing loans or insurance to someone living in an area deemed a financial rick — a process with a history of discriminatory implementation.

After the initial presentation, led by Gonsouland, the six alums broke into groups with a handful of players. For several weeks, they’d discuss the topic and ask questions to better understand its effects on Black men and women.

“I was trying to weave everyone’s different story to show how redlining impacts so many areas of their life that you don’t realize until you take a step back,” Gonsouland said. “When I knew we were doing a good job was when one of our players, you could just tell his mind was blown. He said, ‘This is so messed up.’ They had never thought about it.”

The group next tackled the issue of using the n-word in locker rooms. Both Smith and Gonsouland had heard the word in locker rooms and on the field during their careers, so they dissected the meaning of the word and its use in society.

After the discussion, some of the quietest teammates started to speak up. Smith opened his groups up for questions, and he gathered more questions each time.

Diallo started getting texts and calls from his teammates. Sometimes they’d ask questions about the conversations. Sometimes they’d simply say, “‘I’m here for you.’”

The process has continued since June, and Moran has no plans to stop any time soon. He has more issues to tackle and more information to share with his team.

“There’s a lot of reaction instead of being more educational on the front end,” he said. “Changing that paradigm is really important and having curriculum and making it part of the conversations among your teams. You’re never finished.”

The same goes for Diallo, the UMBC defenseman entering his sophomore year.

He felt he needed to do even more to educate his peers on the issues he’s faced in his lacrosse career. Throughout the summer, he hosted a series of forums on racial issues on Zoom, and invited followers on Instagram to join. He has seen progress, but he doesn’t want to stop making his voice heard.

“I struggled with how to think about things and how to feel in a world when I don’t feel safe,” he said. “Racism will always be around, but there is a way to combat stereotypes and combat discrimination. If people understand the history and the effects, then they can walk about their lives a little differently.”