Old Lyme — Former University of Connecticut women's basketball player Morgan Tuck took center stage Sunday at the Lyme Art Association as she discussed the struggle for racial justice by female athletes.

Tuck prefaced that she was no expert; she was just speaking from experience.

In addition to playing on a national championship team at UConn, the 27-year-old Tuck played in the WNBA for five seasons, four of which were spent with the Connecticut Sun and her final season with the Seattle Storm. She is now the director of franchise development for the Sun.

Public Art for Racial Justice Education (PARJE) sponsored Sunday's event. The group works to uplift champions of racial justice through public art, working on a network of murals in the region. Nancy Gladwell, co-chair of PARJE's steering committee, said education is a big part of what they do, which is why they held the event on Sunday.

Gladwell said members of the committee were impressed to hear Tuck speak at a previous event and invited her to be the guest speaker for the group's first live lecture event since its formation in 2020. Jack Madry, a minister and well-known jazz pianist, also played at the event.

The event also featured an activity in which children could color pictures of local activists such as Virginia D. Christian, the first Black person to be elected to the state Board of Education.

In her talk, Tuck spoke about the Connecticut Sun's "Change Can't Wait," a social platform created in 2020 to address racism and inequality. Tuck was hired by the Sun to revamp the program and make it more inclusive.

Tuck said she and many other players were inspired by the activism of former UConn player Maya Moore. Moore is a professional player who took a break playing at the peak of her career to work on social reform. In 2016, Moore was fined by the league for wearing T-shirts in honor of two Black men killed by police. Tuck said it was players such as Moore who helped shift the league's response to social activism by its players.  

In her final season, Tuck recalled wearing T-shirts for Breonna Taylor, the Louisville, Ky., medical worker killed by police in a wrongful raid of her home. The WNBA dedicated the 2020 season to Taylor.

Tuck admitted there were times players felt defeated, as if the statements they made had very little impact. But she said there was a turning point when Kelly Loeffler, then co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, wrote a letter to the league criticizing it for embracing the Black Lives Matter movement. Seventy percent of the Atlanta team was Black at the time. Loeffler, a Republican, was also running for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.

Players in the league made a statement and wore Vote Warnock T-shirts in support of Leoffler's Democratic opponent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, whom they met with on Zoom. Warnock would ultimately go on to win the Senate seat, becoming Georgia's first Black senator.

Tuck said there were many factors to Warnock's win, but the players felt motivated, having helped make a difference.

"Statements — like T-shirts and kneeling — make more of an impact," Tuck said. "It's one clear, unified message and it gave those that might not have felt comfortable speaking, like me, a way to still be a part of it."

The Sun's players continue to kneel during the national anthem. Tuck said many of the negative comments from fans about it have been directed to her.

"Do your part," is what Tuck said she reminds herself to do in the face of criticism, and she tells those in the audience to do so too. "Keep going and make a difference."

Sitting in the crowd, Eileen Donovan, a director at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, said she has done work with PARJE and was excited to hear Tuck, and see art, racial justice and sports come together in one room.

Also excited was Joan Baffaro of Old Lyme, who said she attended to hear another perspective from Tuck. Baffaro had given up tickets to see the UConn women's basketball team play in Hartford on Sunday to hear her talk.

j.vazquez@theday.com