Original 1919 photograph of former Carlisle football stars as they met on the gridiron for a professional game as the Canton Bulldogs were set to complete their undefeated season and the professional championship. Thorpe and Calac are wearing their Canton Jerseys while Guyon was smart and appears to be wearing some type of an insulated jersey or warm-up. CC0
Jim Thorpe was stripped of the Olympic gold medals awarded to him in 1912, but activists finally got them back in 2022. Today, Thorpe's legacy is about more than medals or even correcting historic wrongs — young Native Americans are now looking to him for inspiration. Thorpe looms large to present-day role models like hip-hop artist Tall Paul, who puts it this way: "now I gotta be you for kids who wanna be me."
- Rapper Tall Paul’s album is called, “The Story of Jim Thorpe." Tall Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida Hip-Hop artist enrolled on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota.
- Biographer David Maraniss is the author of "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe."
- Activist Suzan Shown Harjo is the recipient of a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee.
- Patty Loew is the director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. She is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.