Richard Lapchick had a lot of stories to tell Monday. He told them to participants in the University of Nebraska’s 10th annual conference on People of Color in Predominantly White Institutions.

Along with the stories, about how sports can bridge the racial divide in America, Lapchick had a message: Educators need to communicate to students that America needs their service.

The past decade has been one of hate around the world, he said, with conflicts and terrorism and death.

People at the nation’s universities feel comfortable and immune.

“But our universities are the third biggest site of hate crimes in the United States,” he said.

Estimates are that more than 1 million bias incidents take place on college campuses each year.

But every person has the power to change that, to improve race relations, to make a home, a college, a city or state better places to live and work.

Lapchick is a human rights activist and internationally recognized expert on sports issues, known as the “racial conscience of sport.” He formerly served as the director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, and now is the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics of Sport at the University of Central Florida.

He is the son of Joe Lapchick, the original Boston Celtic center who became a legendary coach at St. John’s University and a coach for the New York Knicks.

Like his father, Lapchick believes that sport can be an effective instrument of positive social change.

He told his stories to the group of more than 60 people gathered for his keynote address Monday morning at The Cornhusker.

He told of answering a phone extension when he was 5 years old in Yonkers, N.Y., and hearing a man call his father a “n——- lover,” because his father had signed and played one the first three African-Americans  in the NBA. It was 1950.

He then told how his own son had repeated that history in 1978, hearing the same accusation about his father, because Lapchick was involved in the athletic boycott of South Africa, because of apartheid.

Because of that involvement, Lapchick was brutally beaten one night while at work at Virginia Wesleyan College, suffering kidney and liver damage, a concussion and having the word n——- carved into his stomach.

Lapchick said he saw in Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, the power of sports to help heal. He went with the Orlando Magic to deliver 6,000 pounds of relief supplies to Baton Rouge distribution centers and shelters.

The people looked sad and drained of energy as they walked into the shelter, he said. When they realized there was a sports team there, their eyes brightened and they gathered around them.

One 101-year-old woman in a wheelchair told him that to have so many from the Magic there meant the world to the people. They didn’t, she said, know anyone cared.

The New Orleans Saints accomplished the same kinds of healing for the people of that city.

“The power of sports to do good is amazing,” Lapchick said.

Players teach that anything and everything is possible, he said. Once teammates are in a huddle — race, religion, politics, differences, nothing else matters but working together to accomplish for the team and its fans.

Lapchick said many young people today face a sense of powerlessness and it is up to university teachers and leaders to be true heroes, to teach them how to serve America.

“We need that at a time when hate flows,” he said.

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.