Naomi Osaka Wears Face Mask with Breonna Taylor’s Name at U.S. Open

Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka

The mask paid tribute to the 26-year-old EMT who was killed by Kentucky police as she slept in her apartment on March 13, 2020.

The Breonna Taylor mask is one of seven face coverings, each one honoring a different person, that Osaka brought with her to the U.S. Open; it takes seven wins to claim victory at the tournament.

Osaka said, “It’s quite sad that seven masks isn’t enough for the amount of names, so hopefully I’ll get to the finals so you can see all of them.”

Osaka sat out an August 27 match she was scheduled to play. In posts on Instagram and Twitter, Osaka said she was opting out of the match to protest the August 23 shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old who was left paralyzed from the waist down after police shot him multiple times in front of his young children in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“Before I am an athlete, I am a Black woman,” she explained in the post. “And as a Black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis.”

Naomi Osaka, a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, is one of many high-profile athletes and celebrities who have called public attention to recent deaths and shootings of Black people at the hands of police officers.

Naomi Osaka is a professional tennis player who represents Japan. Osaka has been ranked No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). She has won five titles on the WTA Tour, including two titles at both the Grand Slam and Premier Mandatory levels. Osaka won her first two Grand Slam singles titles in back-to-back Grand Slam tournaments at the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open.

Born in Japan to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, Osaka has lived and trained in the United States since she was three years old. She came to prominence at the age of sixteen when she defeated former US Open champion Samantha Stosur in her WTA Tour debut at the 2014 Stanford Classic. Osaka made her breakthrough into the upper echelon of women’s tennis in 2018 when she defeated 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams in the final of the US Open.