For several years, a small nonprofit operating out of a church on the South Side of Chicago has tried to reduce gang violence by getting kids involved in boxing, music and other programs.

Few outside the city had ever heard of the group, Crushers Club, until this week, when it was awarded a $200,000 grant from a new partnership between the N.F.L. and Jay-Z that grew out of the league’s recent history of racial strain.

But by Friday, the group and its founder, Sally Hazelgrove, had themselves become a symbol of racial tension. The issue, mostly, was about dreadlocks .

In 2016, Ms. Hazelgrove posted photos on Crushers Club’s Twitter page in which she is holding scissors to cut the dreadlocks off a teenager named Kobe.