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We Can’t Let the Kaepernick Era Be Erased From History

Critics say the Black Lives Matter movement in sports went too far. In reality, it didn’t go far enough, and the backlash to it has been brutal.

Eli Harold #58, Colin Kaepernick #7, and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the anthem, prior to the game against the Buffalo Bills on October 16, 2016 in Orchard Park, New York.

Ten years ago, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in protest of racist police violence. Four years later, following the police murder of George Floyd, the United States experienced the largest protests in its history, and athletes—overwhelmingly but not exclusively Black athletes—took to the streets in unprecedented numbers. For an eyeblink, this activism provoked a “racial reckoning” that challenged white supremacy and its attendant state violence. And Kaepernick became a symbol of so much more than his own demand that the police stop “getting away with murder.” 

Kaepernick immediately became an avatar for an era of struggle: an era that began when George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012, intensified when police officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and burst into the world of sports when members of the (then) St. Louis Rams came onto the field arms raised in a “hands-up-don’t shoot” gesture. Soon after, members of the WNBA wore black T-shirts over their uniforms and linked arms during the anthem and then, following the 2016 summer of viral videos of the police murders of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, Kaepernick—the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, the highest profile position for the most popular league in the country—took that fateful knee.

During four years of steady protest, Kaepernick was more than an icon. He was an inspiration—and this has been left out of every retrospective I have read—for hundreds of high school athletes who also took a knee during the anthem, sparking (depending on the community) violent backlashes but also positive changes in school policies. It was young athletes as much as any other force who kept the connective tissue of Black Lives Matter alive, contacting each other over social media and taking action. While the memory of Kaepernick’s knee cannot be erased—only slandered or coopted—the actions of these young people have been largely forgotten, their bravery invisible to the discussions and assessments taking place on this 10th anniversary.. 

This is why I am so frustrated when the question is asked in 2026, “Was Kaepernick’s knee a moment or a movement?” Of course it was a movement—one that stretched before and after him: It started in 2012 and continued on and off the field culminating with the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020 after police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

We also know that it was “a movement” because “moments” don’t provoke the unholy right-wing backlash that has occurred since 2020. Take your pick when choosing the low points of the racist revanchism that followed the heights of Black Lives........

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