Martin Luther King Jr. Day was on Monday, and Colin Kaepernick had a message for his fans. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback went to Twitter to share a quote from King. The selection was from a letter King wrote while he was in jail.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice;” King wrote, “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”
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Kaepernick gained attention when he began kneeling during the national anthem while a member of the 49ers in 2016. After opting out of his contract once the 2016 season came to an end, Kaepernick became a free agent and has not signed with a team ever since. Kaepernick’s decision to kneel was made because he was protesting police brutality and racial injustice, which is something King and over civil rights leaders protested in the 1950s and 1960s.
Last summer, the death of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter movement across the country. There were numerous protests, and NFL fans mentioned Kaepernick being right when it comes to racial injustice. Fans wanted Kaepernick back in the league, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wanted to see it happen.
“Well, listen, if he wants to resume his career in the NFL, then obviously it’s going to take a team to make that decision,” Goodell said in June. “But I welcome that, support a club making that decision and encourage them to do that.” Kaepernick has constantly been working to get back in the NFL and be active in the community.
King died at the age of 39 in 1968. Along with being a civil rights activist, King was a minister and winner of the Noble Peace Prize in 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1971 but enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
