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But students have a well-established constitutional right to do so.

In West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) the Supreme Court held that public school students have a First Amendment right to remain silent during the pledge and, by extension, any patriotic rite. Following this edict, many districts echo the New York City Public Schools Student Bill of Rights, clearly stating that students may "decline to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the pledge." (Private schools are generally exempt from any of these requirements, so they can require student participation.)

In addition to Barnette's clear direction regarding sitting out these ceremonies, silent nondisruptive political protest is constitutionally protected under another student First Amendment case, Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). This means that public school pupils -- and those in charter schools, because they're publicly funded -- can usually take a knee. If, however, that action or linking arms demonstrably reduces instructional time or creates physical disruption without according opponents a "heckler's veto," school leaders may reasonably limit the activity.

Despite these cases, students are regularly pressured by district officials to stand for the pledge. In Midland, Texas, students were told they had to stand for the pledge until the American Civil Liberties Union got involved. A Detroit-area teacher is under investigation for allegedly snatching a black middle school student out of his chair for failing to stand for the pledge.

Although most of the attention surrounding peaceful protests in public schools has been focused on students, educators, too, might be moved to protest. But reciting, even leading, the pledge is part of the job. For them, the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the National Anthem are daily occurrences. Most states require public schools to conduct a daily pledge as defined by federal law. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is regularly sung at schoolwide events, especially for team sports, where those assembled are expected to stand, hats removed, hands on heart. For these public employees, visible protest is especially fraught because of the special nature of student-teacher relationships set amid parent and community scrutiny.

An Indiana teacher who advised students in 2016 of their right to silent protest was directed by his principal to desist.

Teachers' ability to protest presents a thornier question. Their First Amendment rights are severely limited while on the clock and engaging in school activities.

But reciting the pledge is special. It is not part of the school curriculum that teachers have to follow, no matter their personal beliefs. It is a solemn, personal oath, and courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional for the state to compel such a false statement of political conscience. While the Supreme Court has not ruled directly on the matter, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Russo v. Central School District No. 1 (1972) is instructive, receiving favor in other circuits. There, the court ruled that a high school teacher's silence during the pledge is protected by the First Amendment since "to compel a person to speak what is not in his mind offends the very principles of tolerance and understanding which for so long have been the foundation of our great land."

Still, such actions are not to be taken lightly. Teachers, as role models, have a special responsibility not to appear to favor some students' point of view over others. Since reciting the pledge or singing the anthem are generally routine, few would ascribe a particular political opinion to teachers who do them. But, as we have seen, nonparticipation, especially when coupled with taking a knee or linking arms, is an affirmative statement of protest or religious objection. Yet in some circumstances, there is no middle ground: Sitting or standing, speech or silence, will necessarily convey belief. In those cases, the teacher has a duty of conscience that the law will support.

Student and teacher actions in these matters are highly consequential. While explanation is not normally required, it is educationally essential. A modern American class, school or district is a pluralistic community where members need to freely and peaceably interact. For this to occur, educators, parents and students need to know their rights and responsibilities during this teachable moment in the nation's history.

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classroom kaepernicks: can students and teachers take a knee? (opinion)  - cnn

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Classroom Kaepernicks: Can students and teachers take a knee?

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But students have a well-established constitutional right to do so. In West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) the Supreme Court held that public school students have a First Amendment right to remain silent during the pledge and, by extension, any patriotic rite.

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With more than 200 NFL players choosing to sit or kneel while the national anthem played before football games over this past weekend - largely in response to President Trump's continued criticism of athletes participating in such demonstrations - it's worth remembering that this movement didn't just begin last year with former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to kneel in order to make a statement about how the country is not practicing what it preaches.

In fact, this week's protests are simply the latest in a long history of athletes making public statements in the name of civil rights and American patriotism. Here are the answers to some key questions about the moments that led up to the NFL players' latest act of resistance:

Why is "The Star-Spangled Banner" part of sporting events?

The patriotic song became a fixture at sporting events during the last century. During the seventh-inning stretch of Game 1 between the Red Sox and the Cubs on Sept. 5, 1918, a Red Sox third baseman and furloughed U.S. Navy sailor sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" - then just a military anthem, not the official national anthem - as a band played in the outfield. His rendition was particularly moving because it took place as American soldiers were fighting abroad in World War I. The crowd's positive response was a major reason why the song was incorporated into sporting events throughout the nation. It became a permanent fixture of football games in the wake of World War II.

Is the anthem itself controversial?

Some supporters believe that the history behind the anthem itself makes its performance a fitting time for African-American athletes to protest, given the politics of its writer, Francis Scott Key. "He supported sending free blacks (not slaves) back to Africa and, with a few exceptions, was about as pro-slavery, anti-black and anti-abolitionist as you could get at the time," Jason Johnson, a political scientist at Morgan State University, writes for In addition, a third stanza that is almost never sung is specifically disparaging toward the runaway slaves who joined the British Army during the War of 1812 in exchange for their freedom.

Are the players the first to use kneeling as a protest?

Kneeling has long been an act of prayer and political activism. Take, for example, a photo from 1965 that's gone viral in the last 24 hours, featuring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists kneeling in prayer Selma, Ala., after more than 250 protesters were arrested on a march to the Dallas County Alabama courthouse to help get fellow African-Americans registered to vote.
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Have football players protested before?

Yes. For example, a week before the American Football League's all-star game was set to kick-off in New Orleans, 21 African-American professional players refused to play in the Big Easy because of discrimination that made it impossible for them to enjoy themselves in the week leading up to the game. One of the leaders of the walkout, former Oakland Raiders running back Clem Daniels, recently recalled to TIME the prejudice he and fellow faced trying to do everything from hail a cab to hanging up a coat.

The raised fist of the "Black Power" salute is perhaps most famously associated, at least within athletics, with its use during the 1968 Olympics. LIFE.com has shared the story of the iconic photo of the moment during the medal ceremony for the men's 200-meter event at the Summer Games in Mexico City, when gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos raised glove-covered fists. Silver medalist Peter Norman supported them by wearing a badge representing the Olympic Project for Human Rights. "We were just human beings who saw a need to bring attention to the inequality in our country," Smith said years later, in a 1999 documentary on the moment Fists of Freedom.

What about other sports?

There are many athletes outside of football who helped pave the way for the national anthem protests of 2017, and at least one famous story shows how standing up a cause can have ramifications long after the game ends. The late boxer Muhammad Ali, a devout Muslim, is not only known for being the first three-time heavyweight world champion, but also for refusing to enlisting in the Vietnam draft three times, arguing that "war is against the teachings of the Koran." TIME's Oct. 3, 2016, cover story on today's football protests characterized Ali as a cautionary tale, whose draft evasion conviction in 1967 showed that there can be "consequences for sticking one's neck out." For Ali, that consequence was being stripped of his boxing license and titles, including the heavyweight crown he won by beating Sonny Liston in 1964. (A TIME obituary Ali elaborates on his fight to be recognized as a conscientious objector, while this LIFE.com photo gallery documents his life in exile.) Ali's conviction was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court but the episode remained an example of the high stakes of protest - and today, three weeks into the NFL season, Kaepernick remains unsigned.

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Has This Happened Before? 6 Things to Know About the History Behind NFL Protests

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With more than 200 NFL players choosing to sit or kneel while the national anthem played before football games over this past weekend - largely in response to President Trump's continued criticism of athletes participating in such demonstrations - it's worth remembering that this movement didn't just begin last year with former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to kneel in order to make a statement about how the country is not practicing what it preaches.

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Cairo, Illinois protesting segregation
John Lewis went on to become a Congressman in Georgia.

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We celebrate black history to honor those who came before us, who laid the foundation for this house we call America, who struggled and excelled, who took a stand for what they believed in, and sometimes died doing so. We REMEMBER each tremendous journey, we RECOGNIZE the calamities, and we RAISE our voices in solidarity. We take a stand. Together. For the children. For America. And, we live.

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We celebrate black history to honor those who came before us, who laid the foundation for this house we call America, who struggled and excelled, who took a stand for what they believed in, and sometimes died doing so. We REMEMBER each tremendous journey, we RECOGNIZE the calamities, and we RAISE our voices in solidarity.

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Over the weekend, following President Trump's continued criticism of athletes choosing to protest by kneeling during the national anthem, NFL players across the country were faced with the question of what to do while "The Star-Spangled Banner" played before the game. More than 200 players chose to sit or kneel.

But how did the national anthem become such an integral part of professional sporting events in the U.S.?

"The earliest documented performance [of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at a baseball game] occurred on May 15, 1862, during the opening game played at Union Base Ball and Cricket Grounds in Brooklyn, New York," Marc Ferris writes in Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America's National Anthem. But as he later explained to NPR, hiring a band was a big enough cost that the anthem was saved for "special occasions" like opening day.

One famous example of this kind of special occasion was the first game of the World Series on Sept. 5, 1918.

Americans were so rattled by World War I that the game "almost didn't happen," according to the World War I Centennial Commission. "Out of respect for the soldiers, baseball officials wanted to cancel the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. When it became known, however, that American soldiers fighting in France were eager to know the Series' results, the games commenced." (On a more local level, Chicagoans were particularly on edge after a bombing at a federal building that housed a post office left four dead, with many suspecting that labor activists were behind it at a time when anti-union sentiment was high.)
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Red Sox third baseman and furloughed U.S. Navy sailor Fred Thomas' rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was so moving that the New York Times led its recap of the game not with a rundown of the athletes' performance, but rather with an assessment of Thomas's performance:

Far different from any incident that has ever occurred in the history of baseball was the great moment of the first world's series game between the Chicago Cubs and the Red Sox, which came at Comisky Park this afternoon during the seventh-inning stretch. As the crowd of 19,274 spectators...stood up to take their afternoon yawn...the band broke forth to the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The yawn was checked and heads were bared as the ball players turned quickly about and faced the music. Jackie Fred Thomas of the U.S. Navy was at attention, as the stood erect, with his eyes set on the flag fluttering at the top of the lofty pole in right field. First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day's enthusiasm.

The mind of the baseball fan was on the war. The patriotic outburst following the singing of the national anthem was far greater than the upheaval of emotion which greeted Babe Ruth, the Boston southpaw, when he conquered Hippo Him Vaughn and the Cubs in a seething flinging duel by a score of 1 to 0.

However, while the Times referred to the song as the national anthem, that was not technically the case yet. The song was then just an anthem for the U.S. Army and Navy, but it would prove to have legs ( even if the Cubs' World Series record would not). "The outpouring of sentiment, enthusiasm, and patriotism at the 1918 World Series went a long way to making the (song) the national anthem,'' John Thorn, Major League Baseball's official historian, told the Associated Press in July.

President Herbert Hoover signed a bill into law making "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official anthem of the U.S. in 1931, giving the country a national anthem for the first time.

During the World War II era, with the addition of sound systems that allowed the playing of recorded music at ball games, the performance became standard and moved from the seventh-inning stretch to the beginning of the game, Ferris has said. The tradition spread to football games, too.

At the end of the war, after Japan announced it would surrender, NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden called for all of the league's teams to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" at their games, arguing, "The National Anthem should be as much a part of every game as the kick-off. We must not drop it simply because the war is over. We should never forget what it stands for."

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Here's How Standing for the National Anthem Became Part of U.S. Sports Tradition

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Over the weekend, following President Trump's continued criticism of athletes choosing to protest by kneeling during the national anthem, NFL players across the country were faced with the question of what to do while "The Star-Spangled Banner" played before the game. More than 200 players chose to sit or kneel.

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TALKING TO KIDS ABOUT PROTESTING: 5 Things I Want My Kids to Know

As the protests continue in Charlotte, NC we are seeing the familiar and racially biased messages about protesting surface again. Many have critiqued our media reporting and our national conversation on protesting, pointing out the disparities in language and escalation tactics that are used depending upon the race of the protestors. As a parent, I'm particularly mindful of the potency of the words and images that are widely shared at a time like this. They are impossible to escape.

Instead of shielding my children from or ignoring these images and conversations I seek to both:
Point out that the way these protestors are treated and talked about is different because of the color of their skin AND expand our conversation and narrative about the act of protesting.
Here are the things that I want my kids to know:

1. Protesting is a protected right. The Bill of Rights, written in 1789, grants Americans many important rights, which have come to define our nation and anchor some of our shared national values. Protesting is a reflection of two of those important rights: the right to "peaceably assemble" and the right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances."

It can be traced back to the beginning of our country's history and is responsible for our very formation. A notable early protest example is The Boston Tea Party in 1773. 2. Protesting is an American tradition. Protesting has been a primary and critical way that Americans have stood up against injustice and unfair treatment since our country's inception.

3. There are examples of protest all over in history AND in the present day. Depending on where you live your children may have the opportunity to witness protests with great frequency and on behalf of a wide variety of issues. Can you imagine how many protests kids living in Washington D.C. observe?! In other locations protestors might be more easily coupled with a particular incident or issue.

In the latter case, children's books and media provide a great opportunity to expand the narrative on protests and the gains that have been achieved as a result of this important tradition. We have included some book suggestions below.

You may choose to incorporate other recent examples of protests into your conversations with your children, including:

* Colin Kaepernick (and those following him) who is protesting by declining to stand during that national anthem.

* The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (and the others that joined) protesting the oil pipeline that would cross tribal land. You can use the #noDAPL tag to find images and conversations about this.

4. Debates about the lawfulness and effectiveness of protesting have always existed. It is also important to acknowledge that opinions on the lawfulness and effectiveness of civil disobedience aren't new. People have long-opposed protest efforts that have brought our country to where we are today, and expanded rights for many Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. was not popular during his time. The same narrative about whether protesting is the "right thing to do" exists now as it did when people organized for voting rights, improved working conditions, civil rights, etc. That is important to acknowledge because it can otherwise be easy to give kids the false impression that protests of the past were justified but those of today are uniquely complicated and fraught.

5. We have benefited from the act of protest. It is also worthwhile to think about how your particular family and ancestors have participated in or benefited from protest movements in the past or in the present.

Our children are watching and listening. Please consider using this as an opportunity for expanding this important conversation.
Recommended Reading: Separate is Never Equal Lillian's Right to Vote The Youngest Marcher (coming soon)
Elizabeth Leads the Way * Please note, and share with children, that this book does not make mention that her efforts were on behalf of white women, and that women of color did not receive the right to vote until up to 45 years later.

** I am always looking for books that depict other US protests that are not biased and do not reinforce a problematic and incomplete narrative. If you have other suggestions, please let me know. **

** If you live in St. Lous, MO, these books and more can be found at The Novel Neighbor, St. Louis County Library branches, and The Kirkwood Public Library **

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Talking to Kids About Protesting: 5 Things I Want My Kids to Know

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As the protests continue in Charlotte, NC we are seeing the familiar and racially biased messages about protesting surface again. Many have critiqued our media reporting and our national conversation on protesting, pointing out the disparities in language and escalation tactics that are used

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Martellus Bennett didn't protest the national anthem. The Green Bay Packers tight end stood up with the rest of his teammates, and Washington Redskins players, during the second preseason contest at FedEx Field on Saturday.

"Nah, I'm chilling," Bennett responded when asked about it after the game.

Instead, he just chose a different medium to express his thoughts: art. Yes, there are, in fact, multiple ways to convey a message.

While his brother, Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett, sat during the national anthem during Friday's preseason game for the second straight week in solidarity with those fighting for racial equality, Martellus Bennett posted a political cartoon dedicated to him "and all of the other athletes using their platform to promote change."

Here's my first political cartoon. Dedicated to my brother @mosesbread72 and all of the other athletes using their platform to promote change. As I've been saying it seems as if "you can use the platform provided to promote products but not to promote change to the products of your environment." I've read a lot of the hate mail and comments sent to my brother as well as the ones sent to me. This illustration is how I feel about it all. here's to those willing to risk it all to promote change. #martyland #theimaginationagency #createdbymarty

A post shared by Martellus Bennett (@martellusb) on

The cartoon, which took two days to make, displays two black football players with a platform. One is promoting league products, and he's being told what to say on a big stage with significant interest from the media, while the other (tagged with Michael Bennett's Instagram account) is promoting Black Lives Matter and equality on a smaller platform, to the confusion of media members and a white football player scratching his head.

"I don't think anything I put on the cartoon was offensive," said Bennett, who still received criticism in the comments section. "It was just straight to the point. There was no misinterpretation there at all. It was right there, everything you need to see."

[Raiders' Derek Carr and Khalil Mack stand for national anthem but still send a message of unity]

Bennett, who is the creative director of Awesomeness at The Imagination Agency, thought studying political cartoons during history classes were "pretty awesome." Cartoons have often been a powerful way to present a message, but it's also been a level of imagery that has depicted racial stereotypes from as early as the 1930s to as recently as last week by the Illinois Policy Institute.

"I don't really work with it too often, but I think for that situation, it was perfect to paint the picture that I wanted people to see because sometimes you've got to stand back and look at things," Bennett said. "When you're so focused on what guys are doing, what they're saying, how they look, then we don't see the full image. I thought that was a good way to pull back and kind of frame it side-by-side so that you could see what we saw, or what I saw, from my perspective.

"And my perspective is not always the right one, but that's my POV from my experiences and what I saw. It might be totally different from what somebody else sees. But for us, and a lot of us, that's what we see and that's how it is for us. That's what the biggest thing for me was."

The cartoon is the yin to Michael Bennett's yang, displaying the duality within activism. Michael Bennett is voicing the same message during NFL games that initially started a year ago with Colin Kaepernick, who became one of the most polarizing figures in this country for sitting down during the national anthem to fight racial injustice and police brutality. He remains a free agent during Week 2 of the preseason. Martellus Bennett took it one step further, displaying on a macro level the difficulties NFL athletes face when they attempt to step outside the structure of the NFL and use the platform to promote a social good.

"When you're fighting the war, there's many battles," he said. "My brother is fighting one battle, and I'm on the different end of the spectrum fighting a different battle. But we're in the same war. It's just different things that we're doing right now."

Martellus Bennett understands not everyone's contribution will be the same, although protesting the national anthem has received the most recognition as a form of activism among NFL players. He believes it comes down to figuring out how to make a difference with the specific gifts each individual has to bring to the table.

For him, "art is universal." Bennett said everyone can understand art, and it has the ability to impact people on a broad level, whether that's through cartoons or through his poem, "Dear Black Boy," which he wrote after two black men were killed by police in Louisiana and Minnesota within 48 hours of each other last summer.

"Sometimes I like to write to get a point across, and sometimes I like to design," Bennett said. "Like Langston Hughes is just as important. The words that Martin Luther King spoke were just as important as the things that he did as well because sometimes you retain those things. Like we recite 'I Have A Dream' to this day. Words are powerful. Design, there are things that you see that are powerful; whether it's a political cartoon, whether it's an animated series, whatever it is, there's ways to use art to explain and get people to see things differently than they would with words."

Bennett thought it would be more effective to fight with his creativity and imagination, the same weapons he arms kids with because he wants to teach them how to think with "design in mind so that they can have a better future for us." Inspired by his daughter, he said he's motivated to inspire kids to create a better world for her and her generation.

To be the change he wants to see from the next generation, Bennett is expressing his imagination in a distinctive way that includes the national anthem, but also beyond it. He thinks people often focus too much about which athletes are standing, sitting, raising a fist or lending a hand during the national anthem rather than the message they're getting across.

"I look around the national anthem, and you still got people selling beers and peanuts, people probably in the bathroom taking a [expletive], babies crying and all kinds of [expletive] going on," Bennett said. "It's not like everybody is standing there with attention looking at the flag when the national anthem is going on. You got people doing all kinds of [expletive]. People yelling at you, trying to get a picture of you. I think so. I think people do miss the point. But anything you do, when you've got a good purpose or whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. Most people won't get it. You've just got to keep plugging away, keep chugging away and eventually, change will happen. Change doesn't happen overnight. It takes effort, and it takes a lot of change. It takes one person to sit down. Rosa Parks sat down. Change happened. So, things just come along and it evolves over time.

"I think guys are going to be doing a lot of different things, a lot of different battles and a lot of different things in the same war. I think, at the end of the day, I think the change will come - not only for the black players, but white players. The entire world wants to see the world become a better place. I think everyone is starting to get more involved and trying to look at it more so like, 'What can I do to do my part?' And, 'How can I help out?' I think that's one of the coolest things right now."
More from The Post: After the NFL's white players are called out, Eagles' Chris Long steps up Michael Bennett: 'It would take a white player to really get things changed' Famed former cop Frank Serpico joins NYPD for rally in support of Colin Kaepernick Boston, Tampa teams joining athletes to address racial injustice after Charlottesville

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NFL's Bennett brothers show two sides of activism. For Martellus Bennett, that's political cartooning.

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Martellus Bennett didn't protest the national anthem. The Green Bay Packers tight end stood up with the rest of his teammates, and Washington Redskins players, during the second preseason contest at FedEx Field on Saturday. "Nah, I'm chilling," Bennett responded when asked about it after the game.

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Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin explained on Sunday morning why his team would remain in the locker room during the national anthem in Chicago. He didn't want his team to be part of a political discussion, or there to be division in the locker room as a result of players protesting or not protesting. But in the end there was one player who took the field, offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva.

Villanueva's decision surprised the rest of his teammates. One reason the Steelers decided stay off the field during the nation anthem was because Villanueva didn't want to be singled out while he stood.

"We thought we were all in attention with the same agreement, obviously," linebacker James Harrison told Penn Live. "But I guess we weren't."

"I don't want to go into that, but we support our guy Al. He feels he had to do it. This guy served our country, and we thank him for it," Cam Hayward said when asked about it after the game.

During the national anthem, Villanueva's teammates could be seen behind him in the tunnel, several with their hands over the hearts as well, raising the question of why he was out in front of them.

Villanueva's career in the NFL didn't begin until 2014. Prior to that, he served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, where he served as a Captain in the army, as well as being an army ranger.

Villanueva was critical of Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest in August of 2016, when he said:

"I don't know if the most effective way is to sit down during the national anthem with a country that's providing you freedom, providing you $16 million a year ... when there are black minorities that are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for less than $20,000 a year."

However, he was also quick to acknowledge the problems in this country.

"I will be the first one to hold hands with Colin Kaepernick and do something about the way minorities are being treated in the United States, the injustice that is happening with police brutality, the justice system, inequalities in pay," Villanueva said. "You can't do it by looking away from the people that are trying to protect our freedom and our country."

The Steelers organization has not released a statement following Donald Trump's statements on boycotting the NFL due to protests during the anthem.

UPDATE: On Monday, Villanueva talked to reporters about the team's decision to forgo the national anthem.

Although he recognized what the flag means to veterans, he also feels bad for not supporting the team-wide decision that was made. Villanueva says going out while everyone else stayed in the locker room "threw them under the bus unintentionally." He reiterated that he supports anyone who decides to protest. According to Chris Adamski of the Tribune-Review, Villanueva says he is embarrassed for not joining his teammates during the anthem:

Alejandro Villaneuva: "Every single time I see that picture of me standing by myself, I feel embarrassed."
- Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017

NFL's message of 'unity' has diluted Colin Kaepernick's reasons for protest

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Alejandro Villanueva, a U.S. Army veteran, was the lone Steeler on the field during national anthem

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Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin explained on Sunday morning why his team would remain in the locker room during the national anthem in Chicago. He didn't want his team to be part of a political discussion, or there to be division in the locker room as a result of players protesting or not protesting.

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The Quest for Peace and Justice Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Lecture — December 11, 1964

“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

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I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to truth as we see it.”

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Colin Kaepernick's protest is part of a long history of black athletes taking politics to the field.

Colin Kaepernick's simple act of taking a knee during the national anthem in an act of protest against racism and police violence has set off an earthquake in the world of sports, and the reverberations show no sign of stopping any time soon.

Why did this protest appear now? How does it compare to sports protests of the past? And should we expect to hear more of sports players' political views? Danny Katch talked to Dave Zirin, a sports columnist for the Nation and the author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down to answer those questions.

First of all, there's always been this intersection of politics and sports and antiracism because sports was one of the few avenues for black men in particular to show excellence and have standing.

Sports also became this place where all the lies of racism - the number one lie being black inferiority - could be disproven in a very public way. How are you going to argue the inferiority of people based on the color of their skin when you have Jack Johnson as the heavyweight champion?

So it's always been this politicized space. But when you talk about athletes in 2016, I really believe that the death of Muhammad Ali and the amount of coverage that received has played an unspoken role in everything we're seeing right now.

The coverage of his death was an education for people. Based on their social media feeds, a lot of athletes weren't just saying: Rest in peace. They were re-tweeting articles, too. It wasn't that different for a lot of the country. There was an education process about Ali once he passed away, and I think it made a big impact on a lot of athletes.

DK

Colin Kaepernick's protest during the national anthem has spread to other professional athletes, down to college and high school athletes, and even a youth football team in Texas. Is there any precedent for an athletic protest having this kind of immediate viral impact?

DZ

There absolutely is a precedent, and we would know about it more if only there were smartphones back in 1968. After the US Olympic athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in Mexico City at the 1968 Games, people were doing it around the country - youth groups, high school graduating classes, sports teams.

The lack of recording devices is one reason why we don't know about it, and another reason is that it often happened in the rural South - in Black high schools, junior high schools, and certainly Black colleges. In 1969, the entire graduating class of Howard University raised their fists like Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

So that act is a precedent. Obviously, social media makes it so much more powerful in 2016, but there are parallels to the past - this incredible showing of dissent on the sports field, but also the context of a broader movement that amplifies it and makes it resonate.

DK

Some of the biggest stars in the NBA have been publicly trying to figure out how to help the Black Lives Matter movement, but Kaepernick has done more by just taking a knee, a very simple gesture. What is about this protest that strikes such a chord?

DZ

I respect the fact that people like Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony are feeling an obligation to speak out. We should have all the respect in the world that they - sorry to use this metaphor - moved the ball forward, just by saying you have a right to speak out and you need to say something about the police killings that are taking place.

The first thing that makes Kaepernick different, though, isn't the taking the knee at the anthem, but the political content of what he's doing. He's saying, "No justice no peace." He's taking a side and going beyond what many people have said - that we need stop the violence, and to bring police and community together.

Kaepernick is saying that there's something wrong with a system where police won't even be prosecuted when they kill someone. It isn't about just getting to know the police better or having more forums or building more bridges. It's about there being something systemically wrong about the way policing is done in this country. That's the political content, and it's a huge part of what makes this different.

Then there's the act of first sitting and then kneeling during the anthem, which is putting politics in a space that many sports fans - especially reactionary, right-wing sports fans - want to see as an apolitical space.

Kaepernick is violating this unspoken social contract between the team owners and majority white fan base that says black athletes are to be seen, but not heard. They are here for entertainment, but you don't have to really care what they think about the world.

And then the simplicity of the gesture is something that allows itself for replication. One of the reasons that it spread is that while people agree with Kaepernick that we have to have a discussion about police violence, it also became an act of solidarity against the death threats and racism that he is receiving.

Kaepernick has a teammate named Eli Harold, who last week wasn't going to do anything about the anthem or the flag. But then ESPN's Trent Dilfer basically said Kaepernick should shut his mouth and play, and Eli was so mad that he decided to join the protest.

Then there's the social media aspect of it. You see that picture of Howard University cheerleaders all taking a knee - cheerleaders are usually seen in the football context as not to be taken seriously, and here you see the unsmiling pose of these incredibly strong black women.

That's a powerful image, and the only thing you can do when you see an image like that is respond. Some respond with respect, and others respond with absolute, utter hate. What you don't see is people being neutral when they see it.

DK

When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in 1968, they were immediately hustled away from Mexico City. Twenty years later, when the basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf protested the national anthem, his career came to an end pretty quickly.

Of course, that has to do with the racism that they're reacting against. But African American athletes aren't the only athletes who face racism. To what extent to do you think, consciously or unconsciously, Black athletes today have a strength from drawing on the legacy of protest from previous generations - whether it's Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson, who, as you've shown in your writings, was involved in a lot more protest than mainstream history indicates?

DZ

That's a great question. Abdul-Rauf's protest was in 1996, and Tommie Smith and John Carlos were at the 1968 Olympic Games. I think the media of 1996 had far more in common with the media of 1968 than with the media of 2016.

The sports media of 1996 and before was made up largely of older, white conservative sports writers who set the tune for how things would be discussed across the country. That's not as much the case today.

Don't get me wrong - there are still a lot of racist sportswriters in 2016. At the same time, you can see that the sports-writing landscape and the NFL business landscape is much more responsive to what is said and discussed on social media. In many respects, social media sets the tone for how these discussions take place. Not entirely, but the balance of power is different from what it was in 1996.

Let me give you an example of that. One of the media narratives when Kaepernick started sitting was, "Oh, he's disrespecting veterans!"

What happened in response to that? #VeteransforKaepernick. Photos all over the internet of veterans kneeling during the national anthem. And so before you know it, you have a radical veteran, my man Rory Fanning, invited onto CNN to explain why he stands with Colin Kaepernick.

It's not like we control the mainstream television and print media from social media below. But the balance of power is changing dramatically. And obviously, that balance of power wouldn't be the same if there wasn't a Black Lives Matter movement.

So it's a combination of those factors: The presence of the movement itself, plus a sports media and a mainstream media that are much more responsive as people talk about issues on the social media platform.

DK

Since this protest has spread, Kaepernick isn't the only NFL player speaking incredibly powerfully about the reasons for it. Jared Odrick wrote an incredible piece in Sports Illustrated . . .

DZ

Which also would not have happened in 1996 by the way.

DK

Right. And Arian Foster is talking to reporters in the locker room about the legacy of slavery. Charles Woodson, as a member of an ESPN panel show, is talking about how he's learned about the national anthem.

In your career, you've not only focused on the intersection of sports and politics, but particularly on getting to know modern athletes who are political. Based on your experience, to what extent do you think things like the Black Lives Matter movement and other issues are radicalizing players, and to what extent do you think there's been a number of players who have very interesting political things to say, and this is the first time that millions of people are getting a chance to hear it?

DZ

I think we've seen a bubbling of this for quite a few years. You have to understand the continuity in what's happening right now. It would be a mistake to say, like a lot of the media is saying: "You had a lot of athletes who were political in the late 1960s, and then maybe you had some women who were political like Billie Jean King in the 1970s and now it's re-emerging."

That's just not the truth. The same way that in the labor movement there are people who stay active in the dark times and are able to be that connective tissue between the ups and the downs, it's the same way in sports. So that's the importance of knowing the history of people like Craig Hodges and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in the 1990s, when it really was at its worst in terms of athletes in struggle.

But I'm really thinking more of the post-9/11 period and the athletes who spoke out against war unapologetically. People like Etan Thomas. Even a nineteen-year-old Lebron James said his goal was to dunk on George W. Bush.

Athletes, of course, have always had political discussions in the locker room, and I think they've always had a unique view of US society, because they're disproportionately African American in basketball and football, and disproportionately Dominican and Latino in baseball. Many grow up in poverty, and then they get a lot of money. Then, all of a sudden, everybody's pushing a microphone in front of their faces. That's a crazy perch by which to look at this country. It's a crazy perspective.

Also, I think that what athletes have found in recent years in particular is when they speak out and say something, they actually get some praise for that, too. It's not the boring "We play one game a time, the good lord willing" quote. There's a thirst to know these athletes more as personalities.

I think a lot of the leagues have marketed that. But for the front office, that giveth and it taketh away - because what if you want to get to know a player, and instead of hearing "Eat your vitamins and stay in school," they're saying "Black Lives Matter" or "I support my gay teammates." Or we demand equal pay because we're women soccer players, and we just won the World Cup.

Honestly, one big turning point in athletes feeling the confidence to speak out was around 2008 with Barack Obama's campaign. All of a sudden, a lot of the media were going to Black athletes because it was good copy: "What do you think about this historic moment of a first Black president?"

That's the first time you heard people like Carmelo Anthony speak out. That's the first time you heard Lebron James say something really political. I think that began to plant some seeds in a lot of these athletes. It's almost like they were trying on a new suit, and they said, "Hey, this feels pretty good."

That's all built us up to this moment. I've said this before and I'll say it again: If it wasn't Colin Kaepernick, it would have been somebody else. This was ready to happen.

DK

You've talked about how pro athletes in basketball and football are disproportionately African American. It also seems like throughout US history, among the ranks of athlete protesters in the US - especially male athlete protesters - it's been even more disproportionately African American.

Of course, that has to do with the racism that they're reacting against. But African American athletes aren't the only athletes who face racism. To what extent to do you think, consciously or unconsciously, Black athletes today have a strength from drawing on the legacy of protest from previous generations - whether it's Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson, who, as you've shown in your writings, was involved in a lot more protest than mainstream history indicates?

DZ

First of all, there's always been this intersection of politics and sports and antiracism because sports was one of the few avenues for black men in particular to show excellence and have standing.

Sports also became this place where all the lies of racism - the number one lie being black inferiority - could be disproven in a very public way. How are you going to argue the inferiority of people based on the color of their skin when you have Jack Johnson as the heavyweight champion?

So it's always been this politicized space. But when you talk about athletes in 2016, I really believe that the death of Muhammad Ali and the amount of coverage that received has played an unspoken role in everything we're seeing right now.

The coverage of his death was an education for people. Based on their social media feeds, a lot of athletes weren't just saying: Rest in peace. They were re-tweeting articles, too. It wasn't that different for a lot of the country. There was an education process about Ali once he passed away, and I think it made a big impact on a lot of athletes.

DK

This question is very specifically about the NFL. It's interesting that this protest sparked by Kaepernick hit the NFL. First, because as you've noted many times, this is a league that has wrapped itself in the flag and tied itself to uber-patriotism and militarism. But second, this is a league where players have the least amount of protection, not having guaranteed contracts. And keep in mind that this protest was started by a backup quarterback - who has more name recognition than many because he wasn't always a backup, but he doesn't have great job security.

But the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, has alienated the hell out of the players in recent years by acting as judge, jury, and executioner with disciplinary issues and violating their collective bargaining rights. To what extent do you think that this might be a factor in fueling the support for Kaepernick among players?

DZ

Roger Goodell is someone who fines people for having the wrong color shoelaces. He fined Antonio Brown for twerking in the end zone. Terrell Pryor pretty much lost the game for the Browns last weekend because he flipped the ball at a referee, and they gave him a penalty because they said that was showboating when it accidentally hit the guy guarding him on the helmet.

That's the NFL - completely authoritarian and top-down in how it polices players.

But look how gingerly Roger Goodell has walked around this issue. The league isn't fining or suspending players for protesting during the anthem or walking out onto the field with slogans written on their uniforms. You have to ask the question: Why is this cabal of right-wing owners and their flak-catcher in the commissioner's office not cracking down?

I think the answer is that they realize they have a $20 billion business that's built on a very rickety foundation. The NFL has zero percent black owners and 70 percent black players - and at the skill positions, the percentage is higher - who destroy their bodies playing this sport. I think the numbers are 24 percent of front-office people are black, and 16 percent of head coaches are black.

In other words, if the players say, "We're mad about the situation of black people in this country," the last thing they want to do is fine those players and have them say, "Gee, I guess the NFL is no different from being black in an alley and running across a cop in South Carolina." The last thing they want is people drawing those kinds of direct parallels.

DK

Rather than ask what you think will come of this protest, my final question is: What's the best-case scenario that can come of all this, and what's the worst-case scenario - so that we can get a sense of the range of possibilities?

DZ

If there's one thing I've learned from looking at athletic protests, they're a feature of the broader movement, not a substitute for it. So this has already been a success - another chapter in the history of sports and politics has been written.

We already know this is going to happen in the NBA because players like Iman Shumpert and Victor Oladipo say it's going to happen. So this isn't going anywhere. The protests could stop in the NFL tomorrow - though they won't - and they would start up again November 1 in the NBA.

And tragically, as long as there are violent police officers in this country, these protests will continue. As long as there is no justice, there's not going to be peace.

So the best-case scenario is that we keep the struggle going so that the families who have been devastated by losing their loved ones to police and getting no redress actually start to see real justice. As long as athletes shine a light on what's happening, in concert with broader movements, then that points to the hope of ending the scourge of racist police violence once and for all.

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Dave Zirin is the author most recently of Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy.

Catalyst, a new journal published by Jacobin, is out now.

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Colin Kaepernick's protest is part of a long history of black athletes taking politics to the field. Colin Kaepernick's simple act of taking a knee during the national anthem in an act of protest against racism and police violence has set off an earthquake in the world of sports, and the reverberations show no sign of stopping any time soon.

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Throughout his conversation with sportscaster James Brown '73, Harry Edwards repeated one sentence: "We're better than this." And that hopeful phrase became a theme of sorts for " From Robinson to Kaepernick: The Evolution of Athlete Activism," a JFK Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School on Wednesday.

Brown and Edwards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus, charted the history of African-American athletes fighting for legitimacy since the turn of the 20th century, when they were considered intellectually and physically incapable of participating in mainstream sports. Starting with Jack Johnson's defeat of white heavyweight champion Tommy Burns, black athletes have stood on one another's shoulders to advance Civil Rights. From Jesse Owens advocating the boycott of and then dominating the 1936 Olympics, to Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier, to Muhammed Ali refusing to fight in Vietnam, African-American athletes have pushed the limits of their clout in support of racial equality.

Today, in what Edwards describes as the fourth wave of athletic activism, black athletes are acutely aware of the expectation that they use their celebrity to help others. He referenced Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry, who leveraged his endorsement deal with Under Armour when he called CEO Kevin Plank about his statement of support for President Trump. In response, Plank took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to clarify his sentiments.

Curry's phone call, though, has not received a tenth of the coverage of the silent protest by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who became controversial since he began taking a knee during the national anthem at the start of the 2016 NFL preseason. Edwards, who was a staff consultant for the 49ers under head coach Bill Walsh during the 1980s, strongly supports Kaepernick's activism, which he said has inspired other athletes.

"You have athletes who are lining up and saying, 'What we see going on in the community is wrong. We're better than that,'" Edwards said. "They also realize - as Michael Bennett found out [when he was allegedly handcuffed and threatened by police in Las Vegas] - that the only reason it was Michael Brown lying in the street in Ferguson, Missouri, and not Michael Bennett and not LeBron James and not Malcolm Jenkins, is because they were not there. Because they are subject to the same kind of treatment."

Past progress in race relations can appear fleeting. Edwards said statistics show that segregation in many cities and schools is currently worse than it was right after Jim Crow, and more African-Americans are killed by police today than were recorded lynched in the 19th century. "There is no final victory," he said.

Several times during the discussion, Edwards mentioned the plight of female athletes, in particular what he called the "assault" on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood that he believes endangers Title IX. He said Roe helped colleges see female athletes as assets, rather than flight risks who might leave their school and sport if they became pregnant.

Edwards also lauded to Knox College basketballer Ariyana Smith, who became the first athlete to protest Brown's killing when she lay down during the anthem for 4 minutes and 20 seconds - a nod to the 4 hours and 20 minutes that Brown was left dead in the street. Knox briefly rescinded her scholarship, but Smith refused to return, deciding to take her talents elsewhere.

Brown asked if college athletes, such as the Crimson basketball team, which co-sponsored the forum, should follow the pros' examples.

"You don't do the things that [those activists] do unless you love this country," Edwards told them. He emphasized that college athletes are students first, and should use their educations to understand the history of African-American athlete activism in the U.S. "Dream with your eyes open. You got to understand there is a price to pay."

Edwards also had words for President Trump. "We've had ignorant people in there before, that's not a big deal," he said to laughter. But when Trump speaks about Muslims, women, African-Americans, and protesters, Edwards said, the vitriol that laces his words prevents forward movement.

"He's going to find himself on the same shelf of presidential irrelevancy with Chester A. Arthur and Franklin Pierce."

When the forum segued into a Q&A session, the mother of a 9/11 victim said she thought Kaepernick's protest was disrespectful to the families who lost loved ones in the 2001 attacks.

"[Is there] a better voice than taking a knee?" she asked.

Edwards replied that reducing loss to a numbers game misses the point. He pointed out that far more African-Americans have been killed at the hands of the U.S. government than Americans were lost on 9/11.

"We can disagree about the method as long as we're on the same page about the message. We can discuss the method so long as there's no antagonism. ... But it can't be about Ray Lewis versus Kaepernick, about Michael Vick versus Kaepernick. It's not about Kaepernick cutting his hair or ... talking softer. Those are not the issues," he said, referring to criticisms from some former black athletes.

Edwards said the "right protest" grows organically out of the movement, referencing the evolution of Black Lives Matter from a Twitter hashtag to a national slogan and finally into a movement. "Started by three black women, by the way," he noted.

Edwards said that although it can seem at times that the nation is at a breaking point, he feels optimistic about the future of the country.

"We were better after the Civil War; we were better after the Labor Movement; we were better after the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Rights Movement, the anti-war protests," he concluded. "We're gonna come out of this okay."
John Michael Baglione is a writer and author residing in Boston. His work can be found at johnmichaeltxt.com.

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When black athletes stand up - or take a knee - for equal rights

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Throughout his conversation with sportscaster James Brown '73, Harry Edwards repeated one sentence: "We're better than this." And that hopeful phrase became a theme of sorts for " From Robinson to Kaepernick: The Evolution of Athlete Activism," a JFK Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School on Wednesday.

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Pittsburgh Steelers remain in the locker room for the National Anthem 9/24/17

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Pittsburgh Steelers remain in the locker room for the National Anthem 9/24/17

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National Anthem: Steelers at Bears on Sept. 24

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To display unity in light of President Donald Trump's recent comments, the Pittsburgh Steelers stayed in their locker room when the national anthem was played Sunday at Soldier Field in Chicago. The Bears locked arms on their sideline.

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When Muhammad Ali Refused to Go to Vietnam

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His decision to fight in the war transcended the boxing ring, which he had dominated, at great personal cost.

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Here in 2016, the nation again feels tense and threatened by divisions. When Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, knelt during the national anthem before games, he too was sending a message to a country divided; reeling in the midst of an ugly presidential campaign, struggling with widely reported police violence against African-Americans, and unable to come to a consensus on immigration and the rights of noncitizens. Mr. Kaepernick drew upon a tradition that includes not only Douglass but also many other artists, athletes and activists who reimagined moments associated with patriotism as opportunities to create statements about American ideals. To Mr. Kaepernick, " This country isn't holding its end of the bargain up as far as giving freedom and justice and liberty to everybody," and as a result, he views his protest as a necessary and patriotic one.

In an Op-Ed on September 16, " The Uses of Patriotism," David Brooks challenges this view. Mr. Brooks encourages high school athletes who might want to "pull a Kaepernick" to consider that patriotic acts are a necessary part of a "civic religion," in his words, an "American creed [which] gave people a sense of purpose and a high ideal to look up to." Sitting out the anthem, then, means losing a sense of shared identity and risking disunity.

Paired together, these texts begin a conversation that we'd like to encourage within the safe spaces of our classrooms - one that explores the purposes of patriotism and the meaning of democracy to all of our citizens. Reading the Douglass text helps ground the actions of Mr. Kaepernick in an activist tradition and also helps give historic context to the complaints about inequality and injustice. Mr. Brooks illustrates the discomfort that many feel when our national symbols are involved in such complaints. It is our goal that through reading the pair, students will feel equipped to weigh each perspective and develop personal understandings of patriotism and what it means to be an American citizen in today's context.

Key Question: How does the history of racial injustice in the United States affect Americans' varied understandings of national symbols and what they mean? Can protests involving national symbols be construed as acts of patriotism?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

* Comparing Two or More Texts

* Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading

* Document Analysis Questions

_________
Text 1: Excerpt from "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" (PDF) by Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

... Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

... I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

The speech continues:

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery - the great sin and shame of America!

Text 2: Excerpt from "The Uses of Patriotism" by David Brooks, The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2016

... What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

For Writing and Discussion

This column is directed at all the high school football players around the country who are pulling a Kaepernick - kneeling during their pregame national anthems to protest systemic racism. I'm going to try to persuade you that what you're doing is extremely counterproductive.

When Europeans first settled this continent they had two big thoughts. The first was that God had called them to create a good and just society on this continent. The second was that they were screwing it up.

The early settlers put intense moral pressure on themselves. They filled the air with angry jeremiads about how badly things were going and how much they needed to change.

This harsh self-criticism was the mainstream voice that defined American civilization. As the historian Perry Miller wrote, "Under the guise of this mounting wail of sinfulness, this incessant and never successful cry for repentance, the Puritans launched themselves upon the process of Americanization."

By 1776, this fusion of radical hope and radical self-criticism had become the country's civic religion. This civic religion was based on a moral premise - that all men are created equal - and pointed toward a vision of a promised land - a place where your family or country of origin would have no bearing on your opportunities.

Over the centuries this civic religion fired a fervent desire for change. Every significant American reform movement was shaped by it. Abraham Lincoln wrote, "If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not entirely unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country."

Martin Luther King Jr. sang the national anthem before his "I Have a Dream" speech and then quoted the Declaration of Independence within it.

This American creed gave people a sense of purpose and a high ideal to live up to. It bonded them together. Whatever their other identities - Irish-American, Jewish American, African-American - they were still part of the same story.

Over the years, America's civic religion was nurtured the way all religions are nurtured: by sharing moments of reverence. Americans performed the same rituals on Thanksgiving and July 4; they sang the national anthem and said the Pledge in unison; they listened to the same speeches on national occasions and argued out the great controversies of our history.

Mr. Brooks continues:

Sitting out the anthem takes place in the context of looming post-nationalism. When we sing the national anthem, we're not commenting on the state of America. We're fortifying our foundational creed. We're expressing gratitude for our ancestors and what they left us. We're expressing commitment to the nation's ideals, which we have not yet fulfilled.

If we don't transmit that creed through shared displays of reverence we will have lost the idea system that has always motivated reform. We will lose the sense that we're all in this together. We'll lose the sense of shared loyalty to ideas bigger and more transcendent than our own short lives.

If these common rituals are insulted, other people won't be motivated to right your injustices because they'll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story. People will become strangers to one another and will interact in cold instrumentalist terms.

1. Douglass states, "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future." How does his understanding of the past impact his speech on the Fourth of July? How does Mr. Brooks' interpretation of the past color his view on modern-day protests during the national anthem? Both authors use the founding of the United States as a touchstone and starting point for their arguments, but do they agree on one vision for America? Do you think they view symbols like Independence Day, the flag and the national anthem in the same way?
_________ Going Further
2. Mr. Brooks believes that reverence for the anthem and the flag helps nurture a "civic religion" in the United States that in turn unites Americans in a sense of purpose and drive for reform. What role do you think the anthem, flag and other national symbols play in American life? Are they unifying or divisive? Are they meaningful or are they simply emblems?
Close Read the Anthem in Context
3. In " Colin Kaepernick and the Question of Who Gets to Be Called a Patriot, " Wesley Morris writes: "'Patriot' has a niftily concise definition: 'one who loves and loyally or zealously supports one's own country.' Support can take the form of dissent just as readily as cheerleading - each is a way of suggesting what kind of nation America is to become, and patriots have lived and died on all sides of the argument." Do you agree that patriotism can be expressed both as support or through protest? Create your own definition of patriotism. Do you find Douglass's speech to be patriotic? Point to areas in the text that support your answer.

4. Consider Douglass's audience - did they expect the speech he gave? How might the female abolitionists who invited him to speak have felt about his criticism of American history and life? Remember that these white women in 1852 would have had fewer rights than those of white men of the time. Do you think this would engender understanding for his point of view or would they feel attacked by his critique?
National Symbols and Abolitionism
5. Mr. Brooks addresses high school athletes in his editorial, but one can also imagine that he is directing his advice toward Mr. Kaepernick. What if Douglass could also join that conversation - what do you think he would say to both men? Do you think Douglass considered himself patriotic? Why or why not?

In the wake of Mr. Kaepernick's protest, there has been a renewed debate among historians about how to interpret Francis Scott Key's third verse - in particular the lines "No refuge could save the hireling and slave/from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave." Jefferson Morley, in an interview with BackStory, points out that "Key was hoping for victory over the British, and scorning the slaves who had joined the British cause in search of their freedom. He thought they were ungrateful, and had betrayed their masters and their country." The musicologist Mark Clague disagrees about the implications of this verse, noting that the lyrics "honored American soldiers both black and white." He explains, "The history of 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' like the United States as a whole, is convoluted. The lines between justice and injustice are crisscrossed by crippling social blindness that each era must own and overcome."

Examine the full text of Key's poem "The Star Spangled Banner." Research the significance of the Battle of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 and the contributions of black soldiers on both sides of the conflict. How do the literal meaning and the historical context of "The Star Spangled Banner" influence our modern understanding of the anthem? To what extent do the anthem's lyrics reflect American values? How have perceptions of these values changed over time?

Douglass's speech in 1852 exemplifies abolitionists' attempt to connect their cause to American ideals, but he was not the first to note the disconnect between the nation's stated values and the ugly reality of slavery. Other abolitionists also modified national symbols to illustrate this contrast - for example, E.A. Atlee's rewritten anthem "Oh Say, Do You Hear?" (1844) replaces Francis Scott Key's victorious battle imagery with that of a brutal beating:

Oh, say do you hear, at the dawn's early light,

The shrieks of those bondmen, whose blood is now streaming

From the merciless lash, while our banner in sight

With its stars, mocking freedom, is fitfully gleaming?

Do you see the backs bare? Do you mark every score

Of the whip of the driver trace channels of gore?

And say, doth our star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

An 1859 abolitionist flag includes stripes and stars from only states that had abolished slavery. Secessionists would respond with their own exclusionary flag just two years later.
Compare Views of the Flag
After reviewing these materials, consider:

* In the rewritten anthem, the final two lines in the first verse are unchanged. What is the effect of this? How is the meaning altered?
History of Protest in American Sports
* Would the abolitionist flag be viewed as "unpatriotic" is 1859? Why or why not?

* Is the abolitionist flag excluding Southern states hopeful or defeatist? How does your answer relate to David Brooks's view of Colin Kaepernick's protest?

Room for Debate's " Americans and Their Flag" provides four viewpoints on Mr. Kaepernick's protest and the importance of the flag in American life. Their responses touch on the symbolic power of the flag and the core values each believes it represents. Read each perspective and consider his or her point of view. Teachers might use a version of this Four Corners strategy from Facing History and Ourselves to ask students to evaluate the responses of each author and justify their opinions. After discussing as a class, students might write a response to a debater with whom they disagree.

Ask students to think about their own responses to the flag, anthem or Pledge of Allegiance. How do they typically respond? As protests spread to high schools, students might consider whether they would make the choice to kneel during the anthem or how they might react to a teammate or peer who was protesting. Students could write a letter to the editor of their school or local newspaper sharing their opinion on this issue.
Patriotism and Protest in Art

Mr. Kaepernick is not the first athlete to use his platform to protest injustice. Compare Mr. Kaepernick's reasons for protesting the anthem to those of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and to Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Summer Olympics. How were these protests received at the time? How does the historical context of those protests compare to today's climate?

Recently, the San Francisco 49ers have hired Harry Edwards, who called for a boycott of the same 1968 games during which Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos protested, as a consultant to provide guidance during this new era of activism. Why might they do that? How might Mr. Edwards's experiences help him connect to today's athletes, and in what ways might their worldviews be different?

Interestingly, all these protests during the national anthem at sporting events raises a separate question: Why is the national anthem a staple of sporting events to begin with? After all, as Sam Borden notes in this article, "The president of the United States is not required to listen to the national anthem before beginning his day, but Jay Bruce must hear it before taking the field as an outfielder for the Mets." Read Mr. Borden's article about the union of sports and patriotism in American culture, and consider: Should standing for the anthem always be part of the pregame ritual?

Art has often served as a lightning rod for dialogue about the meaning of national symbols. Look at the following examples of artistic statements that incorporate the flag or anthem:

Jasper Johns, "White Flag"

Dread Scott, "What is the Proper Way to Display the Flag?"

Johnny Cash, "Ragged Old Flag"

Jimi Hendrix, performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, 1969

Esther Popel Shaw, "Flag Salute"

Malcah Zeldis, "Miss Liberty Celebration"

William Pope.L, "Trinket"

Ask students to create a work of visual art, music or poetry that addresses one or more of the following questions:

* What do the American flag and national anthem represent?

* What is patriotism, and how should it be expressed?

* Can protest be a form of patriotism?

* Does patriotism require imagination?

Encourage students to display their art in the classroom, accompanied by an "artist's statement" explaining how their work seeks to address one of the above questions, or ask new questions. In lieu of individual presentations, students may tour the class "exhibit" using this Gallery Walk strategy, commenting on one another's work and comparing perspectives.

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Text to Text | Colin Kaepernick's National Anthem Protest and Frederick Douglass's 'What to the Slave is the 4th of July?'

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Here in 2016, the nation again feels tense and threatened by divisions. When Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, knelt during the national anthem before games, he too was sending a message to a country divided; reeling in the midst of an ugly presidential campaign, struggling with widely reported police violence against African-Americans, and unable to come to a consensus on immigration and the rights of noncitizens.

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Two decades ago, Beverly Daniel Tatum published a bestselling book on the psychology of racism. Now, with the release of the book's second edition, she reflects on its relevance to schools today.

In 1997, Beverly Daniel Tatum, one of the country's foremost authorities on the psychology of racism, answered a recurring question that surfaced in her work with teachers, administrators, and parent groups: Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? The result was a critically acclaimed book of the same name that gave readers-numbering in the hundreds of thousands-a starting point to demystify conversations about race, better understand the concept of racial identity, and communicate across racial and ethnic divides.

Now two decades later, the black kids are still sitting together. And Tatum has returned with a revised and updated 20th-anniversary edition of her national bestseller that publishes today. One aspect that has changed dramatically since the original release of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race are America's demographics. Latinos and Asian Americans are the largest and fastest-growing populations of color, respectively, with children of color for the first time outnumbering white children in public schools. Additionally, the backlash against the election of the first black president, the continuing segregation of schools, and highly visible incidents of police violence seem to belie the claim of a "post-racial society"-making Tatum's perspectives on effective dialogue about race and racism especially relevant.

Tatum recently shared some thoughts with The Atlantic on why conversations about race remain vexing and what can happen when educators and parents avoid those conversations. The interview that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

Melinda D. Anderson: Has your perspective changed on anything you wrote in the original edition of your book?

Beverly Daniel Tatum: In 1997 my goal in writing my book was to help others move beyond fear, anger, and denial to a new understanding of what racism is, how it impacts all of us, and ultimately what we can do about it. ... I still have that goal, but in 1997 we were a nation at peace and the economy was expanding. Today we are a nation at war, suffering from economic anxiety and the combination of "post-racial" rhetoric, simmering racial resentments, and an increasing 140-character culture of communication that has made productive conversation more difficult to have.

That said, it is still the case that in a race-conscious society, we all have a racial identity that develops in predictable ways, shaped largely by the interactions we have with others. I still believe that an understanding of that identity-development process can help all of us begin to build bridges across lines of difference.

Anderson: In the wake of the events in Charlottesville, Virginia-where members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists marched through the city last month-many educators are grappling with how to help students understand and contextualize America's history of racism and current racial divides. What would you say to teachers and administrators struggling in this area?

Tatum: I like to begin my conversations with educators by talking about why it's so hard for people to talk about race. I often ask them to think about their own earliest race-related memories, and without exception what I find is that many people have [these] memories-and if you ask how old they were, they'll often tell you 5, 6, 7 years old. Then I usually ask what emotion is associated with that memory. And they'll mention things like embarrassment, fear, anger, sadness, shame, [and] sometimes confusion. Most often it's some uncomfortable feeling.

[Finally] I ask: When that experience happened, did you speak about it to anyone? Did you talk to a parent, or a teacher, a caring adult about this experience? And almost always, the majority of the people in the audience will say they did not. There's often just this understanding that you're not supposed to talk about it. And I start there simply to say ... now you're 35 or whatever age, and you've had a lot of lifetime experiences that have told you, don't talk about this.

You can't solve a problem without talking about it. And certainly if we think about educational environments and experiences, it is in the classroom where you can create the space for a conversation about the meaning of the Confederate flag and [discuss] those statues [and] when they were put up. There are resources that teachers can use-provided by organizations like Facing History and Ourselves-to inform themselves, and then bring that information into classrooms in an age-appropriate way. [Also,] if I were in a classroom talking about what happened [in Charlottesville] I'd want to lift up not only the horrific things that we all know about, but also the solidarity of the people who came out the next day to remember the memory of Heather Heyer [a 32-year-old woman who was killed protesting the white-supremacist rally]. I think that it's important ... in these conversations, to always leave space for hope.

Anderson: You delve deeply into the racial-identity development process for black youth-from their early years through adulthood. One anecdote brings the specific role of black teachers to the forefront. Can you tell me about the role black educators-who make up just 7 percent of the public-school teaching force-play in black children's lives?

Tatum: I often use this analogy: If you and I were in a room together with lots of other people and somebody took a photograph of us, and I handed you that photograph at the end of our time together, and you took a look at it, what would be the first thing you would do? You're going to look for yourself in the picture.

If you think about classrooms or workspaces or conferences, wherever we are, we go into these spaces and we look for ourselves. You want to see yourself represented. In that sense, when young people walk into a classroom, they want to see someone who they identify with, maybe because they're the same race. It doesn't always have to be racial identification. [A student] can identify with a teacher because she likes music [or] identify with [educators] because they are into sports. But to the extent that kids of color walk into classrooms and rarely see someone who looks like themselves in that environment, that's a missing link.

Anderson: Your writing on the development of white identity was a revelatory look into the current cultural and social dynamics in the United States. Please talk about the process of redefining whiteness from "just normal" to a more nuanced conception of what it means to be white.

Tatum: If ... you live in a neighborhood where everybody or most people are white, you grew up in a family where all the members are white, and you go to a school and most people are white, [chances are] you [see your white identity as] the norm. And you probably don't think much about it-that's not the part of your identity that you're focused on. But when you enter into a space, a classroom or a workplace, where you are now in a racially mixed environment, and there's conversation about issues of race in particular, you may start to have a greater awareness. You start to learn what whiteness means, in some ways, because you start to see what racial-group membership means for other people. Or maybe [that awareness comes through] ... reading a book, or taking a class.

However that awareness starts to happen, what I've found is that [white] people start to realize that they've had some advantages. ... They've had some benefits as a result of being white that they'd never really paid attention to, but have taken for granted, or not even noticed. And when they start to notice or when they learn the history, it's upsetting ... There are often feelings of guilt. It's usually at that point where it can be really helpful [to join] an organization like Showing Up for Racial Justice, which helps white people support each other in their growth and learning around how to become anti-racist.

[Figuring out how to turn that guilt into action] is a learning process, and it's not as linear as I'm describing. It often requires re-educating oneself or learning things that you never learned in school, simply because it wasn't [taught]. Talking to people you don't usually talk to. It's not like it happens instantly.

Anderson: Interestingly, you expand on the conversation-shifting beyond black and white-to interrupt the frequent resistance to talking about racism in non-black communities of color. What are some of the complexities surrounding identity development for students who belong to those communities?

Tatum: Well, I think the basic principle goes back to that picture analogy. If we want to affirm the identities of our students, the first thing we have to think about is: Do they see themselves represented? One of the points I talk about is that the representation of Native Americans is always in the past. There's a Native educator I quote who says Native youth, who have a very high suicide rate, need to see themselves as having a future, not just a past. It's thinking about how students will find themselves in the curriculum, not just who's teaching, but [also] how are they being talked about? If you're Native American, do you see yourself represented at all except perhaps as the mascot of the football team?

The common stereotype for Asians is that they're academically successful, particularly in science and math. But what if you are a young Asian person who is interested in journalism? Are you able to express yourself fully or are you being categorized so narrowly that your options are being foreclosed? In the case of Latinos, language is important to identity. Familism [prioritizing family relationships] is an important cultural value; you want to preserve your language so you can speak to [your] grandmother. But if you're in a school where you feel your language is perceived as a liability-not an asset-that has a direct impact on how you feel about being in school.

Regardless of your group membership, the questions of identity are at the heart of the adolescent experience. ... Each group has its own particular social context ... but at the fundamental core of each young person's [identity development] is a desire for affirmation.

Anderson: You admit that you're an optimist at heart, but for some the prevalence of racism in American society can seem all-consuming. What fuels your sense of confidence?

Tatum: Sometimes you have to work at feeling hopeful. Social progress tends to be two steps forward, one step back. I'm old enough to know that change is possible. I was born in September of 1954, several months after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. ... If you think about the sense of urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, those young people who are out in the streets are asking: Why are we still having this conversation? Why are these things still happening? It's a difficult moment, there's no question. Charlottesville and the President's response have reminded us how difficult it is. But that said, there are a lot of people who want change.

And it's only because I have seen that change is possible that I believe it is again possible. The dialogue is critical. That's why I always put the word "conversations" in my book titles, because you can't move forward without talking to people. Talk isn't something that comes easily [and] talk by itself isn't sufficient; you want to have those conversations because you want to inspire action.

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Do Conversations About Race Belong in the Classroom?

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Two decades ago, Beverly Daniel Tatum published a bestselling book on the psychology of racism. Now, with the release of the book's second edition, she reflects on its relevance to schools today.

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It is perhaps the most iconic sports photograph ever taken.

Captured at the medal ceremony for the men's 200 meters at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, U.S. sprinter Tommie Smith stands defiantly, head bowed, his black-gloved fist thrust into the thin air.

Behind him fellow American John Carlos joins with his own Black Power salute, an act of defiance aimed at highlighting the segregation and racism burning back in their homeland.

It was an act that scandalized the Olympics. Smith and Carlos were sent home in disgrace and banned from the Olympics for life. But they were treated as returning heroes by the black community for sacrificing their personal glory for the cause. History, too, has been kind to them.

Yet few know that the man standing in front of both of them, the Australian sprinter Peter Norman who shocked everyone by powering past Carlos and winning the silver medal, played his own, crucial role in sporting history.

On his left breast he wore a small badge that read: "Olympic Project for Human Rights" -- an organization set up a year previously opposed to racism in sport. But while Smith and Carlos are now feted as human rights pioneers, the badge was enough to effectively end Norman's career. He returned home to Australia a pariah, suffering unofficial sanction and ridicule as the Black Power salute's forgotten man. He never ran in the Olympics again.

"As soon as he got home he was hated," explains his nephew Matthew Norman, who has directed a new film -- "Salute!" -- about Peter's life before and after the 1968 Olympics.

"A lot of people in America didn't realize that Peter had a much bigger role to play. He was fifth (fastest) in the world, and his run is still a Commonwealth record today. And yet he didn't go to Munich (1972 Olympics) because he played up. He would have won a gold.

"He suffered to the day he died."

Peter Norman grew up in a working-class district of Melbourne. As a youngster he couldn't afford the kit to play Australian Rules Football, his favorite sport. But his father managed to borrow a secondhand pair of running spikes, and his talent for sprinting was quickly recognized. Yet Norman was still an obscure pick when the 28-year-old arrived in the high altitude of Mexico City. It was the first time he had run on an Olympic standard track, and he thrived in the thin air.

"I could feel my knees bouncing around my chin," Norman said in "Salute!"

"It lengthened my stride by about 4 inches!"

It was events off the track that had dominated the lead-up to the 1968 Olympics. In the U.S., the civil rights movement fought running battles with the police and army across America against segregation and racism. Both Martin Luther King Junior and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated and the Vietnam War was raging.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, hundreds of protesting students were massacred in the run-up to the Games. The regime covered up their deaths as the athletes arrived.

Australia too, was in the midst of racial strife. The country's "White Australia" policy had provoked protests of its own. It put heavy restrictions on non-white immigration -- and a raft of prejudicial laws against its indigenous aboriginal population, including a policy of taking Aboriginal children from their birth parents and handing them to white couples for adoption, a practice that continued until the 1970s.

Although Norman was a staunch anti-racism advocate, no one expected him to take a stand in Mexico. The Australian Olympic Committee had laid out just three rules for him to follow. The first was to repeat his qualification time before the Games.

"Rule number two: don't finish last in any round," Norman recalled.

"Third, and under no circumstances, don't get beaten by a Pom (a British runner)."

Norman had previously been ignored by the U.S. team, who had assumed they'd win a clean sweep of medals in the 200 meters, but he burst on to their radar when he broke the Olympic record in one of the early heats.

"When I first saw Peter, I said, 'Who's this little white guy?' " Carlos told CNN.

He would soon regret the oversight. When the 200 meters final arrived, all eyes were on the U.S. duo. Smith was expected to win easily ("You wouldn't be able to catch him on a motorbike," was Norman's assessment) but the speculation centered on what political gesture the American athletes might make on the podium.

The starting pistol was fired and Smith powered to gold. But out of nowhere Norman stormed down the last 50 meters, taking the line before a shocked Carlos. Norman's time of 20 seconds flat would have won gold four years later at the Munich Olympics and at the Sydney Games in 2000.

Smith and Carlos had already decided to make a statement on the podium. They were to wear black gloves. But Carlos left his at the Olympic village. It was Norman who suggested they should wear one each on alternate hands. Yet Norman had no means of making a protest of his own. So he asked a member of the U.S. rowing team for his "Olympic Project for Human Rights" badge, so that he could show solidarity.

"He came up to me and said, 'Have you got one of those buttons, mate,' " said U.S. rower Paul Hoffman. "If a white Australian is going to ask me for an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, then by God he would have one. I only had one, which was mine, so I took it off and gave it to him."

The three men walked towards their destiny. The medals were handed out before the three turned towards the flags and the start of the Star Spangled Banner.

"I couldn't see what was happening," Norman said of that moment.

"I had known they had gone through with their plans when a voice in the crowd sang the American anthem but then faded to nothing. The stadium went quiet."

The fallout was immediate for Smith and Carlos, who were sent home in disgrace. Norman was never given the chance to go a step closer. He was never picked to run in the Olympics again.

"I would have dearly loved to go to Munich (but) I'd earned the frowning eyes of the powers that be in track and field," he said in "Salute!"

"I'd qualified for the 200 meters 13 times and 100 meters five times (but) they'd rather leave me home than have me over there (in Munich)."
Shunned in his own country?
Norman retired from athletics immediately after hearing he'd been cut from the Munich team. He would never return to the track. Neither would his achievements count for much 28 years later when Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics.

"At the Sydney Olympics he wasn't invited in any capacity," says Matthew Norman.

"There was no outcry. He was the greatest Olympic sprinter in our history."

In his own country Peter Norman remained the forgotten man. As soon as the U.S. delegation discovered that Norman wasn't going to attend, the United States Olympic Committee arranged to fly him to Sydney to be part of their delegation. He was invited to the birthday party of 200 and 400-meter runner Michael Johnson, where he was to be the guest of honor. Johnson took his hand, hugged him and declared that Norman was one of his biggest heroes.

"Peter was not sanctioned ... we are not sure why he missed selection in 1972 but it had nothing to do with what happened in Mexico," the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) told CNN when asked about Norman's exclusion from the team that traveled to Munich.

"Peter was not excluded from any Sydney 2000 celebrations."

The AOC points out that Australia's greatest ever sprinter had been given several crucial roles in the festivities.

"He represented the AOC at several team selection announcements," it said, "including the announcement of the table tennis team in his home town of Melbourne prior to the Sydney Games."

When "Salute!" was released in Australia in 2008 it caused a sensation, breaking box office records. In a country known for its reverence of sporting legends, many were hearing Norman's story for the first time. But he would never see the film that would put his achievements back into the public consciousness.

Peter Norman died of a heart attack on October 9, 2006.

At the funeral both Smith and Carlos gave the eulogy, where they announced that the U.S. Track and Field association had declared the day of his death to be "Peter Norman Day" -- the first time in the organization's history that such an honor had been bestowed on a foreign athlete.

Both men helped carry his coffin before it was lowered into the ground. For them, Norman was a hero -- "A lone soldier," according to Carlos -- for his small but determined stand against racism.

"He paid the price. This was Peter Norman's stand for human rights, not Peter Norman helping Tommie Smith and John Carlos out," Smith told CNN. The three had remained friends ever since their chance meeting on that podium in Mexico City 44 years ago.

"He just happened to be a white guy, an Australian white guy, between two black guys in the victory stand believing in the same thing."

Arguably the biggest price Norman paid was the fact that his run in the 200 meters final had been obscured by the Black Power salute. It remains to this day one of the finest, and least expected, individual performances by a sprinter at the modern Olympics.

By the end of the final, Norman had shaved half a second off his best time. His full potential was never realized yet, even after the ignominy of his return, Norman bore no grudges.

"It has been said that sharing my silver medal with that incident on the victory dais detracted from my performance," Norman explains poignantly at end of "Salute!"

"On the contrary. I have to confess, I was rather proud to be part of it."

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the third man: the forgotten black power hero - cnn

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The third man: The forgotten Black Power hero

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It is perhaps the most iconic sports photograph ever taken. Captured at the medal ceremony for the men's 200 meters at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, U.S. sprinter Tommie Smith stands defiantly, head bowed, his black-gloved fist thrust into the thin air.

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Veteran/American icon Jackie Robinson concluded the preface to his autobiography this way:

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Veteran/American icon Jackie Robinson concluded the preface to his autobiography this way:

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When the medals were awarded for the men's 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Olympic Games, Life magazine photographer John Dominis was only about 20 feet away from the podium. "I didn't think it was a big news event," Dominis says. "I was expecting a normal ceremony. I hardly noticed what was happening when I was shooting."

Indeed, the ceremony that October 16 "actually passed without much general notice in the packed Olympic Stadium," New York Times correspondent Joseph M. Sheehan reported from Mexico City. But by the time Sheehan's observation appeared in print three days later, the event had become front-page news: for politicizing the Games, U.S. Olympic officials, under pressure from the International Olympic Committee, had suspended medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos and sent them packing.

Smith and Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the event, had come to the ceremony dressed to protest: wearing black socks and no shoes to symbolize African-American poverty, a black glove to express African-American strength and unity. (Smith also wore a scarf, and Carlos beads, in memory of lynching victims.) As the national anthem played and an international TV audience watched, each man bowed his head and raised a fist. After the two were banished, images of their gesture entered the iconography of athletic protest.

"It was a polarizing moment because it was seen as an example of black power radicalism," says Doug Hartmann, a University of Minnesota sociologist and the author of Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath. "Mainstream America hated what they did."

The United States was already deeply divided over the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, and the serial traumas of 1968-mounting antiwar protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the beating of protesters during the Democratic National Convention by Chicago police-put those rifts into high relief. Before the Olympics, many African-American athletes had talked of joining a boycott of the Games to protest racial inequities in the United States. But the boycott, organized by sociologist Harry Edwards, never came off.

As students at San Jose State University, where Edwards was teaching, Smith and Carlos took part in that conversation. Carlos, born and raised in Harlem, was "an extreme extrovert with a challenging personality," says Edwards, now emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Smith, the son of sharecroppers who grew up in rural Texas and California, was "a much softer, private person." When they raised their fists on the medals stand, they were acting on their own.

Among the Games athletes, opinions were divided. Australia's Peter Norman, the winner of the silver medal in the 200-meter sprint, mounted the podium wearing a badge supporting Edwards' organization. Heavyweight boxer George Foreman-who would win a gold medal and wave an American flag in the ring-dismissed the protest, saying, "That's for college kids." The four women runners on the U.S. 400-meter relay team dedicated their victory to the exiled sprinters. A representative of the USSR was quoted as saying, perhaps inevitably, "The Soviet Union never has used the Olympic Games for propaganda purposes."

Smith and Carlos returned home to a wave of opprobrium-they were "black-skinned storm troopers," in the words of Brent Musburger, who would gain fame as a TV sportscaster but was then a columnist for the Chicago American newspaper-and anonymous death threats. The pressure, Carlos says, was a factor in his then-wife's suicide in 1977. "One minute everything was sunny and happy, the next minute was chaos and crazy," he says. Smith recalls, "I had no job and no education, and I was married with a 7-month-old son."

Both men played professional football briefly. Then Carlos worked at a series of dead-end jobs before becoming a counselor at Palm Springs High School, where he has been for the past 20 years. Now 63 and remarried, he has four living children (a stepson died in 1998). Smith earned a bachelor's degree in social science from San Jose State in 1969 and a master's in sociology from the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change in Boston in 1976. After teaching and coaching at Oberlin College in Ohio, he settled in Southern California, where he taught sociology and health and coached track at Santa Monica College. Now 64 and retired, he lives with his third wife, Delois, outside Atlanta. He has nine children and stepchildren.

The two athletes share what Smith calls a "strained and strange" relationship. Carlos says he actually let Smith pass him in 1968 because "Tommie Smith would have never put his fist in the sky had I won that race." Smith, who won the race in a world-record 19.83 seconds, dismisses that claim as nonsense.

But both men insist they have no regrets about 1968. "I went up there as a dignified black man and said: 'What's going on is wrong,' " Carlos says. Their protest, Smith says, "was a cry for freedom and for human rights. We had to be seen because we couldn't be heard."

David Davis is a contributing sportswriter at Los Angeles magazine.

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When the medals were awarded for the men's 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Olympic Games, Life magazine photographer John Dominis was only about 20 feet away from the podium. "I didn't think it was a big news event," Dominis says. "I was expecting a normal ceremony.

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By: Nate Scott | August 30, 2016 9:08 am

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has come under fire this week for refusing to stand during the national anthem before preseason games, a decision he says he made because he was "not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color."

Kaepernick was widely criticized, by both other athletes and fans, for his decision. But as Twitter user @Kokujin pointed out, baseball legend Jackie Robinson made a similar statement about the national anthem in his 1972 autobiography, I Never Had It Made.

From the book:

There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey's drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

If you missed the key passage, it reads: "As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world."

This isn't to equate Kaepernick and Robinson, but rather to point out that Kaepernick is not the first to feel the way he does, nor the first to believe that this is something he should, and must, do.

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Jackie Robinson wrote in his autobiography: 'I cannot stand and sing the anthem'

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By: Nate Scott | August 30, 2016 9:08 am San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has come under fire this week for refusing to stand during the national anthem before preseason games, a decision he says he made because he was "not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color."

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Who's ready for a fun fact?

A lot has been made of Colin Kaepernick and many other NFL players' decision to protest the National Anthem prior to games, many people have called for fines, suspensions and even releases of the players.

But did you know that until 2009, no NFL player stood for the national anthem?

Hat tip to Slate.com's Josh Levin for picking this one up:

No NFL player stood for the national anthem until 2009-before then, the players stayed in the locker room as the anthem played. NFL teams got patriotic in recent years because it was good for business. A 2015 congressional report revealed that the Department of Defense had paid $5.4 million to NFL teams between 2011 and 2014 to stage on-field patriotic ceremonies; the National Guard shelled out $6.7 million for similar displays between 2013 and 2015.

"Paid patriotism" is what this is being called.

Last May, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell returned more than $700,000 of taxpayer's money that was to teams for "sponsored military tributes" according to Darren Rovell of ESPN.com

Roger Goodell wrote a letter Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain, which was disclosed to the public last May, Goodell said that following an audited review of 100 marketing agreements from 2012 to 2015, all 32 NFL teams were received $723,734 for "acts of sponsored patriotism"

The NFL was brought under heavy scrutiny after it was discovered that money was being given to the NFL for "various measures of public recognition" during games, including having players stand for the National Anthem and honoring the military with on-field apparel.

While many NFL players continue to sit during the National Anthem and people of a certain belief continue to 'bash' and ridicule them, it's important to know that at the end of the day, ever since 2009 and millions of dollars, NFL players didn't stand for the National Anthem on a regular basis.

On ESPN's First Take, this was brought up by co-host Stephen A Smith:

Paid patriotism. @stephenasmith drops facts about shady ass @NFL & nat'l anthem. Kaep haters will say it's photoshop pic.twitter.com/M8eGGxmMSN

- Bossip (@Bossip) September 14, 2016

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NFL Teams Didn't Stand For The National Anthem Until 2009 - Daily Snark

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Who's ready for a fun fact? A lot has been made of Colin Kaepernick and many other NFL players' decision to protest the National Anthem prior to games, many people have called for fines, suspensions and even releases of the players. But did you know that until 2009, no NFL player stood for the national ...

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Listenwise: Debate: Should a Social Protest Affect Football?

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For five hours on August 8, 1944, the young second lieutenant stood nervously before an all-white nine judge military jury panel at Camp (now Fort) Hood, Texas. He faced multiple charges in his court martial proceedings. His only real offense was that he had defied a segregation mandate. While he rode on a bus back to his base camp, he refused to move to the back of the bus as all blacks were then required to do. Though the army had reduced the charges against him to two counts including insubordination, a conviction would have meant his bounce from the military and possible imprisonment. Fate, and his fame as a star athlete and vigorous protest from the black press and the NAACP, was with him. After lengthy testimony, the second lieutenant was acquitted. But he was not completely out of the legal woods, because of his court martial he was barred from seeing action with his tank unit overseas.

Jackie Robinson never forgot that bitter experience. He talked often about it in years to come. He took special pride in taking a stand against injustice even though it could have cost him his freedom.

This is the Robinson that is seldom mentioned in the countless tributes, testimonials, and celebrations of his smashing baseball's color barrier. The Warner Bros biopic 42 on Robinson celebrates that towering achievement.

But 66 years ago, on April 15, 1947, when Robinson nervously stood at second base in his first game in the majors he described his feelings as "uneasy" and far less hopeful that his feat would change American attitudes toward blacks. Twenty-five years after that historic day in 1947 Robinson's unease became bitter doubt. In his immortal and provocative autobiography, I Never Had It Made, he pulled no punches in saying so: "I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. I never had it made." This is the other story Robinson told in his autobiography, and letters and columns in the New York Post and the Amsterdam News, and most importantly his tireless civil rights activism.

This started two years after he broke the color barrier. In 1949 black singer/activist Paul Robeson made an ill-timed and much distorted statement that blacks were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Robinson was pressured to testify before the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee to refute Robeson. Robinson did not want to be used as a black pawn to attack Robeson.

In his testimony he opposed communism, criticized the committee for its "partisan politics" and fiercely attacked racial discrimination: "We're not going to stop fighting race discrimination in this country until we've got it licked." Years later he did not regret his testimony but he told why he "would reject such an invitation" if it had been offered at a later date: "In those days I had much more faith in the ultimate justice of the American white man than I have today."

Many blacks blasted Robinson as an "Uncle Tom" and "sellout" for supporting the Republican presidential bid of Richard Nixon over Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960. But the Nixon of 1960 wasn't the Nixon of 1968 who inflamed law-and order sentiment, and pandered to racist, white Southerners. As Dwight Eisenhower's vice president, Nixon vigorously fought for the civil rights bills of 1957 and 1960 and for stronger action against racially motivated violence. The Kennedy of 1960 wasn't the Kennedy of 1963 who took forceful civil rights action. As a senator, he voted to water down a section of the civil rights bill of 1957 and actively courted racist southern Democrats. Robinson promised that if his candidate betrayed him on civil rights "I'll be right back to give him hell." He did. He denounced the political mean-spiritedness of Nixon. "Every chance I got I said plainly what I thought of the right-wing Republicans and the harm they were doing."

During the next decade, Robinson gave speeches, helped raise funds, and made generous contributions to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But in 1967, he resigned from the NAACP's board of directors accusing it of being "insensitive to the trends of our times, unresponsive to the needs and aims of the black masses -- especially the young -- and more and more they seem to reflect a refined, sophisticated, "Yassuh, Mr. Charlie, point of view." His criticism foreshadowed the identical charges made by dissidents that would nearly wreck the NAACP almost two decades later.

Like many then, Robinson at first regarded Malcolm X as an anti-Semitic, race-baiting demagogue and criticized his approach to racial problems. But in time he came to respect and admire Malcolm X: "Many of the statements he made about the problems faced by our people and the immorality of the white power structure were the naked truth."

He staked his career and reputation on making black economic empowerment a reality. He believed, "There were two keys to the advancement of blacks in America -- the ballot and the buck. If we organized our political and economic strength, we would have a much easier fight on our hands."

In 1972, Robinson refused to attend an old-timers game and accused baseball owners of running "a big selfish business" for refusing to hire blacks as managers, coaches and front-office executives. More blacks are top coaches and hold front office position in MLB today, but Robinson still might not be satisfied with that, and demand even more be done to attain full equity in the sport.

Robinson got the break of the century when he was chosen to smash the color barrier. He was courted by politicians, showered with personal honors and attained a measure of financial success.

But at the end of his life he realized that many blacks had continued to lose ground: "I can't believe that I have it made while so many of my black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity, live in slums or barely exist on welfare."

To the end of his life, Robinson insisted that he never had it made. He'd likely say the same today. That's the Robinson that baseball, and much of America, has forgotten. 42 tells only part of his story.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.

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For five hours on August 8, 1944, the young second lieutenant stood nervously before an all-white nine judge military jury panel at Camp (now Fort) Hood, Texas. He faced multiple charges in his court martial proceedings. His only real offense was that he had defied a segregation mandate.

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"... I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world." - Jackie Robinson, 1972

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Martin Luther King Jr. Praying with Group

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Martin Luther King Jr. Praying with Group

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Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy (center, back) kneel with a group in prayer prior to going to jail in Selma, Alabama. The group was arrested on February 1st after attempting to gain the right to vote. Following the prayer, the group peacefully marched to jail.

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A large crowd kneels in prayer on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee on the first anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., May 5, 1969.

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A large crowd kneels in prayer on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee on the first anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., May 5, 1969.

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It was Feb. 1, 1960, when four black students sat down at Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and ordered coffee. As TIME reported, "the white patrons eyed them warily, and the white waitresses ignored their studiously polite requests for service."

Six years had passed since the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional - separate facilities were inherently unequal, argued Chief Justice Earl Warren - but Southern states (and even some cities in the North) clung desperately to their traditions of racial exclusion. Challenging Jim Crow through the legal system was a gradual, piecemeal process, and large numbers of Americans were growing impatient.

The four young men, freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, remained seated until closing time, and returned with 300 more students a few days later, determined to integrate the whites-only five-and-dime.

This form of grassroots activism, known as a "sit-in," spread to cities in nearly every Southern state over the next several weeks. TIME credited the "unique protest against Jim Crow" with initiating a wave of demonstrations that "raced from North Carolina to South Carolina to Virginia to Florida to Tennessee and into Deep South Alabama." Although the sit-ins "washed up some familiar flotsam: the duck-tailed swaggerers, rednecked hatemongers, [and] the Ku Klux Klan," they also attracted sympathy from white college students, as well as those in Northern cities; picketers marched outside of Woolworth's and similar variety stores in New York, Madison, and Boston.

Woolworth's desegregated in July of 1960, with other stores and restaurants following suit.

The lunch-counter sit-ins spawned wade-ins at pools and beaches, kneel-ins at churches, read-ins at libraries, and walk-ins at theaters and amusement parks. Those who participated in these direct actions had to maintain stoic composure in the midst of white harassment, both verbal and physical. Many were careful to adhere to white standards of "respectable" grooming, dress, and manners, even as they disrupted deep-rooted racial etiquette. In some cities, stubborn officials simply shut down public parks and pools rather than integrating them, but the strategy worked in many others.

Sit-ins were not new - the NAACP as well as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized them in both the North and the South following World War II - but in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a national movement emerged. The sit-ins mattered not only because they worked, but also because they mobilized tens of thousands of people to participate in an assortment of confrontational acts that made up the civil rights movement.

The same went for boycotts, which had been used as a strategy for addressing racial inequality since the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" actions of the Depression-Era North, in which blacks refused to shop at stores that would not hire them as employees. Their efforts were often stymied by court injunctions against picket lines, and their success was heavily dependent on local press coverage, but the boycotts ultimately yielded hundreds of jobs for blacks in cities like Chicago and Cleveland. Activists revived this strategy during 1950s and 1960s, stressing the importance of economic opportunities in black communities. The most well-known boycott in American history took place in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. After several black women, including Rosa Parks, were arrested for refusing to give up their bus seats to white passengers, African Americans organized a boycott of the city's bus system. It lasted 381 days, with an estimated 40,000 participants. TIME described the boycott as a "powerful economic weapon," and indeed, African Americans accounted for 75% of Montgomery's bus ridership. In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating on public transit violated the 14th Amendment.

Likewise, the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, had roots in 1940s civil rights activism. In 1941, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin mobilized 100,000 people to march on the nation's capital in order to protest racial discrimination in the U.S. military. No march actually took place that year; the planning alone effectively pressured President Roosevelt to issue an executive order desegregating the war industries. But the idea for a Washington march never fully disappeared, and the climate of protest in the 1960s gave it new life. In 1963, Randolph and Rustin, with help from an assortment of civil rights leaders and groups, organized what was then the largest political rally in American history.

What all of these social-movement strategies had in common was that they disrupted business-as-usual and used public space to make a spectacle that commanded attention. Even when they failed to provoke the type of literal confrontation that occurred in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they had symbolic power. Although the news coverage that these events received was not universally supportive, an enormous amount of media focus both on television and in the papers ultimately bolstered the cause of civil rights. By 1960, almost every American had a television set, and could watch the movement unfold on the evening news. Images of nonviolent protesters enduring brutal beatings swayed public opinion in favor of the movement.

Subsequent American social movements recognized the power of the sit-in, and modified it to address their own struggles. In the 1970s, for instance, gay liberation activists organized "kiss-ins" at anti-gay businesses as a way of promoting visibility and awareness, and during the 1980s, AIDS advocacy group ACT-UP staged "die-ins" in Manhattan, to represent the magnitude of a health crisis that had been neglected by the government. Recently, die-ins have been used to protest police brutality.

The protest tactics of the civil rights movement, from the Woolworth's sit-ins to the Selma marches, demonstrate the power of ordinary people taking collective action. These strategies ultimately paved the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Just as importantly, they allowed black Americans to express a sense of dignity and self-worth that had been consistently, violently denied to them. In this way, they were precursors to today's social justice activism, particularly the #blacklivesmatter call to action against police brutality. We can see such current protests as the continuation of a long and unfinished grassroots movement. Now as in the 1960s, victories depend on strength in numbers as well as the instrumental role of the media in shaping a narrative of the struggle.

Sascha Cohen is a PhD candidate in the history department at Brandeis University. Her dissertation explores American humor in the 1970s and 1980s. Her own satirical writing can be found in McSweeneys.

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It was Feb. 1, 1960, when four black students sat down at Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and ordered coffee. As TIME reported, "the white patrons eyed them warily, and the white waitresses ignored their studiously polite requests for service." Six years had passed since the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs.

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While hundred of comments from politicians and public figures over the past couple of years have ignited the vein in my forehead and taken me to full underbite-y, I have done my best to remain fairly apolitical on my Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/wickeddecent.

Today's story of President Trump's rally in Alabama broke me - and I'm not entirely sure why this is the one that finally did it.

Over on Facebook, I am quite outspoken about my politics. For the record, I consider myself a fiscal moderate, a social progressive and a comic book nerd. I vote my conscience rather than my party line, I call my representatives and my senators, I speak up at school board and town meetings, and I stand with quiet respect during anthems - national or otherwise - and other moments of public solemnity. I'm the grandson of veterans of foreign wars, the son of a retail store manager turned small business owner and a legal secretary turned school district administrative assistant, as well as the husband of a school librarian. I'm an Eagle Scout who has been inactive in the organization since they made public their intolerance for the LGBTQ community and who remains unconvinced that the organization has truly changed despite its press releases.

And I like good humans. A lot.

Good humans are kind.

Good humans help.

Good humans tend to balance confidence with humility.

Good humans tend to look for the best in others while making mental notes of room for improvement.

Good humans open doors, even if they might lower their eyes because they are shy or not say much because they prefer to keep quiet counsel.

Good humans donate what time and energy they can afford to making the world a better place for other good humans and those trying to become better humans.

Good humans can disagree on politics and economics, religious and social beliefs, because good humans find pathways to co-exist.

Good humans practice empathy.

Good humans maintain growth mindsets with regards to their values and principles.

While it's difficult in 2017 to remain apolitical on Twitter, I have generally done so by focusing my energy on promoting good human-ing.

Equity, tolerance, diversity, empathy, understanding. I tend to like and retweet, even evangelize for pedagogies and practices that grow these capacities in education, innovation, and technology.

Though when I read a tweet primarily aimed at a direct criticism of a political figure or ideology, I rarely retweet or add my own commentary. I click that heart in solidarity. To let that voice know there's another out there who agrees. And to also keep myself . . . safe.

And I don't mean personal security safe - I am fortunate and enjoy privilege far too many do not. I mean professional safety - avoiding the conversations about conflicts of interest, about education versus indoctrination, about teaching versus preaching, and generally threatening the time I could be using in the service of helping students become more critical thinkers, persistent problem solvers and conscious consumers.

And today I broke. Calling football players who do not rise for the national anthem "sons of bitches" is something I expect to hear in line at a store or from a nearby stool at a bar. It's something I expect to hear in the parking lot during an evening of Friday night lights or while I pump gas into my truck.

It's not something I expect to hear from the President of the United States. And today I heard just that. (I have also heard President Trump traffic in false equivalencies about civil rights activism and white supremacy activism, make outlandish accusations directed at world leaders and private citizens alike, and wheel and deal with the safety and security of most everyone living in the United States who is not white, Christian and/or wealthy - most everything else said that frustrated, disgusted or underbitey-ed me was said during the campaign stump. Or before.)

Though I have found my mindset around improvisation - dealing with whatever is coming your way and transforming it into something meaningful - has made it possible to practice professional preservation and political fidelity.

I posted a couple of quick tweets about the Alabama campaign rally for the 2020 election. I retweeted a couple of pithy commentaries. I received some likes. Some retweets. And I received a response suggesting I write this short piece about my perspective on how to navigate these waters as a professional educator.

It's hard. It can be very, very hard. Though I have found my mindset around improvisation - dealing with whatever is coming your way and transforming it into something meaningful - has made it possible to practice professional preservation and political fidelity.

A cceptance. Accept that others in the building, especially in your classroom may have different ideas and opinions. And that is okay. They can still be good humans even if they believe in different paths toward a greater good. (And it is okay to work alongside bad humans sometimes. With time, they may become good humans. See the next item.)

C ommunicate. Communicate your truth rather than preach your truth. I use the phrases, "In my experience . . . " and the disclaimer "Folks, this is my opinion - this is not a fact." Most importantly, I have tried in the middle stage of my career to listen more, speak less. Communication is 90% listening, 10% expressing. Provide students opportunities to express their viewpoints and the context for them. And honor the risks they are taking by expressing an understanding of where they may be coming from so they know they are heard. Diffuse the tension and the potential for conflict by understanding, not endorsing. Following that with, "In my experience, that has not been the case," has led to great conversations and eye openings on both sides.

T rust. Build a culture of trust in the room. Where ideas can be shared that may be unpopular, that may be half formed, that are open to question. Some of my favorite students are those that have called me on my positions and challenged them - not through yelling or outrage or threatening to call their parents but rather by asking thoughtful, tough questions and making astute observations of my patterns.

One of my favorite moments: several students expressed their appreciation that my room was a place where thinking differently was encouraged, all points of view were okay, and one of student pushed back. "I disagree. I love this class too and I think Mr. Ryder wants us to be kind and empathetic and tolerant and everything. And if we are going to express ideas that are hateful and racist, he's probably not going to let those be here. He's pretty clear that he has particular point of view. He wants people to feel safe and he wants us to think about what that means." Note: the quotation marks here indicate a student's voice through the filter of my memory - not necessarily a direct quote. My students tend to be less verbose than I tend to recall.

I often get asked, "What do you think about xyz issue?" or "Well, how would you vote?"

I never tell students how I voted or how I will vote. I rarely tell students with my own words what I believe or what I think about a particular issue. Instead I say, "Think about the skill sets we develop in here. Think about the issues we explore and the readings. Think about our work with empathy and with designing for others. Think about what we've uncovered about the history of race and economics and gender and identity and the big questions people have asked and the topics you've chosen to investigate. Think about how I treat people in this room and how I like to be treated by others here and in this school. Think about the questions I ask. Now, how do you think I'd vote on this? How do you think I feel about it? If that answer will be surprising? I'll let you know."

There wasn't any nuance, there wasn't any, "on both sides," there wasn't any hedging.

And perhaps today's why I felt the need to express myself. Something about a president calling for the firing of a professional athlete who expresses a social and political position through a simple, quiet, non-violent act, as well as calling that athlete a "son of a bitch" . . . that makes the world in which we live less safe. There wasn't any nuance, there wasn't any, "on both sides," there wasn't any hedging. This was, "The President of the United States says fire people who share different political beliefs from you AND call them names you cannot use in school while doing so."

That's not being a good human.

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How Might We Be Our Best Educator Selves Despite the Politics of Now?

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While hundred of comments from politicians and public figures over the past couple of years have ignited the vein in my forehead and taken me to full underbite-y, I have done my best to remain fairly apolitical on my Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/wickeddecent.