The year 2016 isn't quite 1972, but history has repeated itself.
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As pointed out by Twitter user @Kaibutsu (via NBC sports), San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is far from the first athlete to take a stand against the national anthem and the American flag.
Baseball great Jackie Robinson also took a stand in his 1972 autobiography, I Never Had it Made, describing his first World Series appearance and then-Dodgers president and general manager Branch Rickey:
"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."
Although years apart, Kaepernick's sentiment sounds similar to the man who broke baseball's color barrier.
When asked why Kaepernick sat through the national anthem, this was his response:
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," he said. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
Players such as Victor Cruz and Alex Boone have both spoken out against Kaepernick's decision. Michael Bennett of the Seattle Seahawks has also spoken out as a supporter of Kaepernick in the sense that his speaking out is, "what makes America great."
It doesn't sound like Kaepernick plans to change his stance anytime soon. Although the distraction he's caused could eventually push him out of the NFL.
