Protesting on Bended Knee: Race, Dissent and Patriotism in 21st Century America

Protesting on Bended Knee eyes the modern crusade for racial equality through the prism of the demonstrations associated with Colin Kaepernick, a professional football player who in 2016 began kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to discrimination and injustice. A diverse array of thirty-one authors explain in brief essays what they see in the protests; collectively, they describe where the demonstrations fit within Americans’ quest to form “a more perfect union”; the legal landscape of dissent; the revival of athlete-activists; the tactics of protesters and counter-tactics of their opponents; and the perspective of others—reporters, coaches, players, and fans—“in the arena.” Their observations, along with an extensive Introduction by historian Eric Burin, provide a nearly contemporaneous account of the latest chapter in a freedom struggle as old as America itself. Eric Burin is Professor of History at the University of North Dakota, and author of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (2005) and editor of Picking the President: Understanding the Electoral College (2016).