BSO: Shifting to the present, Colin Kaepernick has become the face of modern protest in football. When you and your teammates wanted to wear armbands to draw attention to treatment you were personally subjected to, you were kicked off the team. Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee to draw attention to the way African-American’s are being treated in this country by law enforcement has been met with death threats and other disgusting treatment BUT, he hasn’t really suffered punitively like you all did. Do you think it’s “easier,” for lack of a better term, for him?
TM: Well I have a 2 part answer to that question. I believe he did not receive that punishment because of what happened to us 48 years ago. People have changed how they view protests so you don’t get as much punishment.
The second part in our case was the media, the school and the government in Wyoming villainized us by saying we were protesting against a church so they could put us in the wrong. Lloyd Eaton had a rule that players couldn’t be involved in protests against religion. Had we known they were framing it that way we would have fought harder to get OUR message out.
We wanted to wear those arm bands and our coach went to the left and told us to go get on “colored relief” and to go to the black colleges of the world. For the young people who don’t know what that is, that’s like food stamps. How racist is that? Like African Americans are the only ones receiving relief.
Now, with Kaepernick, before he made his first stance and took his first knee he should have made sure the media knew that he wasn’t protesting the government, the flag or the military. He was protesting the deaths of African Americans in the streets. Other than that he made no mistakes, other than what we did we made no mistakes. I think what Kaepernick is doing is good. We need more of that.
BSO: A lot of people feel that athletes shouldn’t use their platform to address political and social issues saying “that’s not the right way to protest.” What do you think they mean when they say that?
TM: Well, I’ll digress and say, “Was there a right way to be a slave?” “Was there a right way to be taken out of Africa?” “Was there a right way to be taken from your family or have your name taken away?” In other words, if you protest you’re a runaway slave. You weren’t an individual stolen from your country.
When they say that to athletes they are saying ‘you should be happy to be in the position you’re in.’ But athletes need to use that as a platform just like Lebron James wouldn’t go to the Trump Hotel. Why shouldn’t we exercise our rights to protest just because we play football? People don’t realize when we speak up, we are putting a lot at risk. All 14 of us put at risk scholarships when we needed them, support we needed it, and our athletic careers where we had it at that time.
People say we shouldn’t speak on social and political issues and we should just be happy that we got the opportunity like we shouldn’t care about the wrong things being done and others. We still have family and friends that are affected.
Flip the page read Tony McGee’s thoughts on the Patriots and finding vindication 40 plus years later