Brown Bag Lecture: Charles Ross, “Protests in Pro Football: The 1965 AFL All-Star Game and Colin Kaepernick”

DUE TO CONSTRUCTION IN BARNARD, TODAY’S EVENT IS MOVED TO OVERBY CONFERENCE ROOM 249

In his lecture, “Protests in Pro Football: The 1965 AFL All-Star Game and Colin Kaepernick,” Charles Ross will discuss how African American players forced the 1965 AFL All-Star Game to be moved from New Orleans to Houston after experiencing discrimination in the segregated southern city. Fifty years later, Colin Kaepernick began a protest against police brutality and discrimination in America by refusing to stand for the National Anthem. Both events clearly illustrate that African American players in pro football, then and now, were willing to take action to address inequalities in America. Ross is a native of Columbus, Ohio, and is currently chair of the African American studies program and associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Outside the Lines: African Americans and the Integration of the National Football League and editor of Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality On and Off the Field.