Most people probably believe that Colin Kaepernick started kneeling out of nowhere and it was a last ditch effort to bring attention to himself and where he was at his career at the time. It was so much deeper than that as he recently revealed with Paper on Tuesday.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback explained to Miabelle Bocicault, Dr. Ameer Hasan Loggins and Dr. Christopher Petrella that the 2015 shooting death of Mario Woods was that moment he decided he would become an activist.
At age 26, Woods was shot 21 times, 6 in his back, by 5 San Francisco PD officers during a Dec. 2, 2015 incident where he allegedly refused to drop a knife he reportedly used to stab a man. Investigators later determined 26 shots were fired by five different officers.
Those officers were not charged in the shooting death of Woods, with an internal affairs stating they “acted within policy.” The city would end up paying the family of Woods $400K after they filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
Kaepernick referred to Woods’ death as an “execution,” which led him to picking up and reading several books about activists like Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton.
“If Colin wasn’t reviewing a playbook, he was reading a history book,” Nessa told Paper.
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Kaepernick would go on to start taking a knee in August 2016, some eight months after Woods was killed and the rest is history.
