Reports said Thursday that the NFL is planning to play “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” dubbed the “Black national anthem,” before all Week 1 games.
The song “is expected to be performed live or played before every Week 1 NFL game, and the league is considering a variety of other measures during the upcoming season to recognize victims of police brutality, a source familiar with the league’s discussions told The Undefeated on Thursday,” an ESPN report outlined.
“Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing” would potentially be played before the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
According to ESPN, the league is also considering “listing the names of victims on uniforms through decals on helmets or patches on jerseys” and will likely “produce educational programs about victims.”
The measures were reportedly created in collaboration with the NFL Players Association.
Moreover, earlier this month, the NFL pledged $250 million toward “social justice” causes over the next ten years.
The recent moves by the league come after the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in late-May after an arrest captured on viral video showed an officer, who has since been charged with second-degree murder, holding his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes.
Far-left Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests over the death quickly morphed into rioting, looting, and the destruction of statues of historical figures across the nation.
In recent years, the national anthem has become a partisan issue. In 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the song before games, claiming law enforcement and America more broadly was plagued by racism.
Kaepernick, who began the anthem protest when he started to see little field time, claimed America was “oppressing” minorities and allowing cops to “murder” innocent people of color.
“People of color have been targeted by police,” the now-Nike sponsored athlete said at the start of the controversial protest. “So that’s a large part of it, and they’re government officials. They are put in place by the government. So that’s something that this country has to change. There’s things we can do to hold them more accountable. Make those standards higher. You have people that practice law and are lawyers and go to school for eight years, but you can become a cop in six months and don’t have to have the same amount of training as a cosmetologist.”
The anthem protest has reached outside of football, too. As noted by The Daily Wire last week, two professional women’s soccer teams recently knelt during the anthem.
“On Saturday, as the National Women’s Soccer League commenced the Challenge Cup tournament in Utah, all 22 players plus the reserves for the Portland Thorns and the North Carolina Courage knelt during the national anthem in a game televised by CBS. They also knelt just before kickoff, ESPN reported,” The Daily Wire noted. “Prior to the game the players and their coaches donned Black Lives Matter T-shirts for warmups.”
Related: Lone Women’s Soccer Player Who Refused To Kneel For Anthem Releases Statement On Why She Stood
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