On a Friday evening in early September, Rodney Axson Jr. went out to the field with the rest of the Brunswick High School varsity football team. The Blue Devils were a little over an hour away from their campus in Brunswick, Ohio, and about to play a game against Austintown-Fitch, a high school in Youngstown. It was only their second game of the season.
As the pre-game national anthem began, Axson, a senior backup quarterback, and two of his teammates knelt in protest. All three are African-American, and their decision to make a public statement in the manner of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick came after a few of their white teammates said, in reference to an Austintown Fitch squad that is largely made up of black players, "We have to get those niggers."
In the immediate moment, few seemed to notice. Most students and parents in the stands didn't realize what Axson and his teammates had done. Brunswick head coach Luke Beal found out when an assistant coach texted him after the game. Axson's parents, Rodney Sr. and Danielle, weren't at the game and didn't know anything until later on that night, when their son sent them screenshots of people calling him and his teammates things like "worthless niggers" on social media.
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