President Trump has called NFL players who kneel during the national anthem, SOBs.

I have never played sports.  A black man, I did grow up in the deep-South, in the time of Jim-Crow legal racial segregation. I did grow up in an activist household.  I did do voter registration of black people in 1968. I did march and protest, including sitting during the national anthem. I did, later, serve my country in the U. S. Navy during a time of racial turmoil and change in that branch of the military. And even while I served, I engaged in peaceful protest of ongoing racial inequities in the Navy.

Here’s my full essay, published in the News & Observer (September 26, 2017):

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article175350526.html

President Trump did not serve. I served @Navy and am proud of Americans who kneel in protest of injustice/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-revolution/201609/colin-kaepernick-s-protest-is-patriotic-apple-pie

Listen up, young people. I am flabbergasted to read that any of you “…are tired” to have to still fight racism, heterosexism, and intergroup bigotry of all types.

I am a 65 year old, dark-skinned black man. I have lived through the horrific time of legal-racial segregation, riots and assassinations. I have fought many fights for equality and justice for our humanity…

I am not yet tired because I cannot afford to be.

I can still hear the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s words: “At a certain point in every struggle of great importance, a moment of doubt or hesitation develops. Some voices declare, “Let us stop here, we have gone far enough… [But]… Let nobody stop you; you are doing something that will ultimately save the soul of America. If you continue to struggle, there will be a new day in America.”

We are, we have always been, in a struggle for the soul of America.

No one ever told me that the struggle for a true America would be easy or short.

No one should have ever told you, no one should have ever implied that the struggle for a true America had an endpoint.

Tired, you say. I cannot afford for you to be tired. I need you to be motivated to work.

America cannot afford for you to be tired.

Morris Deeds (80 years old) who founded the Southern Poverty Law Center cannot afford for you to be tired.

Reverend William Barber (53 years old) founder and leader of the new “Moral Monday” movement cannot afford for you to be tired.

In 1968, with some of his last public words, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead.”  And now in 2017 we see his prophecy come to dramatic life in Charlottesville, Va.

That is a call to gear up.

Tired? We need you to be disgusted and outraged about the bold display of white supremacists in Charlottesville. We must then turn that disgust and outrage into positive energy and motivation to get to work.

We still have some difficult days ahead. Sixty-five years old, but I am still not yet tired.

What are you prepared to do?