Jimmy McMillian Takes a Knee for Second Season

Colin Kaepernick first began sitting during the national anthem at the start of NFL preseason in August 2016. It was a silent stance to show his support for the oppressed people of color in America and to take a stand against police brutality. To Kaepernick, this was “bigger than football,” he told NFL.com.

The first time Jimmy McMillian knelt for the national anthem was Saturday, Sept. 24^th 2016 at the Amherst College men’s soccer team’s home opener against rival Williams College.

Suited up in their white home uniforms, each Amherst College player looked toward the waving flag at the left side of the field. The stands’ attention was drawn to a first year’s face, leveled closer to the ground than everyone else.

As the national anthem projected through the speakers, McMillian held his stance.

“It’s something bigger than soccer,” McMillian said. “I take my knee as a protest and demonstration of how I personally feel in this country.”

Kneeling and other forms of protests by athletes have swept the country in the past year, popping up in not only the professional sports leagues but trickling down into the collegiate and high school levels as well.

McMillian has knelt for the national anthem at every game he’s participated in since that home opener in his freshman season with the Mammoths. It was Kaepernick who sparked the inspiration in the Washington D.C native who then turned to other black athletes attending Amherst to take the stand with him.

“We came together at different times and in different groups to talk about what we could do ourselves,” McMillian said. “A number of us decided to take our own spins on it and do it our own ways.”

The Williams home opener happened to be an alumni event for previous players on the Amherst soccer team. McMillian believed it was an even larger statement, given the audience, which he recalled consisted of vast amounts of alumni.

“I wasn’t sure how it was going to go because of course different ages, different time periods of Amherst alums,” McMillian said. “But I knew I had our team’s support.”

Growing up in a primarily black neighborhood in D.C., McMillian faced instances of institutional racism, most notably the overall mediocre state of the D.C public schools.

In search of better school systems, the McMillian family headed to Montgomery County, Maryland in 2011.

McMillian was just 10 years old when his family moved to a predominately white neighborhood in the D.C. suburbs.

“We were one of two black families there when we moved,” McMillian said. “My school was really the same way, mostly white kids and I was one of the few black students in the class.”

His experience within the two communities gave him the opportunity to come in contact with all different types of people and see how they’ve carried themselves through life regardless of their skin color.

“I saw examples of people that looked like me doing good things and people who looked like me doing bad things as well,” McMillian said. “I never really thought about my potential being constrained by my skin color.”

He’s is kneeling in hopes to communicate his personal feeling as an African American man in the United States, believing that as an athlete he has a unique opportunity to influence those around him.

“It’s a way to spark conversation and it’s a way to allow people to compare and contrast ideas about an important topic.”

Race and being an African American in America is a frequently discussed topic in the McMillian household.

“We always had conversations about race about how I was going to be perceived whether I liked it or not,” McMillian said. “Really for survival, I learned to conduct myself and respond to certain situations.”

McMillian acknowledged his tremendous growth as a person from his freshman year at Amherst with the soccer program to where he is now. A growth that has not only been noticed by himself but by his - Justin Serpone - as well.

McMillian recalled the first time Serpone noticed his kneeling, asking if there was anything that he could do to help.

Serpone even suggested opening it up for discussion with the entire team so that those who had something to say could speak and those who needed to learn had the opportunity to do so.

Serpone, now in his 11^th season with Amherst, believes that sports teams have an opportunity to “think critically about things.” He likes the fact that people aren’t just accepting the country’s current situation as it is and are taking the necessary steps to make a difference.

“I think that there’s an old saying ‘may you live in interesting times’ and we most certainly do,” Serpone said. “We are certainly as connected as a team as it is, but we’ve got a lot of individuals and there’s a lot of individual perspectives on things.”

It’s no secret that Kaepernick started something big. For the longest time, people have struggled to figure out how they can express their disapproval with the direction this country is headed in.

Kaepernick and McMillian are just two of the athletes that have used their platform to speak for those who don’t have voices, giving people something to rally behind.

“The fact that it doesn’t have to be me sparking these conversations but it can be all people around me, that’s really reassuring,” McMillian said.