In 2017, the NFL effectively ended Colin Kaepernick’s career; no team signed him, or called.
The most visible act of Black protest in professional sports since Muhammad Ali was met with the response the system has so often reserved for Black people who refuse to make power comfortable, removal. Kaepernick did not disappear, he built.
In 2018, he founded Know Your Rights Camp, a nonprofit providing free education, legal resources, and direct support to Black and Brown communities. The organization teaches young people their constitutional rights, knowledge the system has never been incentivized to provide.
But some of its most important work happens far from the cameras. When Black families receive death rulings that don’t add up, when investigations close before questions are answered, Know Your Rights Camp helps fund independent autopsies.
When Demartravion Reed was found hanging from a tree on the campus of Delta State University in 2025, the organization funded an independent autopsy. When Nolan Wells was found dead on Horn Island, Know Your Rights Camp did the same. This is the infrastructure IMPACT examined when we published “The Only Black Person There.”
The system reaches a conclusion, families are left with questions, Know Your Rights Camp builds the counter-structure; independent investigations, legal support, documentation, and resources that make it harder for unanswered questions to disappear.
The NFL argued Kaepernick’s protest was the wrong kind of activism; too visible, uncomfortable, and disruptive. He responded by building something even more powerful than a protest, infrastructure. Not a moment; a sustained organization that gives Black families tools to pursue answers when institutions refuse.
The NFL took his career. He used what remained to build something the NFL could never take away. This is what Unmuted Leadership looks like. Not waiting for justice; building the infrastructure that makes justice harder to deny.
This is part of our Unmuted Leadership series, profiling the builders shaping Black leadership, power, and legacy.
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