The University of Mississippi’s athletics director and basketball coach are supporting a decision some players on the team made to take a knee before a game on Saturday.
“They see what’s happening on our campus and these people that come here and spill hate and bigotry and racism. We don’t want them on our campus,” university athletics director Ross Bjork told The Daily Mississippian.
The players said the demonstration was in response to a pair of pro-confederacy rallies being held on the school’s campus at the same time as the game was being played that afternoon.
After the game, the team’s first-year head coach said he was unaware the players planned to demonstrate during the anthem, but he said he supported the move.
“This was all about the hate groups that came to our community to try to spread racism and bigotry,” Davis said. “It’s created a lot of tension for our campus. Our players made an emotional decision to show these people they’re not welcome on our campus, and we respect our players’ freedom and ability to choose that.”
The players who knelt during the anthem were KJ Buffen, D.C. Davis, Brian Halums, Luis Rodriguez, Devontae Shuler, Bruce Stevens, Franco Miller Jr., and Breein Tyree.
To the people that fight for this country, my teammates and I meant no disrespect to everything that you do for us, but we had to take a stand to the negative things that went on today on our campus. #WeNeedChange
— Breein Tyree (@Breety5) February 23, 2019
“The majority of it was we saw one of our teammates doing it and we just didn’t want him to be alone,” guard Tyree told reporters after the game.
Campus police reported no instances of violence between the Confederate demonstrators and counter protesters on campus Saturday. The group dispersed during the second half of the game, according to ESPN.
“Ole Miss” as it is informally known, has a complicated history with race relations and so-called “southern heritage.”
The official nickname of the school’s teams are the Rebels and in 2016, the university dropped “Dixie” — a confederate war anthem — as its fight song during home games.
Kneeling during the national anthem has become the go-to form of protest for professional athletes since Colin Kaepernick first took a knee in protest of racial inequality in America two years ago.
