Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown and Colin Kaepernick.

Sports and politics have always been intertwined, and many of the greatest Americans have used the podium that their sports careers provided them to speak out against the injustice of institutional racism and to remind us all that the National Anthem is still an aspirational anthem, a reminder of the promise that remains unfulfilled for so many.