Two Texas high-school football players stood with athletes across the country against police brutality and discrimination by protesting during the national anthem. Immediately after, they were told to hand in their uniforms.
Sophomore Cedric Ingram-Lewis and his cousin Larry McCullough were kicked off their team at Victory & Praise Christian Academy, the Houston Chronicle reported. The pair didn't play in the Friday night game for their private church-affiliated football program in the Houston suburb Crosby.
Ingram-Lewis raised his fist during the anthem while McCullough took a knee. Coach Ronnie Mitchem kicked them off the team when the anthem ended.
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"He told us that disrespect will not be tolerated," Lewis told the Houston Chronicle. "He told us to take off our uniform and leave it there."
The coach told the Chronicle that he wanted players to participate in protests by kneeling after a touchdown or distributing pamphlets about the issues they're calling attention to—not by taking a knee during the anthem, like players across the country.
"That was my point of view," Mitchem told the Chronicle. "Like I said, I'm a former Marine. That just doesn't fly and they knew that. I don't have any problem with those young men. We've had a good relationship. They chose to do that and they had to pay for the consequences."
NFL protests against police brutality started over a year ago with Colin Kaepernick, but escalated last week when President Donald Trump ranted against the mostly black athletes protesting. Trump said that NFL owners should fire athletes who protested and called players who knelt during the anthem a "son of a bitch."
"I'm definitely going to have a conversation because I don't like the way that that was handled," Lewis's mother, Rhonda Brady, told the Chronicle. "But I don't want them back on the team. A man with integrity and morals and ethics and who truly lives by that wouldn't have done anything like that."
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