Cam Newton dons MLK shirt before game in Charlotte
As the city of Charlotte continued to recover from several night of intense protests after police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton took the field Sunday wearing a t-shirt that featured a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
The line appears in King's famous "Letter from a Birmingham jail," written while King was jailed in April 1963, in response to clergymen who thought the civil rights movement should be limited to fights in court.
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The star quarterback has made headlines for his previous seemingly contradictory comments on race. In January before the Super Bowl, Newton suggested that racism was the reason why some criticized his outspoken celebrations on the field.
"I'm an African-American quarterback that scares people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to," he said at the time.
In August, Newton was also criticized after he told GQ that the reason for the flack was not racism. Instead, Newton said, "I don't want this to be about race, because it's not. It's not. Like, we're beyond that. As a nation."
Earlier this week, as the protests unfolded in Charlotte where the Panthers are based and play their home games, Newton spoke with Sports Illustrated about police violence against African-Americans.
"I'm an African-American. I am not happy how the justice has been kind of dealt with over the years. The state of oppression in our community. But we also, as black people, have to do right by ourselves. We can't be hypocrites.
I say that on one voice but also on another voice that when you go public or when things happen in the community, it’s not the fact that things are happening. It’s the way they’re being treated after they’re happening. When you get a person that does some unjust things or killing an innocent person, killing fathers, killing people who have actual families. That's real."
Newton's post-game attire was quite different, although some observed that a note on his top hat, "Don't be a puppet," could have been a political statement.
On Sunday, around 100 protesters gathered at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte before the game and kneeled during the national anthem.
Sunday's protest at the stadium was peaceful, as were other gatherings throughout Charlotte on Sunday.
Early Sunday evening, Charlotte's mayor lifted the curfew that had been in place across the city since Wednesday.
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
