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Ole Miss Players Kneel in Response to Pro-Confederate Rally

Nathanael Gabler/The Oxford Eagle, via Associated Press

OXFORD, Miss. — Eight University of Mississippi men’s basketball players knelt during the national anthem on Saturday in response to a pro-Confederate rally taking place on their campus.

Minutes before the game against Georgia, both teams formed lines for the anthem. As soon as “The Star-Spangled Banner” began, six players from the Rebels took a knee and bowed. Toward the end of the anthem, two teammates joined them.

The pro-Confederate demonstration was led by out-of-state protesters a few hundred feet from the arena.

In the aftermath of violence at a similar rally in Charlottesville, Va.