Ten years after one gesture turned a quarterback into a national symbol, his memoir The Perilous Fight puts his own account back at the center.
For most of the last decade, Colin Kaepernick was talked about far more than he talked. Presidents, senators, team owners, commentators and rappers all offered versions of what his protest meant and what it cost him. With his new memoir, The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick is filling in the parts of the record that he says the public never saw.
Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem on September 1, 2016, and the book arrived September 15 through Legacy Lit, a Hachette imprint, with an audiobook he narrates for Audible. The anniversary has set off a wave of interviews, with David Remnick of The New Yorker, Michel Martin of NPR, and appearances on The View and with Trevor Noah. When the book was announced in April, Kaepernick framed it as context the public had been missing. “When I took a knee, it wasn’t a sudden act,” he said.
Where the story begins
The memoir opens decades before the stadium. It starts with a childhood memory of neighborhood kids tying him to a rose tree, and he told NPR that growing up as the adopted Black son of white parents meant meeting racism early without knowing whether those closest to him would understand. He told TIME that his parents raised him with strong values and a work ethic, but that understanding what it meant to be a Black man in America largely wasn’t part of the household. His sharpest line on the subject: “I don’t know if they always loved my Blackness.”
That starting point matters to the argument he is making. He wrote that the first sit-down, on August 13, 2016, was spontaneous, and that he wasn’t even in uniform that day. The act may have been sudden, but the convictions behind it, he says, were built over a lifetime.
Why he stayed quiet
Kaepernick’s silence during the height of the controversy was a strategy. He told TIME he sensed a deliberate effort to make him the lone face of the movement, and he wanted to make room for other voices, because attacks meant to discredit him were also aimed at the broader cause. He now wonders whether that restraint, including his decision not to publicly answer critics like Jay-Z, left space for others to steer the narrative in directions it shouldn’t have gone.
The memoir is his answer to that question. It names people and details private conversations. Kaepernick says the Seattle Seahawks told him in 2017 they knew he was a starter, spent the visit asking about his politics, and later asked him to commit to not kneeling before a workout, which he refused. He says John Harbaugh wanted to sign him in Baltimore but was overruled, and that a 2022 Raiders workout went well before the team went silent. The Ravens pointed to a 2017 team statement denying that ownership blocked a signing, and the Raiders declined to comment.
The league, and the man who made a deal with it
Kaepernick describes his exile as intentional. He told NPR the message was that the league needed to “make an example out of Colin” to keep other players in line. In 2019, he and former teammate Eric Reid, who knelt alongside him, settled a collusion lawsuit against the NFL.
The book also revisits Roc Nation‘s 2019 partnership with the league. Kaepernick told NPR he was disappointed that Jay-Z, who had publicly supported him, signed a deal he believes was meant to undermine the protest, and he alleged that Roc Nation later tried to plant negative stories about him. Roc Nation did not respond to NPR. When Jay-Z recently referenced him in a lyric about taking a check, Kaepernick told TIME he never signed a non-disparagement agreement and called the comparison between his legal settlement and a business deal with the league disingenuous.
He also rejects the idea that the NFL’s later social justice spending closed the chapter. He called the league’s reported $450 million commitment a PR play and said he does not forgive Commissioner Roger Goodell, citing the league’s history of race-norming in medical benefit claims.
Owning the narrative, and its limits
Controlling the story also means choosing the settings where it gets told. An OutKick columnist argued the press tour has been notable for its lack of tough questions and criticized what he saw as friendly coverage. That critique points to a real tension. A memoir is an author’s version, and several of the book’s sharpest claims about owners, coaches and Roc Nation are contested or unanswered by the other parties.
Kaepernick is not presenting the book as a closing statement. At 38, he told NPR he still trains and prepares to play, and he said the Spike Lee documentary that ESPN shelved is finished and his team is looking for a partner to release it. He still does not stand for the anthem, and he said he would never have stood to get his career back because that would have been a moral concession.
Asked by NPR whether taking a knee was worth it, he answered without hesitation that it was. Ten years on, what Kaepernick wants is not only to be remembered for the gesture, but to be the one who explains it.
Sources: The New Yorker, NPR via WWNO, TIME, Associated Press, Kaepernick Publishing, OutKick