Colin Kaepernick. Photo: Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images
The New Yorker's "Cover Story": "I asked myself, What would King be doing if he were around today?” the San Francisco-based artist Mark Ulriksen says, about the civil-rights leader, the inspiration for this week’s cover.
- "I’m glad that Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett are making it political. I’m sure that if King were around today, he’d be disappointed at the slow pace of progress: two steps forward, twenty steps back. Or ten yards back, as the metaphor may be.”
- “This is 49er country, and my mom and I have been going back and forth —she’s upset that players have brought politics into sports, but I say, How would you feel if you had to show up at work every day and salute a country that treats black people like second-class citizens?"
The cover’s title draws from Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he spoke of a “creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice." The depiction shows King kneeling and praying alongside a kneeling Kaepernick.