Letter to the editor: Many reasons to take a knee

Take a knee for the millions kidnapped from Africa and packed into the holds of slave ships.
Take a knee for those slaves who worked for NOTHING other than maybe food, clothing, and shelter.
Take a knee for the tens of thousands who were kept and bred like animals for their white slave-owner’s profit.
Take a knee for those women raped by their white slave-owners.
Take a knee for those lynched.
Take a knee for those killed by police for being black.
Take a knee for the black veterans of the Civil War,  WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, who faced Jim Crow in the South and North — if they were lucky enough to come home alive.
Take a knee for those blacks denied housing or home loans.
Take a knee for those denied the same quality of education provided white children.
The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
Take a knee for all those prohibited from voting through fear (KKK) or other discriminatory policies or actions (poll taxes, arbitrary poll closures, or names arbitrarily erased from voter registration lists).
John Lea, Bristol