Women's Basketball Team At Howard Takes Protest to the Locker Room as HBCU Silences Taking A Knee During National Anthem

At Howard University, "The Mecca," the most prominent HBCU in the world,  protest is not incidental to the institution's identity. It is foundational. That's why the recent change to pregame protocols for the women's basketball team cuts so deeply. The situation echoes Colin Kaepernick's original 2016 kneeling protest against police brutality from which they initially took inspiration from.

For six consecutive seasons, Howard's women's hoops program has knelt during the national anthem in direct response to racial injustice and police brutality. The ritual was born during COVID, when, as associate head coach Brian Davis explained, "all the social justice things were happening... all the young men and women of color [who] were passing away from the hands of police brutality." The team chose to take a stand — literally by going to their knees.

That stand has now been complicated. Following a December game against Army, the athletic department issued new pregame protocols requiring student-athletes to either stand or remain in the locker room. Rather than stand, the women's team chose the locker room,  a defiant but constrained form of solidarity, echoing the approach Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks have taken since 2020-21.

Coach Davis reframed the decision pragmatically: "We don't want to bring any bad light to Howard University, so we just decided to stay in the locker room now for every game, home and away." But the spirit of the protest endures,  the players haven't abandoned their convictions, they've adapted them under institutional pressure.

The most powerful response came from the men's soccer team. Junior goalkeeper Ireal Wyze-Daly captured the stakes with striking clarity: "If they can take away our right to protest, what else can they take away? I would never believe that coming to Howard, the biggest HBCU in the world, The Mecca, would basically be forced to bow down to the white oppressive system."

That sentiment matters. HBCUs exist as acts of resistance. Howard, in particular, has long been a training ground for activists, lawyers, and leaders who challenge systemic inequality. For its athletes to be restricted in how they express that legacy is a contradiction the institution must reckon with,  because protest, especially here, is more than symbolic. It's history in motion.

Link: The Grio