Alabama football players and coaches to hold march against racial injustice

Alabama football players and coaches are planning a march Monday in response to the Jacob Blake shooting. The protest will start in front of the Mal Moore Athletic Facility at 4 p.m. CT as players will march to the Foster Auditorium, the building where former Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood in front of the schoolhouse door to block integration at the university in 1963.

Following Saturday's scrimmage, head coach Nick Saban said the players made the decision to march, stating that he and the rest of the coaching staff wanted to show their support.

"We want to support them because we do support what they want to do," Saban said. "I think they did a really good job in what they did before. I think we implemented sort of a speaker series for some very prominent people: Condoleeza Rice, Tony Dungy, Stephen A. Smith, Joey Galloway, Charles Barkley. And they all did a phenomenal job of trying to explain to players, how can we have a plan for change? How can we make things better in the future? And I think that’s what our players have really been focused on, and I think that’ll be what they want to try to get out there, a message on Monday. And we’re very much in support of that."

Running back Najee Harris announced the time and place of the meeting over social media Friday evening, while multiple Alabama players posted about the protest earlier in the day. Other SEC schools such as Kentucky and Mississippi State have boycotted practice in response to the Jacob Blake shooting. Alabama practiced Friday and will have a scrimmage on Saturday. The team does not have a practice scheduled for Monday.

Earlier this week, offensive tackle Alex Leatherwood explained the creative process behind his Black Lives Matter essay, which was tweeted by the Alabama football Twitter account in June.

"My opinions have not changed at all," he said. "The creative process to be honest was almost like — I don't know, it just like came to me out of nowhere. I am by no means a writer or anything like that because I'm very math-minded. Left-brained, you know what I mean? But I felt like that was just something that came to me and I felt like because I'm not really an outspoken person but I felt like those thoughts and those feelings that I had to for the situation needed to be heard so I used my platform to do so."

Leatherwood said that the Jacob Blake shooting has been discussed by the team and that players have the same stance they had on social injustice this summer.

"We feel the same way as we did a few months ago when we put out that video,” Leatherwood said. “Of course, we're not really angered but like we just don't feel good about that kind of stuff. We don't like to see it. It shouldn't be normal to be seeing that kind of stuff every few weeks, every month or so. It's not good. We don't like it.”