When the University of Missouri’s football team vowed to stay off the field until administrators met the demands of student protesters, defensive end Charles Harris grasped the national implications earlier than most. Wearing a shirt with the anti-police-brutality slogan “I can’t breathe,” he told reporters in 2015, “Let this be a testament to all other athletes across the country that you do have power.”
Mr. Harris, who now plays for the Miami Dolphins, heeded his own call. Last September he locked arms with other players in a show of support for four teammates who knelt during the national anthem.
But public records obtained through the Missouri Freedom of Information Act suggest that the Mizzou protests, like the riots in Ferguson a year earlier, might have been inspired in part by a false narrative. Graduate student Jonathan Butler had started a hunger strike, claiming the administration had failed to address racist acts on campus, including incidents in which Mr. Butler, who is black, was himself the purported victim. Football players were “very concerned about his life,” Coach Gary Pinkel said at the time.
