Colin Kaepernick is bringing his new memoir tour to Houston this fall, with a stop set for October 28 at Windsor Village Church on West Orem Drive. The 38-year-old former quarterback's appearance is part of an 11-city tour launching alongside his book “The Perilous Fight,” described by its publisher as equal parts memoir and manifesto.
The book releases September 15, according to the Houston Chronicle, and the Houston stop will be hosted by CLASS Bookstore, a Black-owned independent shop located in the city's Third Ward. Publisher Hachette Book Group's Legacy Lit imprint acquired world rights to the memoir through editor Amina Iro and CAA, according to Hachette Book Group, which describes Legacy Lit as an imprint dedicated to elevating underrepresented and overlooked voices. The tour itself kicks off September 14 at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Branch, with an opening conversation moderated by “1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones.
A Third Ward Bookstore Steps Into the Spotlight
CLASS Bookstore was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife team David and Dara Landry, first as an online venture before the couple opened a physical storefront in December 2022 directly across from Texas Southern University, according to The Houston Defender. Landing a stop on Kaepernick's national tour puts the shop in rare company alongside major institutions like the Brooklyn library that opens the run.
The Houston event itself will unfold at Windsor Village Church's Kingdom Builders Center, a venue that anchors a 234-acre master-planned community and serves a United Methodist congregation that has historically grown to more than 18,000 members, per UMC.org. The church has been recognized as one of the largest predominantly Black congregations in the country, making it a fitting stage for an author whose activism has long been rooted in Black community institutions.
The Anthem Protest That Started It All
Kaepernick's memoir returns to the moment that reshaped his career and his public life. He first sat during the national anthem on August 14, 2016, before kneeling alongside teammate Eric Reid on September 1, 2016, during a 49ers preseason game against San Diego, a timeline confirmed by the Brooklyn Public Library's event listing. At the time, he said he was protesting the mistreatment of Black people and people of color, referencing Black men killed by police during that preseason. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag, for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said at the time, according to the Houston Chronicle's reporting.
He has since described the decision as anything but sudden. “When I took a knee, it wasn't a sudden act,” he said, per the same account, framing the gesture as the product of years of reflection rather than a single moment of defiance. “People saw the moment, but they didn't see the years that made it possible,” he added.
From the Field to a Grievance to a Publishing Career
Kaepernick led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2013 and spent six years with the team overall, but the 2016 season proved to be his last in the NFL. San Francisco went 1-10 in his 11 starts that year, and he became a free agent once the season ended. He later filed a grievance accusing NFL owners of colluding to keep him out of the league, ultimately withdrawing it two years later after reaching a settlement, per ESPN's reporting cited by the Houston Chronicle. That settlement, along with a similar one for Reid, came in at under $10 million combined, according to a Wall Street Journal report at the time, far below initial media speculation that had ranged from $60 million to $80 million.
In the years since leaving football, Kaepernick has steadily built a media and publishing footprint of his own. He launched Kaepernick Publishing in March 2019, aiming to give Black and Brown writers narrative control and ownership over their projects, according to the Los Angeles Times. That venture has already produced essay collections and graphic novels, including “Change the Game,” a young-adult graphic memoir co-authored with Eve L. Ewing and published by Scholastic in March 2023 that chronicled his high school senior year and his choice of college football over a Major League Baseball draft path; it went on to become a New York Times bestseller. He also co-created and narrated the 2021 Netflix limited series “Colin in Black & White” with director Ava DuVernay, which won two NAACP Image Awards and dramatized his adolescence as a Black adopted child in Turlock, California.
A Decade-Long Commitment Continues
This August marks ten years since Kaepernick's initial protest, and his foundation, Know Your Rights Camp, used the anniversary to renew its Million Dollar Pledge, committing another $1,000,000 in grants to community organizations through 2027, according to Blavity. The camp was founded in late 2016 in the immediate aftermath of his original demonstration, and the renewed pledge underscores that the anthem protest was the beginning of a longer project rather than a closed chapter.
In writing about the new book, Kaepernick described his own journey from a Black child navigating identity to an athlete who realized the game was bigger than football. “I'll be visiting cities across the country to talk about the experiences that shaped me, the convictions that continue to guide my work and how we build collective power,” he wrote, according to the Houston Chronicle. For Houston, that conversation will unfold not in a stadium but inside a Third Ward bookstore's orbit and a West Orem Drive megachurch, two institutions with deep roots in the city's Black community.
