Kaepernick, who is a face of the company, told Nike that he found the Betsy Ross flag designed in 1777 with a circle of 13 stars, one for each American colony offensive because of its connection to the era of slavery, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Betsy Ross flag in question is named after an upholsterer who was a contemporary of Founding Fathers such as George Washington, though there are questions about whether she is actually responsible for the design because the legend first emerged in a speech given by her grandson in 1870.
You can go to an endless amount of white-supremacist rallies and never see a Betsy Ross flag, he said. Overwhelmingly, its used by ordinary people in ordinary circumstances as a cool-looking patriotic and historical flag.
Still, the Betsy Ross flag has been used in ways that have been seen as offensive. In 2016, a schools superintendent in Grand Rapids, Mich., apologized after some students at a predominantly white high school in the area brought the flag to a football game featuring an opponent with majority black p