In an impassioned speech Monday night, Jonesborough Alderman Adam Dickson â the townâs only African American alderman â addressed the East Tennessee State menâs basketball teamâs decision to kneel for the national anthem, calling on people to âlisten with the desire to at least acknowledge, if not understandââ each other. âWhat I would hope that we all could gather is that, as beautiful and as wonderful as this flag is and what it represents, there is a sad truth: Not everybody has been free under that flag, and that is just a reality that I would hope we would at least attempt to comprehend,â Dickson said. âAnd so you have a group of young men (who), whether right or whether wrong, did what they did because of a young man like Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia â the same age as most of them. Trayvon Martin was just a few years younger than them. Tamir Rice was the same age-range as them.