It is kind of amazing that people get so riled up over protest shirts, but they surely do. The shirt in question today is Andrew Hawkins of the Cleveland Browns wore a shirt calling for justice for Tamir Rice, a 12 y.o. child shot by Cleveland police officers. Hard to believe, but the officers in question were not indicted. Check out the video and you probably will find it amazing that they were not indicted as they just drive up and immediately shoot him. Indicted doesn’t mean convicted and it sure appears to at least warrant a trial to fairly determine guilt.

Hawkins defends his protest well, you can hear it in his own words.

I tried researching on the internet to find what might be considered the first protest shirt, but found nothing even close to indicating what it might have been.

I printed shirts ca.1974 that said “Save Old Bio” to protest the impending demolition of a Colgate University landmark building. Apparently the shirts might have worked (and are mentioned in the wikipedia article about it) as the building still stands. Clearly that was not the first protest shirt, but I wonder if anyone does know what the first one was.