A miniature protest was staged by a team of 8-year-old football players at Little Devil's Field in Belleville, Illinois on Sunday when every player on the Cahokia Quarterback Club team took a knee during the pre-game National Anthem.

Orlando Gooden, who coaches the team, told Fox 2 Now that one of the kids came to him concerned about the recent St. Louis protests following the acquittal of former St. Louis cop Jason Stockley who said he was going to “kill this motherf****r” before fatally shooting Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011. When Gooden asked if the students knew why they were protesting, the coach said the player replied, “Because black people are getting killed and nobody’s going to jail.”

Gaging the impact that the event was having on his young team, Gooden spoke to his students about Smith’s death and other cases of brutality against black people around the country. He explained to them that’s what ignited Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest last year. “One of the kids asked, ‘Can we do that?’ I said, ‘As long as we know why we’re doing it, I don’t have a problem with any of it,’” Gooden said.

Watch the full news report below: