… We don’t have any polling specifically about Trump’s recent NFL comments, but a Quinnipiac University poll from 2016 found that only 38 percent of those surveyed approved of players choosing not to stand during the anthem. But while these NFL protests may be unpopular right now, particularly with white people, similar protests in the past — involving race, civil rights and varying definitions of patriotism — came to be viewed much more positively after the fact.
Marches for civil rights during the 1960s were generally seen negatively at the time. As the Washington Post noted last year, most Americans didn’t approve of the Freedom Riders, the March on Washington in 1963 or other similar protests. CONT.
Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight