WASHINGTON - The NAACP wants a meeting with the NFL commissioner to discuss the fate of Colin Kaepernick.

He's the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem - kneeling as a protest against police brutality. He once took his team to the Super Bowl, but he's a free agent now, and no club has signed him.

The NAACP says in a letter to the football commissioner, Roger Goodell, that it's apparently “no sheer coincidence” that Kaepernick hasn't been picked up.

Derrick Johnson - the NAACP's interim president and CEO - says “no player should be victimized and discriminated against because of his exercise of free speech.”

The NAACP plans to participate in a rally Wednesday at NFL headquarters in New York in support of Kaepernick.