The American Civil Liberties Union presented Bruce Springsteen and Colin Kaepernick with its newly created Ralph Ellison Award for Defenders of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Arts, Business, Science, and Sports at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Friday, 24 July 2026. Billboard

Actress Laverne Cox hosted the event. ACLU president Deborah Archer oversaw the proceedings, which also recognised Vanita Gupta, Erwin Chemerinski and Elizabeth Foster across the evening's other honours. ACLU

Springsteen closed the ceremony with a solo performance of "Streets of Minneapolis." The performance was uploaded to his official YouTube channel following the event. Billboard

The ACLU describes the Ralph Ellison Award — named for the author of Invisible Man, a novel whose central theme is the erasure of Black identity in America — as a new award. It was presented alongside two established ACLU honours: the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty and the ACLU Presidential Prize. ACLU

For Kaepernick, the ceremony fell roughly a decade after he first knelt during the US national anthem before NFL games to protest police violence and racial inequality. That protest drew national attention and set off a wave of similar demonstrations across the league. Billboard

In 2017, Kaepernick and fellow player Eric Reid filed collusion grievances against the NFL, arguing that team owners had coordinated to keep them unsigned because of the protests. The two sides reached a settlement in 2019. Billboard

Springsteen has been a vocal supporter of civil liberties throughout his career. His appearance at the ACLU event placed him alongside a former NFL quarterback whose activism made him one of the most discussed figures in American sport.

The ceremony brought together figures from music, sport, law and advocacy under a single award meant to span those fields. Whether the Ralph Ellison Award becomes an annual fixture will depend on the ACLU's future programming.