I was 9 years old in 1968 but I remember it well.
Some say 1968 was one of the worse years in the history of the United States. It was in 1968 that we witnessed the assassinations of both Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., race riots in our streets, a clash between police and protesters at the Democratic Convention in Chicago and increasing unpopularity of the war in Vietnam.
Olympic medal winners make a statement at the 1968 Mexico City games. Photo courtesy of Newtown graffiti/Creative Commons
1968 was also the year the Summer Olympics were held in Mexico City — the Olympics that gave us what many of us will remember for the “Black Power” salute.
This story revolves around two men, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and the 200 meter dash. I remember watching the race and being excited that the United States finished first and third, winning the gold and bronze medals. (Tommie Smith set a new world record in the 200m race with a time of 19.83 seconds.)
During the medal ceremony, Smith and Carlos stood on the podium and received their medals. Smith and Carlos were shoeless and wore black socks to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf to represent black pride and Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with blue-collar workers. Carlos also wore a necklace of beads that he said represented “those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no-one said a prayer for…..”
As the men turned to face their flags and listen to “The Star Spangled Banner,” Smith and Carlos, with heads bowed, each raised a black-gloved fist and kept them raised until the anthem was finished. The men were booed by the crowd as they left the podium.
The event is regarded as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the Olympic Games, and the International Olympic Committee was not amused. Avery Brundage, then president of the IOC, said he wanted Smith and Carlos removed from the United States Olympic Team and banned from the Olympic village. The United States Olympic Committee refused and Brundage threatened to ban the entire U.S. track team.
Smith and Carlos returned to the United States to be criticized by such publications as Time magazine, and shunned by the U.S. sporting establishment. Both men suffered abuse and death threats toward them and their families.
“We were just human beings who saw a need to bring attention to the inequality in our country,” Smith said years later, in an HBO documentary on the 1968 Mexico City games. “I don’t like the idea of people looking at it as negative. There was nothing but a raised fist in the air and a bowed head, acknowledging the American flag — not symbolizing a hatred for it.”
I will always remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos for being brave enough to stand up for they believed in. They stood up for people who could not stand up for themselves. They put the needs of others before themselves.
(Did I say this story revolved around two people? If you don’t learn anything else today you will at least learn this: There are three kinds of people in this world, those who can count and those who can’t.)
There was a third man on the podium that day in 1968 in Mexico City, silver medal winner Peter Norman of Australia.
All three men wore Olympic Project for Human Rights badges on the podium. Peter Norman wore his in support of Smith and Carlos.
“We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat,” Carlos was quoted as saying at the time. “[Peter] said, ‘I’ll stand with you.’”
Carlos expected to see fear in Peter Norman’s eyes before the medal ceremony, when there was no turning back from what they were about to do.
But he didn’t see fear.
“I saw love,” he said.
Smith and Carlos both took a pair of black gloves to Mexico City, but John Carlos left his at the Olympic Village. It was Norman who suggested that Carlos wear Smith’s left handed glove while Smith wore the right glove.
Norman was reprimanded by his nation’s Olympic Committee and was denied a spot on the Australian team for the 1972 Olympics, even though he qualified.
Smith and Carlos served as pallbearers at Norman’s funeral in 2006.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett, two black American athletes who won gold and silver medals in the 400 meter race, protested American civil rights on the podium and were kicked off the U.S. team and banned from competition for life. The controversy they caused was pretty much forgotten due to the terrorist attack on 11 Israeli Olympic team-members, who were taken hostage and killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian group Black September.