It is still the most remembered medal ceremony of all time and one of the most overtly political statements in the 110 year history of the modern Olympic Games. The photographs of two Black American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, standing on the medal podium with heads bowed and fists raised at the Mexico City Games in 1968 not only represent one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history but a milestone in America's civil rights movement.
On the the morning of October 16, 1968, Tommie Smith won the 200 metre race race in a then-world-record time of 19.83 seconds, with Australia's Peter Norman second, and John Carlos in third place. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium. The two American athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride. Carlos wore beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage." All three athletes wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges, after Norman expressed sympathy with their ideals.
Carlos had forgotten his black gloves, but Norman suggested that they share Smith's pair, with Smith wearing the right glove and Carlos the left. When "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd. Smith later said "If I win, I am American, not a Black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are Black and we are proud of being Black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."
Teammates at San Jose State University, Smith and Carlos were stirred by the suggestion of a young sociologist friend Harry Edwards, who asked them and all the other Black American athletes to join together and boycott the games. The protest, Edwards hoped, would bring attention to the fact that America's civil rights movement had not gone far enough to eliminate the injustices Black Americans were facing. Edwards' group, the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), gained support from several world-class athletes and civil rights leaders but the all-out boycott never materialized. Still impassioned by Edwards' words, Smith and Carlos secretly planned a non-violent protest in the manner of Martin Luther King, Jr.
While the protest seems relatively tame by today's standards, the actions of Smith and Carlos were met with such outrage that they and their families received death threats. Those that opposed the protest cried out that the actions were militant and disgraced Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, were moved by the duo's actions and praised them for their bravery.
International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage deemed a domestic political statement unfit for the so called non-political, international forum the Olympic Games was supposed to be. In an immediate response to their actions, he ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the U.S. team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee refused, Avery threatened to ban the entire U.S. track team. This threat led to the two athletes being expelled from the Games.
Smith and Carlos were largely ostracised by the U.S. sporting establishment in the following years and in addition were subject to criticism of their actions. Time magazine showed the five-ring Olympic logo with the words, "Angrier, Nastier, Uglier", instead of "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Back home they were subject to abuse and they and their families received death threats.
Smith continued in sports, going on to play football with the Cincinnati Bengals, before becoming an assistant professor of Physical Education at Oberlin College. In 1995 he went on to help coach the U.S. team at the World Indoor Championships at Barcelona. In 1999 he was awarded a Sportsman of the Millennium award. He is now a public speaker.
Carlos' career followed a similar path to Smith. He initially continued in sports, equaling the 100m world record the following year. Later he played football with the Philadelphia Eagles before a knee injury prematurely ended his career. He fell upon hard times in the late 1970s and in 1977 his wife committed suicide. In 1982 Carlos was employed by the Organising Committee for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles to promote the games and act as liaison with the city's Black community. In 1985 he became a track and field coach at a high school in Palm Springs, California a post which he still holds. While at the time of the incident, they were ostracised, their actions are now seen as heroic, and as an important part of the Civil Rights Movement.
An interesting side note to the protest was that the 200m silver medallist in 1968, Peter Norman of Australia (who is White), participated in the protest that evening by wearing a OPHR badge and was not banned from the games. Norman, who was sympathetic to his competitors' protest, was reprimanded by his Country's Olympic authorities and ostracized by the Australian media. He was not picked for the 1972 Summer Olympics, despite finishing third in his trials. He kept running, but contracted gangrene in 1985 after tearing his Achilles tendon, which nearly led to his leg being amputated. Depression and heavy drinking followed. He died on October 3, 2006. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral.
San Jose State University honored former students Smith and Carlos with a twenty foot high statue of their protest in 2005. In January 2007, History San José opened a new exhibit called Speed City: From Civil Rights to Black Power, covering the San Jose State University (the mecca of track in the 1960s and 70s) athletic program "from which many student athletes became globally recognized figures as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements reshaped American society."
On March 3, 2008, in the Detroit Free Press editorial section, an editorial by Orin Starn entitled "Bottom line turns to hollow gold for today's Olympians" lamented the lack of social engagement of modern sports athletes, in contrast to Smith and Carlos.
The Sydney Film Festival in mid-2008 will feature a documentary about the protest. It is called "Salute" and has been directed and produced by Matt Norman, an Australian actor and film-maker and Peter Norman's nephew.
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