Human rights protest makes memorable moment at 1968 Olympics
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By John Willard | Saturday, October 11, 2008 |
Editor’s note: 1968 was a watershed year for the United States: The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, escalation of the Vietnam War, and racial and political turmoil that touched city streets, college campuses and even the sports world. This is the fourth in an occasional series looking back at significant events of that year.
Forty years ago today, more than 7,400 brightly attired athletes from 119 nations marched around the 400-meter synthetic track at the saucer-shaped Olympic Stadium in Mexico City.
The parade was part of the opening ceremony of the Games of the XIX Olympiad, the 1968 Summer Olympic Games and one of the most memorable of the storied international athletic competitions.
The cordons of guards that stood outside Olympic Stadium on Oct. 12, 1968, were a solemn reminder of the bloody student riots that preceded the Games, resulting in more than 50 deaths. When the competition ended Oct. 27, the Games of the XIX Olympiad had made more history.
It weathered controversies over sex and drug tests and rumors of a payola scandal while setting an all-time high for world records in track and swimming. It was the first Olympics since 1952 in which the United States gained world sports dominance over Russia.
But perhaps the most enduring incident of the 1968 Summer Olympics occurred Oct. 16 during the ceremony in which Tommie Smith and John Carlos, both students at San Jose State University, received gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter dash. Smith won the race in what then was a world- record time of 19.8 seconds.
As the national anthem played, the two athletes each thrust black-gloved fists skyward and bowed their heads. The silent gesture was broadcast to a worldwide television audience, leaving an iconic image that came to represent the simmering caldron of sports, race and politics in America.
“With their gesture, they created a moment of resistance and confrontation with dominant and existing forms of racial identity ... In front of a global audience of approximately 400 million people, the duo used their moment to denounce racism in the United States … ,” Amy Bass writes in her book, “Not the Triumph but the Struggle, The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete.”
As a result of their actions during the victory stand ceremony, Smith and Carlos were dismissed from the U.S. Olympic team and sent home. Despite the controversy, both men went on to successful careers as coaches. On Oct. 17, 2005, they were honored at San Jose State University with the unveiling of a 25-foot tall sculpture of them in their iconic pose.
Joining Smith and Carlos on the victory stand was Peter Norman, an Australian who had won the silver medal. He was reprimanded by his country’s Olympic officials and was not picked for the 1972 Olympics. He died in 2006, and Smith and Carlos traveled to Australia to be pallbearers.
The athletes’ victory stand protest ignited a firestorm.
John O’Donnell, then the sports editor of the Davenport Times-Democrat, a predecessor of the Quad-City Times, wrote from Mexico City: “As the band played the national anthem, each black athlete raised a hand in black power and fixed his eyes on the ground, refusing to look at the flag … . It was not a proud moment for the American team or the Americans in the stands.”
Gayle Hopkins, a Davenport native, was a long jumper on the 1964 U.S. Olympics team and a finalist in the 1968 Games. A friend of Smith’s and Carlos’, he recalls today that he and other black athletes participating in the Olympic trials had discussed what they might do to show their pride.
“I felt that whatever we did, we would have to win and do nothing extreme that would get us bounced on. Tommie and John came up with their own idea, and they paid the price,” said Hopkins, who today is the associate to the athletic director at the University of Arizona.
Gary Carlsen, a Rock Island native, was a track and field star at the University of Southern California and a discus thrower on the 1968 U.S. Olympics team. Sequestered in Olympic Village, he watched Smith and Carlos strike their famous pose on television.
“At first I was shocked, but I became more sympathetic and now realize that they did what they felt needed to be done,” said Carlsen, who today is an oral surgeon in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Lendol Calder, an associate professor of history at Augustana College in Rock Island, said the Olympic protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos does not come up in the black history course he teaches.
“The black power salute in Mexico City might be a memorable moment in history, but it’s hard to think of a reason to include it in a history course. A history course isn’t just about remembering; it’s more about explaining. Since the black power protest at the ’68 Olympics doesn’t explain much of anything in the narratives we historians are telling about civil rights and American history, it doesn’t get studied closely,” he said.
The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2450 or newsroom@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
Pride factor
It was on the campus of San Jose State University that Tommie Smith, John Carlos and other black athletes were introduced to the ideas of sociologist Harry Edwards. He had been a succesful student-athlete at San Jose State, where blacks faced widespread discrimination in housing and other racial injustices. Edwards proposed a boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games by black athletes through an organization he founded, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, but the boycott never happened.
In his autobiography, “Silent Gesture,” Smith wrote that he brought a pair of black gloves to the awards ceremony, talked to Carlos about wearing one and asked him to follow his lead.
“Then, all of a sudden, on my way toward the stand, I decided why not represent the flag with pride, but do it with a black accent and add some prayer. So that’s what it was. If you look at me, you’ll see that it was done in military style, the way I turned from facing the man who presented me with the medal to facing the flag. It was a military turn; I was in ROTC, so I knew the move. Then it was fist up, a movement of conviction. My head was down because I was praying ... We did it with pride and we wanted it to represent everybody without making a statement for anybody, just a silent gesture for anyone to interpret their way.”
— John Willard
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