Olympic Athletes Who Took a Stand
For 40 years, Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos have lived with the consequences of their fateful protest
- By David Davis
- Smithsonian magazine, August 2008, Subscribe
When the medals were awarded for the men's 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Olympic Games, Life magazine photographer John Dominis was only about 20 feet away from the podium. "I didn't think it was a big news event," Dominis says. "I was expecting a normal ceremony. I hardly noticed what was happening when I was shooting."
Indeed, the ceremony that October 16 "actually passed without much general notice in the packed Olympic Stadium," New York Times correspondent Joseph M. Sheehan reported from Mexico City. But by the time Sheehan's observation appeared in print three days later, the event had become front-page news: for politicizing the Games, U.S. Olympic officials, under pressure from the International Olympic Committee, had suspended medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos and sent them packing.
Smith and Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the event, had come to the ceremony dressed to protest: wearing black socks and no shoes to symbolize African-American poverty, a black glove to express African-American strength and unity. (Smith also wore a scarf, and Carlos beads, in memory of lynching victims.) As the national anthem played and an international TV audience watched, each man bowed his head and raised a fist. After the two were banished, images of their gesture entered the iconography of athletic protest.
"It was a polarizing moment because it was seen as an example of black power radicalism," says Doug Hartmann, a University of Minnesota sociologist and the author of Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath. "Mainstream America hated what they did."
The United States was already deeply divided over the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, and the serial traumas of 1968—mounting antiwar protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the beating of protesters during the Democratic National Convention by Chicago police—put those rifts into high relief. Before the Olympics, many African-American athletes had talked of joining a boycott of the Games to protest racial inequities in the United States. But the boycott, organized by sociologist Harry Edwards, never came off.
As students at San Jose State University, where Edwards was teaching, Smith and Carlos took part in that conversation. Carlos, born and raised in Harlem, was "an extreme extrovert with a challenging personality," says Edwards, now emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Smith, the son of sharecroppers who grew up in rural Texas and California, was "a much softer, private person." When they raised their fists on the medals stand, they were acting on their own.
Among the Games athletes, opinions were divided. Australia's Peter Norman, the winner of the silver medal in the 200-meter sprint, mounted the podium wearing a badge supporting Edwards' organization. Heavyweight boxer George Foreman—who would win a gold medal and wave an American flag in the ring—dismissed the protest, saying, "That's for college kids." The four women runners on the U.S. 400-meter relay team dedicated their victory to the exiled sprinters. A representative of the USSR was quoted as saying, perhaps inevitably, "The Soviet Union never has used the Olympic Games for propaganda purposes."
Smith and Carlos returned home to a wave of opprobrium—they were "black-skinned storm troopers," in the words of Brent Musburger, who would gain fame as a TV sportscaster but was then a columnist for the Chicago American newspaper—and anonymous death threats. The pressure, Carlos says, was a factor in his then-wife's suicide in 1977. "One minute everything was sunny and happy, the next minute was chaos and crazy," he says. Smith recalls, "I had no job and no education, and I was married with a 7-month-old son."
Both men played professional football briefly. Then Carlos worked at a series of dead-end jobs before becoming a counselor at Palm Springs High School, where he has been for the past 20 years. Now 63 and remarried, he has four living children (a stepson died in 1998). Smith earned a bachelor's degree in social science from San Jose State in 1969 and a master's in sociology from the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change in Boston in 1976. After teaching and coaching at Oberlin College in Ohio, he settled in Southern California, where he taught sociology and health and coached track at Santa Monica College. Now 64 and retired, he lives with his third wife, Delois, outside Atlanta. He has nine children and stepchildren.
The two athletes share what Smith calls a "strained and strange" relationship. Carlos says he actually let Smith pass him in 1968 because "Tommie Smith would have never put his fist in the sky had I won that race." Smith, who won the race in a world-record 19.83 seconds, dismisses that claim as nonsense.
But both men insist they have no regrets about 1968. "I went up there as a dignified black man and said: ‘What's going on is wrong,' " Carlos says. Their protest, Smith says, "was a cry for freedom and for human rights. We had to be seen because we couldn't be heard."
David Davis is a contributing sportswriter at Los Angeles magazine.
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Comments (25)
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I watched the documentary on Netflix and it moved me. I was not alive during that period, and I couldn't imagine how they were able to deal with not only the mental abuse of discrimination, but the physical as well. Today, every one has a very short memory or they just do not know the facts. Most of these new countries in the western hemisphere have a violent, bloody and hateful past that many of us would frown upon (if those acts were committed in the present day). George Foreman was disconnected back then as he is today. Never mind the fact that he benefited from the civil rights movement. He basically took a very selfish stand and that what he has always been.
Posted by Dan Excel on December 8,2012 | 09:04 PM
@Sue, the only one that appears offended is you and by all means, get with the program..Racism is dying out at a fast pace...Embrace the love...Celebrate the victory...THEY WON MEDALS for OUR country! They made history! At that time, it did seem like two different countries. Worthy enough to compete and win for the USA, but not good enough to "BE WHO YOU WERE", and stand proud doing it...KUDOS to them both...Thank the LORD that the world if changing for the better...
Posted by Wan Lanae on August 18,2012 | 11:19 PM
A very important part of our history. I will tell my son about these two great men. Who took an oppertunity to stand up for human rights and to protest the injustice torred African Amercans At that time, &many years laterr. Thank you Mr.Carlos, & Mr.Smith. you both are Gold medalist, for ever.
Posted by Larry Christensen on August 10,2012 | 05:58 PM
I use this article in my civil rights class (high school)...and as for a previous comments about them not ranting and raving, frankly they would have had all the right in the world to do so, considering...
Posted by Leslie R on May 11,2012 | 01:47 PM
They made me so proud at that moment. I am happy to share that with them. I am sorry it cost them so much! I saw them at the time and was so proud that they spoke for me and all of us who have suffered the injustice that is America. We still have a long way to go!
Posted by Cheryl on February 5,2010 | 11:55 AM
They are great people who have great hearts!
They are my rolemodels!
I would love to meet them!
Posted by Emily on January 25,2010 | 08:08 PM
That is truly inspiring...
Posted by Nathalie on January 7,2010 | 10:55 PM
I must say i love this photograph. It is very.. beautiful in a way.
Posted by La on November 18,2008 | 12:29 AM
I saw the coverage that day. A young, 15 year old white girl in Texas saw two men being proud and dignified heroes. No ranting, no raving, truly in the best sense of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.those two men did the brave and right thing! That was the proudest moment in the history of sports in my opinion. That was when atheletes had brains, conscience and spirit. God Bless them both! God Bless America...give them their medals back!!
Posted by Elizabeth on October 4,2008 | 09:00 PM
That was an excellent article! I guess with time comes wisdom. However, over the years,some mean and hateful people have done some mean and hateful things to other human beings. Sadly,nothing was done about it,and frankly, society did not care. But,if it weren't for the Carlos and Smiths, Martin Luther King,NAACP,SCLC,The Black Panthers,The Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni,and many of the "Culture Movement",etc..,who said,change the way we think,understand who we are,claim our heritage,change our history books!,etc.. made more sense than,'the revolution will not be televised.'
Posted by hb on September 10,2008 | 04:57 PM
The Olympics are not the place to right all wrongs. Especially when these men had and still have more opportunities here than in the home of their ancestors. George Foreman had it right back then and still does today.
Posted by Andy on September 8,2008 | 10:50 PM
I ran on the same San Jose State Track team with Tommy in the Spring of 1967. Those who never saw him run have no idea of how fluidly beautiful he was: watching him make up a huge deficit as the last man in the mile relay at U.C. Berkeley(SJSU, Washington,UC Berkeley) was one of the great thrills of my life. He had already run and won three other races that day. I watched as he and Lee Evans set a record for the quarter mile on the old corroded SJSU dirt track in an intersquad meet in 1967. I too took a stand on an issue in 1968, the American involvement in Viet Nam and I too paid a price. It is easy to be silent or to accept the status quo. Unfortunately, in spite of those who have refused to be silent, racism endures, the world is still rife with violence and blind nationalism is alive and well. The world is rarely kind to those who resist its mad course. But resist they must, those who have a conscience.
Posted by Bill Nelson on September 8,2008 | 06:35 AM
They made their choice to make a political statement and they had to live with the consequences. Should I feel sorry for them? No. However, they are examples of two men who stood up for what they believed. How can I not respect that?
Posted by Kelly on August 25,2008 | 11:04 PM
without your protest we may not be here!!!
Posted by Gloria Wiest on August 22,2008 | 11:51 PM
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