Last week, former Olympic track stars, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, iconic figures from yesteryear, were inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame. When I learned that this was going to happen, many thoughts and feelings washed over me.
The old statement “Truth will out” kept ringing in my mind. The truth may be hidden, but sooner or later, it will be found out. By doing their heroic act at the 1968 Olympics Carlos and Smith were vilified by friend and foe alike. Now the truth is out, and they are treated like the heroes they were.
Remembrance of their heroism also brings to mind an idea expressed often by Martin Luther King, that the time is always right to do right.
Undoubtedly you have seen the iconic picture from the 1968 Olympics showing Carlos and Smith on the medal stand in Mexico City giving a Black Power salute. Why did this happen?
During the Black Power era of the late 1960s, black college athletes at predominantly white institutions began to protest the continuing systemic racism in the country. They saw that they were not exempt from these issues.
At that time, the only black males at San Jose State University were athletes, and they had difficulty getting housing near the San Jose State campus. And there were other problems. Notably, in April of 1968, nine black track and field athletes from the University of Texas at El Paso team were expelled because they refused to participate in a meet at the Mormon university, Brigham Young. They were objecting to the Mormon’s openly racist policies. At the time, no black could be a priest in the Mormon church.
This group of expelled black athletes included Bob Beamon, then the world record holder for the indoor long jump. Consequently, he went to the Olympics with no school behind him, and there he accomplished one of the most astonishing feats in track and field history. He broke the outdoor world record by almost two feet.
Carlos and Smith, who were students at San Jose State, began to participate in protests about conditions they and the black community faced. Harry Edwards, a former San Jose State athlete back on campus as an instructor, led these athletes to join with other protesters across the country. He founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) to protest against racial apartheid in South Africa, racism in the United States, and racism in sports in general.
Many prominent black athletes, including Carlos and Smith, were members of OPHR, which had the following list of demands of the sports world:
• Restore Muhammad Ali’s title. Ali had been stripped of his title in June 1967 for his refusal to fight in Vietnam.
• Remove Avery Brundage as head of the United States Olympic Committee. Brundage was a notorious white supremacist, a person who even praised Hitler.
• Disinvite South Africa and Rhodesia, racial apartheid regimes, from the games
• Boycott the New York Athletic Club.
• Hire More Black Coaches.
Many of us non-athletes participated in the OPHR, most notable for me was joining Harry Edwards and over a hundred people in picketing the New York AC meet at Madison Square in the winter of 1968. Most black athletes boycotted the meet.
OPHR called for a boycott of the Olympics that October, But OPHR, with plenty of discussion in the ranks, suggested that track and field athletes participate because this was their top event, with no professional track and field to follow. Everyone else should consider boycotting the games.
Following the lead of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, all of the top black college basketball players boycotted. So athletes from junior colleges and lower level athletic schools went.
There was broad speculation about whether black track and field athletes would express their positions symbolically as suggested. We got the answer when Tommie Smith won the 200 meter event in world record time, and John Carlos finished third. On the medal stand as the National Anthem played, they shocked the world with their Black Power gestures. Afterward, black solidarity gestures were expressed by a few other athletes as well, just not as shocking as Smith and Carlos.
Truth will out.
