Exhibition examines athletes, social causes
For sports sociologist Harry Edwards, there is a clear relationship between the uproar over Colin Kaepernick and Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign and the protests of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics.
“The police violence that is driving protests today was driving protests in 1968,” Edwards said at the opening of “The Power of Protest,” an exhibition at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Main Library that chronicles demonstrations by athletes from Smith’s and Carlos’ historic Black Power salute in Mexico City to Kaepernick’s national anthem knee.
The exhibition, which opened to the public Friday and runs through Nov. 15, is part of a 50th anniversary commemoration at San Jose State of the Smith-Carlos moment that will culminate in a Town Hall meeting Oct. 17 for the university’s Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Societal Change.
Most of the 130-plus items on display are from Edwards’ personal collection, plus a few loans like a lane marker from the track Smith ran on at the 1968 Olympic trials at Echo Summit near Lake Tahoe. There is also memorabilia from San Jose State’s days as Speed City, newspapers featuring the famous photo of Smith and Carlos with their fists raised on the medal stand, and artifacts related to the formation of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which Edwards and Ken Noel started at San Jose State.
There are also books and photographs — nearly all of
them signed — related to leaders of the Civil Rights movement like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as African Americans who were cultural groundbreakers like Jackie Robinson and Dick Gregory. Some of Edwards’ personal history is on display, too including photo- graphs from his days at San Jose State and when he was with the Black Pan- thers. There are pages from his FBI file, as well as a letter he received from President Obama after Edwards gifted the chief executive with a 49ers Super Bowl ring in 2014.
And there are a pair of blue-and-gold Nike shoes, emblazoned with “Sideline Racism” next to a Time magazine cover featuring and autographed by Kaepernick.
“When Colin took a knee for the first time in the preseason of 2016, I went into the locker room and got his shoes, his jersey, his gloves,” Edwards said. “I had him autograph everything and sent them back to the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture and told them to put them in a case right next to Muhammad Ali’s gear. I knew at that time where this was going to go.”
What happens next for Kaepernick isn’t as clear, Edwards said, but it may not matter..
“Whether or not a team ever signs him is irrelevant,” he said. “It’s like looking at the Montgomery Bus Boycott and wondering if Rosa Parks will ever get her seat back. At this level it’s gotten so much bigger than that, than Kaepernick and the job. The die has been cast. The statement has been made. The power of the protest has been made manifest.”
Whether it was 50 years ago or today, Edwards said, protest is in the fabric of American society and is a power that’s inherent in
the character and spirit of its people. “If you are willing, as Kaep says, to take a stand for something even if it means losing everything, the American people have shown a persistent, not just capability but commitment, to changing.”
Craig Simpson, director of special collections and archives at San Jose State, said it was a pleasure working with Edwards to assemble the exhibition. It purposely has a broad scope to provide visitors with historical, cultural and social contexts for what was going on in 1968 and more recently.
“I hope someone comes away with being able to see all those things in kind of a continuum and being able to see Tommie Smith and John Carlos and what they did in 1968 and Colin Kaepernick, for example, today being part of the same continuum,” he said.
And, Simpson said, the exhibition recognizes that Edwards’ career has been at the nexus of college and pro athletics, political activism and civil rights. While he is also a professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley, Edwards has strong ties to San Jose State, where he was a discus thrower and later, as a member of the faculty, a leader and spokesman for the campus’ African-American community in the late 1960s.
In Edwards’ mind, there was no question where his collection or the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change would end up.
“This belongs at San Jose State,” he said. “This was ground zero for a movement.”