Shockwaves of Olympic ‘Black Power’ protest still rumble
LOS ANGELES: Fifty years after raising clenched fists in protest during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the shockwaves unleashed by John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s salute of defiance are still rippling around the sporting world.
The image of the African-American sprinters standing on the medal podium on October 16 1968, heads bowed while each raising a solitary, leather gloved fist into the night sky would become one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century.
The protest redefined the concept of athlete activism as the stuffy, antiquated world of the Olympic movement under then president Avery Brundage collided with the political and cultural maelstrom raging across the globe in 1968.
America had already been convulsed by the twin assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King in April and the murder of presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy in June. In between the trauma of those events, deadly rioting erupted in Chicago.
Large-scale protests against the Vietnam War gained momentum throughout a year which also saw civil unrest in France as student-led demonstrations and general strikes plunged the country into chaos.
By the time of the Olympics, the febrile mood sweeping the world had reached Mexico City. Just days before the Games got under way, Mexican government forces crushed a protest by students and civilians. Independent reports say between 300-500 people were killed, with thousands wounded and more than 2,000 arrested.
That bloody crackdown set the stage for an Olympics that will forever be associated with Smith and Carlos’s “Black Power” salute. On the morning of October 16, Smith won the 200m in a then-world record of 19.83sec, with Carlos taking bronze behind Australia’s Peter Norman.
At the medal ceremony that evening, Smith and Carlos proceeded with their planned protest which had been hatched before the Olympics.
The two sprinters had been drawn to activism while at San Jose State University in California, where they had been members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) set up by sociologist Harry Edwards.
As they walked out for the ceremony, the two athletes received their medal without shoes to symbolise black poverty in the United States.
Smith wore a black scarf to reflect black pride while Carlos wore a beaded necklace intended to represent “those individuals that were lynched or killed and no-one said a prayer for.” Initially, both athletes had planned to bring gloves, but Carlos forgot his so the two men shared Smith’s pair. — AFP