Athlete Tommie Smith talks to reporter Martin Croucher about the motivation behind the famous 1968 ‘black power’ protest and how the Games remain inseparable from politics.

By Martin Croucher Epoch Times UK Staff

Photo: Posters, like the one above, capture the iconic moment when Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the black power salute on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics.

Forty years ago Tommie Smith stood in front of a mirror and asked himself whether he could go through with what he and fellow athlete John Carlos had planned.

He had just won the gold medal for the 200-metre race at the 1968 Olympics. And although what he was about to do would mean the end of his sporting career, at the very moment he claimed his award on the winners’ platform, Smith would enter the history books.

He and bronze medallist Carlos stood bare-footed, bowed their heads and raised their black-gloved fists in salute as the US national anthem began to play.

Their aim was to protest racism and bigotry in America.

“Even before we took part we were targeted wherever we went,” Smith told The Epoch Times. “We were threatened, laughed at and jeered. We were treated as second-class citizens.

“We didn’t want to just do the race and get a pat on the back and then go back home to this devastating racial injustice. We wanted to start a conversation with our country. There was a need for social equality.

“Because we were athletes we used our position to represent the needs of the black community.

“There were hundred of young black men who didn’t have a platform and we were to be that platform for them.”

Their political stance was shared with Peter Norman, the Australian silver medallist. The three wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges as a show of solidarity.

Over 400 million people worldwide saw their protest in Mexico City and the image stands today to represent the high-water mark of the civil rights movement.

That picture was on the front page of virtually every daily newspaper around the world but at the time the reaction was overly hostile.

Smith, Carlos and Norman were booed by the audience as they left the field.

The Associated Press likened their gesture to a ‘Nazi like’ salute. The sports journalist Brent Musburger called them ‘black-skinned storm troopers’.

“We knew that if we did this there was no coming back,” Smith said. “We knew we were going to suffer.

“We were refused jobs, we weren’t able to rent an apartment and we were shunned by other athletes.

“But we took on the system because we absolutely had to make a difference.”

IOC president Avery Brundage said that the political sentiment of their protest was in contravention of the Olympic spirit and ordered the two athletes suspended from the US team and expelled from the Olympic village.

When they returned to the US the only thing that Smith could do was throw himself into education, becoming an assistant professor in Physical Education in Oberlin College.

Carlos himself found it very hard after the protests. He later said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “My first wife is deceased as a result. She took her life because she could not deal with the pressures of Mexico.”

Peter Norman also found that he was shunned by athletes for joining Smith and Carlos in their protests.

Smith believes that their actions set a precedent for other athletes to follow, especially in the Beijing Olympics in August.

“It’s no longer the case that the Olympic Games are non-political,” he said.

He added that it was possible that teams from around the world could take part in some symbolic protest in Beijing against the regime’s appalling human rights record.

It is believed that over a million Chinese are currently being held in re-education camps and suffering torture.

Smith said: “I can’t say yes or no as to whether there will be a similar protest in Beijing.

“But what I can do is say to every athlete – before you take part you have a conversation with a person in the mirror. You ask that person ‘do you like what I am doing? Are you willing to take the consequences of what you believe in?’

“You have to answer that question with the conception that you are at the forefront of world change.

“Those who take that step change history.”

Four decades later the world is a very different place, not least through the actions of people like Smith and Carlos.

But with racial feuds still pulling at the fabric of American society, does Smith think things have really changed in the way of equal rights?

“I would be being disrespectful to the thousands of young men who have been shot, hanged or torn apart by dogs in the fight for equal rights if I say that nothing has changed,” Smith said.

“But change is an ongoing thing and you still have to work for it. As long as there are human beings breathing its worth fighting for.”

Posted: 05|14|08 at 9:03 am. Filed under: News.
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