On this Day: American Athletes Give Black Power Salute on Olympic Podium

Their gesture gripped the nation and the world: two Olympic athletes, heads lowered and gloved fists raised into the night sky, silently displaying the anger and unrest of black America in the wake of the era’s stormy civil rights movement and the Vietnam War’s high toll on young African-American men.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos had just finished first and third, respectively, in the 200-meter Olympic final. Smith set a world record, finishing in 19.83 seconds.

Wearing their medals and various symbols of the civil rights movement, the two men waited for “The Star-Spangled Banner” to begin, and then they “delivered the gesture that became front-page news around the world.”

“Smith said he had raised his right fist to represent black power in America, while Carlos raised his left fist to represent black unity,” reported the BBC. “[Smith] said the black scarf represented black pride and the black socks with no shoes stood for black poverty in racist America.” A set of beads around Carlos’s neck honored black lynching victims.

“Any resemblance to Lady Liberty lifting her torch was ironic,” noted a Sports Illustrated article, “for Smith and Carlos were taking U.S. society to task for having failed to extend liberty and justice to all.

“In 1968, the United States was verging on chaos,” writes the Los Angeles Times. “As the Vietnam War raged in Asia, the civil rights movement raged in America’s cities. Assassins’ bullets felled Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.”

African-American college athletes like Tommie Smith and John Carlos were keenly aware of the unprecedented change sweeping the country. While at San Jose University, the two young men met Harry Edwards, a sociologist and teacher at the school, who initially urged all African-American athletes to boycott the Olympics to protest the slow progress of the civil rights movement. When the boycott failed to gain support, the decision to protest was left to individual athletes, and Carlos and Smith took up the charge.

Sports Illustrated reports that “Smith repeatedly said that he loved his country and simply wanted it to be better. ‘It was not a gesture of hate,’ he said. ‘It was a gesture of frustration.’” Nevertheless, “the tableau was riveting and grim. Most of the 80,000 spectators in the Olympic Stadium seemed mystified. Over some applause there were boos, catcalls.”

Within hours the International Olympic Committee had flatly condemned their political statement, with an IOC spokesperson calling it “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.”

The American press vehemently condemned the incident. The Associated Press accused Smith and Carlos of a “Nazi-like salute.” A columnist for the Chicago American newspaper had called them “black-skinned storm-troopers.” African-Americans, on the other hand, applauded the gesture.

Smith played football for the Cincinnati Bengals for three seasons, and then went on to teach physical education at Oberlin College. He also helped coach the U.S. team at the 1995 world indoor championships in Barcelona.

After an unsuccessful stint in the NFL, Carlos was forced to take odd jobs to make ends meet. In 1977, his wife committed suicide. Today, he works as a counselor at a school in Palm Springs, Calif.

Smith and Carlos have become estranged, each publicly insisting through autobiographies that he came up with the idea to protest at the 1968 Mexico City Games. But, as their former San Jose mentor Harry Edwards notes, their bad blood does not overshadow their accomplishment in Mexico City.

“What matters is their courageousness,” Edwards said. “One hundred years from now, what will matter was that their gesture became the iconic image of a phenomenal era, when people from Muhammad Ali to Curt Flood changed the face, the image and the dynamics of American sport.”