Abstract
On Wednesday, October 16 1968, Tommie Smith won the 200-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics in a world record time of 19.8 seconds, and his American teammate John Carlos finished third. At the awards ceremony Smith wore a black glove on his right hand, a black scarf around his neck, and stood in black socks. Carlos wore the black glove on his left hand, beads around his neck, and stood, similarly, in his black socks. When the national anthem began, in what has become one of the most memorable images in sport history, the two athletes bowed their heads and put their gloved fists into the air. This chapter examines the gesture by Smith and Carlos as a key moment in sport history; by looking at the lead up to the Olympic Games and subsequent reactions to the gesture, as well as how the image has transformed over the last 40 years. Identified by Life magazine as one of the ‘100 photographs that changed the world,’ the image of Smith and Carlos has been transformed into a statue on the campus of San José State University in California, and remains an image that generates debate and discussion.1 This event did not occur during a sport competition or performance, but in the wake of one, on the victory stand; it is an event that used the platform and spectacle of Olympic sport to communicate a statement about civil rights. The continued reinterpretations of the gesture reflect contemporary dialogues of race, sport, and society.2
Parts of this chapter were previously published and are reprinted here with the permission of the Journal of Sport History. For the original article, see M.M. Smith, ‘Frozen Fists in Speed City: The Statue as Twenty-First-Century Reparations,’ Journal of Sport History, 36(3), 2009, 401–20
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Notes
1. Robert Sullivan, ‘100 Photographs that Changed the World,’ Life (New York: Time Warner, 2003).
2. For more on this gesture see Amy Bass, Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Harry Edwards, Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York: Free Press, 1969); Douglas Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Kevin Witherspoon, Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympics (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008); Urla Hill, ‘Racing After Smith and Carlos: Revisiting Those Fists Some Forty Years Hence, in David C. Ogden and Joel Nathan Rosen (eds.),’ Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2008); Smith, ‘Frozen Fists in Speed City: The Statue as Twenty-First-Century Reparations,’ 401–20; Gary Osmond, ‘Photographs, Materiality and Sport History: Peter Norman and the 1968 Mexico City Black Power Salute,’ Journal of Sport History, 37(1), 2010, 119–37. For an excellent article detailing protests of black athletes during 1968, see David K. Wiggins, ‘ “The Year of Awakening,”: Black Athletes, Racial Unrest and the Civil Rights Movement of 1968,’ International Journal of the History of Sport, 9 (1992), 188–208. For an overview of college athletics and the integration movement in sports in the 1960s, see Adolph H. Grundman, ‘The Image of Intercollegiate Athletics and the Civil Rights Movement: A Historian’s View,’ in Richard E. Lapchick (ed.), Fractured Focus: Sport as a Reflection of Society (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1986): 77–85; Donald Spivey, ‘Black Consciousness and Olympic Protest Movement, 1964–1980,’ Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985): 239–62; David K. Wiggins, ‘ “The Future of College Athletics is at Stake:” Black Athletes and Racial Turmoil on Three Predominantly White University Campuses, 1968–1972,’ Journal of Sport History, 15 (1988), 304–32.
3. For more on Speed City, see History San Jose, ‘Exhibits & Collections,’ Speed City: From Civil Rights to Black Power, retrieved http://www.historysanJose.org/exhibits_collections/current_upcoming_exhibits/speedcity.html. Accessed 22 July 2008. Also see ‘Sports Distortion of SJS,’ Spartan Daily, 10 April 1969, 2; Ann Killion, ‘An Accomplishment Most Rare-SJS Track Title was Beginning of the End,’ San Jose Mercury News, 4 June 1989, 1D; Mark Purdy, ‘Preserving Track’s Past Isn’t Enough,’ San Jose Mercury News, 5 December 1996, 1D. For a sample of press coverage of Speed City’s 1969 season, see footnote 44. John Carlos with C.D. Jackson, Why? The Biography of John Carlos (Los Angeles, CA: Milligan Books, Inc., 2000).
5. For more on Harry Edwards, his tenure at San Jose State, and his role in the OPHR, see Michael E. Lomax, ‘Bedazzle Them with Brilliance, Bamboozle Them with Bull: Harry Edwards, Black Power, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete Revisited,’ in Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era of Change (Jackson, MI: University of Mississippi Press, 2008), pp. 55–89; also see Ron Briley, “The Black Panther Party and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: Sport and Revolutionary Consciousness,” pp. 90–104, in the same collection.
9. Moore, ‘A Courageous Stand,’ 71; Harry Edwards, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York: Free Press, 1969); For an account of Brundage’s recollections of the incidents, see Allen Guttman, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
10. Tommie Smith with David Steele, Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2007), p. 173.
16. ‘Olympic Stars Should Evoke Pride – Ownes,’ Los Angeles Sentinel, 17 October 1968, B1. Also see, Milton Richman, ‘Pride, Prejudice Affect Owens Anew,’ Washington Post, 20 October 1968, C4; ‘Ouster of Carlos, Smith ‘just’,’ San Jose Mercury, 30 October 1968, 106. For recollections of the event, read Jesse Owens, Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1970), pp. 75–6. For another account of Owens’ involvement in the Smith–Carlos affair, see William Baker, Jesse Owens: An American Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 206–17.
69. A. Rosenfeld, ‘Popularisation and Memory: The Case of Anne Frank,’ in P. Hayes (ed.), Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p. 277.
70. Judith Dupré, Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 7.
72. Martha K. Norkunas, Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), p. 160.
74. Murray G. Phillips, Mark E. O’Neill, and Gary Osmond, ‘Broadening Horizons in Sport History: Films, Photographs and Monuments,’ Journal of Sport History, 34 (1), Spring 2007, 283–7.
79. Julienne Malveaux, ‘Fall Follies, Myths and Statues,’ Black Issues in Higher Education, 16 (18), 28 October 1999, 45.
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© 2011 Maureen Margaret Smith
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Smith, M.M. (2011). The ‘Revolt of the Black Athlete’: Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s 1968 Black Power Salute Reconsidered. In: Wagg, S. (eds) Myths and Milestones in the History of Sport. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230320819_9
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