On Sports and Civil Rights: An Olympic Moment Remembered

At the start of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, it's hard to believe that 40 years have passed since American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos shocked the world by staging a silent but dramatic demonstration during the medal presentation ceremony that followed their first- and third-place finishes in the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

As Smith and Carlos mounted the medal podium, along with second-place finisher Peter Norman of Australia, few among the 100,000 spectators and untold millions watching on television noticed that the two Americans were shoeless and wearing black gloves, or that Norman had an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge pinned to the pullover top of his uniform.

At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, as one by one the medals were placed around the necks of the athletes, with bronze awarded first to Carlos, silver next to Norman, and finally gold to Smith, the Olympic champion. Next, as was and remains the custom, the three athletes turned to face the corner of the stadium where the flag of the nation of each of the medalists was about to be raised.

But as the opening notes of "The Star Spangled Banner" began to reverberate through the vast Olympic arena, Smith turned slightly toward Carlos. The two then immediately bowed their heads and thrust their arms straight into the air, Smith his right, Carlos his left, their black-gloved fists clenched in a gesture debated in some circles even today.

Living and working in South Boston at the time, and up to my neck in the anti-war movement, I remember looking on at home with a mixture of shock and admiration as Smith and Carlos stood there in front of the world, their defiant gesture a bold and courageous statement against the hypocrisy of a nation that had yet to come even close to practicing what it preached regarding the rights and freedoms of all of it citizens.

Looking back on that amazing event, it's important to put the whole affair in the context of the times. The year was 1968, a tumultuous, watershed period in American history, with a bitter, divisive war being waged in Southeast Asia, student demonstrations, sit-ins and urban riots going on all over the country, a third of the nation's youth lost to drugs, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential contender Robert Kennedy, brother of a U.S. president gunned down five years earlier in Dallas, typical of the stories that led off the three major network news broadcasts every evening on television.

In the days leading up to the Mexico City Olympics, there had been rumors of a growing movement among black athletes to boycott the Games as a protest against the intolerable racial conditions that still existed at home. But the effort fell short, the prevailing view among those participating in the discussion being that the best place to present their case for justice and equality was on the track. It was there, the athletes reasoned, where they could best demonstrate that, given the opportunity, black Americans could compete on even terms with anyone -- whether white, red, yellow, brown or green -- not only on the athletic field, but in any field of endeavor, anywhere in the world.

There was, however, general agreement within the group on one other important point. Those socially conscious black athletes who wished to speak to the complicated issue of race were free to do so, but only as individuals and not as spokespersons for any organized collective separate and divided from the larger, fully integrated American team.

And so it was that option that Tommie Smith and John Carlos, despite their considerable fears and concerns, chose in speaking out, as they did, shortly after their remarkable 200-meter Olympic performances on that historic afternoon 40 years ago.