Tommie Smith and John Carlos: Heroes at Last

By DON ROLLINS

“I don’t pay attention to people that don’t make sense. They didn’t make any sense to Jack Johnson, or to Jackie Robinson ... All of them received the same note that they put under my door: ‘Just shut up and play the game’. I’m not concerned with those individuals who tell me just to go out there and play sports. Because before I was an athlete, I was a human being.” — John Carlos, May 2019

As with every major segment of American society, high-profile sports have long been havens for the worst in us. Militant sexism, racism, homophobia, economic exploitation - these systemic scourges have often been reflected in, if not magnified by competitive sports.

Alas, history is not even history when it comes to these injustices. Knee-taking, unrepentant professional football players are still mysteriously persona non grata among millionaire owners; women’s college programs continue to receive significantly less funding than men’s, even within the same sport; and the billion-dollar National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is even now mounting a withering attack on California’s efforts to pay college athletes for their endorsements, fearing the measure will pave the way for a universal pay-to-play system that would change the face of collegiate sports.

But while the nation continues to sort out it’s complicated sporting present, there is ongoing if halting progress in owning an even more complicated sporting past.

It was in the middle of a Mexico City October when two African American sprinters ascended to the winner’s podium. Tommie Smith and John Carlos had just taken the gold and bronze in the men’s 200 meter race, adding to Team USA’s total medal count at the 1968 Olympic Games.

Flanked by Australia’s white silver medalist Peter Norman, the two Americans waited for their national anthem to begin playing, then each raised a gloved fist skyward — the gesture known in the States as the Black Power salute.

Hell broke loose. Their gestures were met with immediate disapproval in the form of a booing crowd, and soon thereafter by the incensed head of the International Olympic Committee, American Avery Brundage. Brundage demanded Smith and Carlos be suspended from the team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee refused, Brundage upped the ante by threatening to ban every member of the track team. Fearing Brundage would keep his word, the USOC sent Smith and Carlos home.

Further scorn was heaped on the two athletes, the most public being that from the then-young sportswriter, Brent Musburger. Calling them “black-skinned storm troopers” under the headline “Bizarre Protest by Smith, Carlos Tarnishes Medals,” Musburger spoke for a large white contingent angry that black runners would use the moment to “make a political statement.”

Smith and Carlos — along with the sympathetic Peter Norman upon his return to Australia — would be largely held up to this same white ridicule, then indifference, for the next three decades.

But led in large part by black scholars-activists, there is another, richer American narrative of the 20th century unfolding. African American truth-tellers are leading the way in decentering whiteness and white-only heroes.

To that end, on Nov. 1, Smith and Carlos (now in their mid-70s) will be inducted into the US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame as champions for equality — an act unthinkable as they were expelled from the Village.

Yet the moment will be bittersweet at best. Tommie Smith and John Carlos are national heroes, and should be honored as such; but no amount of praise will assuage the white hatred and fear that was unleashed upon them for registering a peaceful protest. Their induction is a measure of vindication for telling truths we’re only now ready to hear.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019

Populist.com