The Summer Olympics Mexico City October 1968
In the 1960s the Olympic Games did not enjoy the television coverage which they do in the 21st century, with network coverage limited and usually shown in a newsmagazine format well after the events. The Olympic games did not receive the same amount of attention as in more recent years either but in 1968 they were welcomed as a respite from the events of the year and the upcoming US presidential election, which was at the time considered to be too close to call. The Olympics were regarded as apolitical, an event for the celebration of sport.
American track runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos competed in the 200-meter sprint race, with Smith winning the gold medal and Carlos the bronze. At the awards ceremony following the race, as both runners turned to face the American flag as the US National Anthem was played, they bowed their heads and raised black-gloved clenched fists over their heads, retaining that posture until the anthem was finished. The Olympics was immediately a political event as the image of the two Americans united in a salute which symbolized Black Power was transmitted around the world.
Later it was revealed that the clenched fists weren’t the only symbols of protest present at the time, they were merely the most visible. Carlos wore a chain of beads around his neck in memory of lynching victims, as well as black victims of unsolved murders at the hands of whites. Both athletes removed their shoes for the ceremony, wearing only black socks, to acknowledge black poverty in the United States. Carlos forgot his black gloves, borrowing Smith’s left hand glove, which explains why he has his left hand raised in the photo which was soon being published in newspapers all around the world. As they left the podium and stadium they were heavily booed by the crowd.
The International Olympic Committee and its president, Avery Brundage, ordered the two athletes to be suspended and banned from the Olympic Village for making an inappropriate political statement. When the US team hesitated Brundage threatened to suspend the entire American Olympic team, The US then expelled Carlos and Smith from the Games. Brundage had been present at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and had offered no objection to the proliferation of Nazi salutes during that Olympiad, a fact which was pointed out by the few writers who came to the defense of Smith and Carlos, who found little sympathy for their actions when they returned home.
Both runners were treated as pariahs by the sports community and most journalists. TIME Magazine condemned the action and the appearance it presented of America to the rest of the world. The third man on the podium on the day of their protest was a white athlete named Peter Norman, an Australian, who was sympathetic to the Americans, and ostracized in Australia as a result. He was not selected for the following Australian Olympic team, despite qualifying for it more than a dozen times. The action of Carlos and Smith was indicative to the rest of the world of the divisiveness within the United States, as well as how that division could have an adverse impact on the rest of the world.