Two sprinters gave the black-power salute at the Olympics. It took them decades to recover from that
By Rick Maese
May 28
They stood on the podium with Olympic medals hanging from their necks, and something much heavier weighing on their shoulders. Each man silently and stoically jabbed a gloved fist in the air, a popular black-power salute. The American track stars stood there without shoes, to symbolize black poverty, and one wore a black scarf, symbolizing black pride. Both kept their heads bowed as their national anthem played, refusing to acknowledge an oppressive society. And by the final notes of the song, everything had changed for John Carlos and Tommie Smith.
The crowd that assembled 50 years ago in Mexico City was there for a medal ceremony, to celebrate the fastest Olympic sprinters from the men’s 200-meter race: the two African Americans and an Australian named Peter Norman. It witnessed something much bigger. And as word of the demonstration spread across a United States still reeling from racial tensions, it became clear that Smith and Carlos would not be returning home to a hero’s welcome. Instead, they were cast as villains by leaders in the Olympic movement.
“The action of these negroes was an insult to the Mexican hosts and a disgrace to the United States,” Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, wrote in a letter months later.
A search through contemporaneous records reveals an IOC that was eager to punish Smith and Carlos, a U.S. Olympic Committee that was reluctant to defend them, a White House that declined to host them and an FBI that was monitoring them.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/two-sprinters-gave-the-black-power-salute-at-the-olympics-it-took-them-decades-to-recover-from-that-gesture/2018/05/28/b29e9dfc-4a58-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html
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