A Silent Protest: the 1968 Olympiad and the Appropriation of Black Athletic Power
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8 A Silent Protest: The 1968 Olympiad and the Appropriation of Black Athletic Power Jamal Ratchford “ ood day everyone, on behalf of ABC Sports I would like to welcome nearly Gfour hundred million people who are glued to their seats for this one. I am Jim McKay, my partner is Keith Jackson and we are anticipating a high level of competition in today’s 200 meter men’s final featuring Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos.”1 Before the race, all was not well in the American camp. Tommie Smith, who won his semifinal heat by six yards in the time of 20.1 sec- onds, cramped up and was listed as doubtful for the finals. Smith said, “When I crossed the finish line, I slowed down too fast, pulled a leg muscle and fell flat on my face.”2 To make matters worse, the stadium announcer mentioned to a vibrant crowd of 80,000 at the Estadio Olímpico that the injury might prevent Smith from competing in the finals. Nevertheless, Smith refused to let an opportunity of grandeur pass him by. “I waited too long and come too far to allow a leg injury stop me from running,”3 Smith said. Rather than drug his leg, Smith’s coach, Lloyd C. “Bud” Winter, told the doctor to apply ice so that his leg would be mobile while also numb from the pain. During warm-ups, he jogged lightly and feigned major injury for two rea- sons. On the one hand, he wanted to keep the pressure off his leg; on the other hand, he wanted his competitors to psychologically believe that he would not run. Make no mistake about it, Smith said, “The Olympics is strict competition and is no place to think about friendship.”4 Not everyone was fooled, and the stadium announcer mentioned that Tommie Smith would run despite injuring his leg only an hour prior. American Broadcasting Company’s (ABC) Jim McKay called the race. “John Carlos is in lane four and should burst out of the blocks quickly and if he doesn’t take the lead early then he may be in trouble. Tommie Smith, injured in the semifinals, usually starts kinda slow but makes his bid down the stretch.” The starter said, “Runners come to your marks, get set” and, at the T. L. Brown et al. (eds.), Soul Thieves © Tamara Lizette Brown and Baruti N. Kopano 2014 110 JAMAL RATCHFORD sound of the gun Smith said, “Carlos took off like a jet,” and took an early lead. Australian sprinter Peter Norman also started well and threatened to win the race. “Tommie Smith is running pretty well so far but its John Carlos right now followed by Peter Norman in lane two . but here comes Tommie Smith . and Tommie Smith wins, I don’t know who finished second.”5 Amidst a continual roar from the crowd, Smith flew past Carlos with about fifty meters left and never looked back. Smith ran so quickly that it appeared that the field briefly was in a state of slow motion, as a stunned Carlos looked over his shoulder with forty-five meters to go, only to see his friend, teammate, and rival pass him. With fifteen meters remaining, Smith raised his arms in victory and crossed the fin- ish line in world record time at 19.83 seconds. Carlos’s mistake of looking back would cost him the silver medal as Peter Norman placed second with a time of 20.06, while Carlos finished third at 20.10.6 The crowd was enthralled by the race and the men later took a victory lap in appreciation. So what happened? For a minute, the race captivated the Mexico City crowd and television audience, and about twenty minutes later, the cheers became boos, and the Olympic commu- nity officially depicted the heroes as troublemakers. Times sure have changed. Forty years after critics blasted the 1968 Olympiad black-gloved, silent protest, white journalists, spectators, athletes, and admin- istrators honored Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly (ESPY) Awards. In 2008, the Entertainment Sports Programming Network (ESPN) held their annual gala at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles and numerous sports and entertainment dignitaries celebrated the apex of athletic accomplishments. Singer Justin Timberlake entertained the audience and hosted the sports premier award show. The tone for the eve- ning was jovial—a lighthearted attempt to recapture the best athletic achieve- ments from the calendar year. The Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, an honor presented to one that made the most significant humanitarian contribution to sports and society, shifted the tone from playful to a serious and reflective remembrance of the moment captured. Actor Samuel L. Jackson and National Basketball Association (NBA) all-star and two-time most valuable player Steve Nash gave the opening remarks. For Jackson, the silent protest remained fresh in his mind. The year 1968, he recalled, “may have been forty years ago but for many of us, like me, a nineteen-year-old student at Morehouse College at the time, the events were so vivid, so personal, that they could have occurred yesterday.”7 The festivities did not end. Actor Tom Cruise narrated a nine-minute clip that documented events leading up to the silent protest. When the film concluded Tommie Smith and John Carlos were introduced and received the award. The audience erupted into a standing ovation. A crowd that included racer Danica Patrick, National Football League (NFL) all-time great Jerry Rice, and interna- tionally renowned soccer star David Beckham rose and cheered the two men. They gave another silent protest in appreciation of the audience. Smith spoke of sacrifice and Carlos reminded current athletes to use sports as a vehicle for social change. ESPN honored them three years after San Jose State College (SJS), their A SILENT PROTEST 111 alma mater, erected a statute in their memory. In 1968, after the silent protest, the reception was different. Chicago Daily News sports writer, and later ABC play-by- play man, Brent Musburger, ferociously criticized the protest. He said “Smith and Carlos looked like a couple of black skinned storm troopers (Nazis), holding aloft their black gloved hands during the playing of the National Anthem. It’s destined to go down as the most unsubtle demonstration in the history of protest . and it insured maximum embarrassment for the country that picked up their room and board bill in Mexico.”8 In other words, how dare these black athletes rebel against a country that Tommie Smith said, “treated him like just another nigger off the track.” How and why were Smith and Carlos blacklisted in 1968 but appreciated in 2008? This research investigates black and white definitions of black athletic power specifically as they pertained to the circumstances surrounding the 1968 Olympiad grandstand protest. Scholars typically break up twentieth-century African American sports history into three categories —segregation, integration, and the revolt of the black athlete. Two positions, though, are highlighted here: double consciousness in segregated sports and American culture, and a two- pronged revolt of the black athlete embedded in a continuous twentieth-century black freedom struggle. Historian David Wiggins uses W. E. B. Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness to explain that black athletes were proud of their race for overcoming assumptions predicated on scientific racism. On the other hand, the successes of black athletes and their ability to assimilate into American culture were predicated on adhering to the values upheld in dominant society. Therefore, sports for African Americans represented race pride and American citizenship for black athletes who faced racism regularly.9 Twentieth-century sports, unlike politics, labor, education, or legislation, rep- resented racial equality for African Americans and a platform to stabilize their claims for American citizenship by their performances and later, protest. The revolt of the black athlete must be examined within these two overlapping points. First, black athletes overcame segregation in sports by earning spots on previ- ously all-white teams, and they often did this using direct action and nonviolence. Second, as depicted in the 1968 Olympic Games, black athletes used revolution- ary activism with the intention to confront racism in sports and society. In this regard, the black-gloved protest demonstration is rooted in a continuous African American freedom struggle in which black athletes regularly and intentionally used sports as a protest strategy against racism. “A Silent Protest” traces the con- tinuity in the revolt of the black athlete from the direct action phase of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1950s at SJS to the revolutionary activist phase of the mid- to late 1960s.10 Politicians, journalists, and administrators, moreover, also attempted to define black agency and athletic potential. The gloved salute perplexed and flustered whites. To them, how dare black athletes reveal their frustration through sport. To them, sport best represented American democ- racy. Athletic integration meant national integration. To blacks athletic integra- tion, which in some ways was a fallacy, only deepened the paradox of American democracy. 112 JAMAL RATCHFORD The Idea of Blackness in Sports There are numerous historical examples and contexts that alluded to a legacy of white appropriation of black athletic potential, agency, and freedom prior to the 1960s revolt. To build on activist H. Rap Brown and historian Howard Zinn, white appropriations of black identity and agency were as American as American pie.11 In 1790, President George Washington signed the Naturalization Act. This law reinforced racial distinctions in the Constitution and prohibited black citizenship. Race-based clauses also were promoted and reinforced alleged black inferiority.