The Black Athlete, Black Power and the 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 2-18-2009 Stand Up and Be Counted: The Black Athlete, Black Power and The 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights Dexter L. Blackman Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation Blackman, Dexter L., "Stand Up and Be Counted: The Black Athlete, Black Power and The 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2009. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/22 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STAND UP AND BE COUNTED: THE BLACK ATHLETE, BLACK POWER AND THE 1968 OLYMPIC PROJECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS by DEXTER L. BLACKMAN Under the Direction of Jacqueline A. Rouse ABSTRACT The dissertation examines the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a Black Power initiative to build a black boycott of the 1968 US Olympic team that ultimately culminated in the infamous Black Power fists protest at the 1968 Olympics. The work challenges the historiography, which concludes that the OPHR was a failure because most black Olympic-caliber athletes participated in the 1968 games, by demonstrating that the foremost purpose of the OPHR was to raise public awareness of ―institutionalized racism,‖ the accumulation of poverty and structural and cultural racism that continued to denigrate black life following landmark 1960s civil rights legislation. Additionally, the dissertation demonstrates that activist black athletes of the era were also protesting the lack of agency and discrimination traditionally forced upon blacks in integrated, yet white-controlled sports institutions. The dissertation argues that such movements for ―dignity and humanity,‖ as progressive black activists of the 1960s termed it, were a significant component of the Black Power movement. The dissertation also examines the proliferation of the social belief that the accomplishments of blacks in white-controlled sports fostered black advancement and argues that the belief has origins in post-Reconstruction traditional black uplift ideology, which suggested that blacks who demonstrated ―character‖ and ―manliness‖ improved whites‘ images of blacks, thus advancing the race. OPHR activists argued that the belief, axiomatic by 1968, was the foremost obstacle to attracting support for a black Olympic boycott. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the competing meaning and representations of Smith and Carlos‘s protest at the Olympics. INDEX WORDS: Olympic Project for Human Rights, Black Power, Black Students‘ movement, Institutionalized racism, Black athletes, 1968 STAND UP AND BE COUNTED: THE BLACK ATHLETE, BLACK POWER AND THE 1968 OLYMPIC PROJECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS by DEXTER L. BLACKMAN A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2009 Copyright by Dexter Lee Blackman 2009 STAND UP AND BE COUNTED: THE BLACK ATHLETE, BLACK POWER AND THE 1968 OLYMPIC PROJECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS by DEXTER L. BLACKMAN Committee Chair: Jacqueline A. Rouse Committee: Ian C. Fletcher Akinyele K. Umoja Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2009 iv This dissertation is dedicated to my grandparents: Quincy Roy, Sr. and Janie Hooper Kea, William Henry, Sr. and Lois Raynor Blackman and Oscar Peter, Sr. and Addie Rust Hooper and the Hooper, Kea and Blackman families. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I acknowledge the Creator for seeing me through and smiling on me. I would also like to shout-out a network of friends and fellow graduate students that include Victor E. Blue, Shannon King and Robert Woodrum. Your camaraderie was vital to the process. I would like to acknowledge the patience and hard work of my dissertation committee, Dr. Rouse, Dr. Umoja and Dr. Fletcher. I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement of several other professors including Freddie Parker, Beverly Washington-Jones, Percy Murray, Sylvia Jacobs, Lolita Brockington and Carlton Wilson of North Carolina Central University‘s history department. I am also thankful for the Dan E. Sweat Graduate Dissertation Fellowship from the Andrew Young School of Policy at Georgia State University and a dissertation fellowship from Southeastern Regional Educational Board. I would also like to thank the library staffs of Georgia State University and Central Piedmont Community College. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTERS I. ―The Negro Athlete and Victory‖: The Traditional Black Establishment, Manliness 18 and the Meaning of Black Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow II. ―I Never Had It Made‖: The Mass Integration of Blacks into White-Controlled 66 Institutional Sports, World War II to the Sixties III. ―We Are Men First and Athletes Second:‖ Black Student-Athletes, Black Power and 111 the Origins of the 1968 Olympic Projects for Human Rights IV. ―Rather than Run and Jump for Medals, We Are Standing Up for Humanity, Won‘t 157 You Join Us?‖: Publicizing the Olympic Project for Human Rights V. ―Revolt of the Black Athlete‖: The Meanings of Black Protest in Sports in the Sixties 211 and at the 1968 Olympics POSTSCRIPT: A Miscarriage of Glory 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACOA American Committee on Africa AAU Amateur Athletic Union CIAA Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association IOC International Olympic Committee MLB Major League Baseball MOOC Mexican Olympic Organizing Committee NBA National Basketball Association NCAA National Collegiate Athletic Association NFL National Football League NL Negro Leagues NOI Nation of Islam OAU Organization of African Unity OAAU Organization of African American Unity OPHR Olympic Project for Human Rights SASA South African Sports Association SAOC South Africa Olympic Committee SAN-ROC South Africa Non-Racial Olympic Committee SCSA Supreme Council for Sport in Africa SJS San Jose (CA) State College SCSA Supreme Council of Sport in Africa UCLA University of California-Los Angeles USOC United States Olympic Association UTEP University of Texas-El Paso UN United Nations 1 INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a Black Power attempt to raise awareness of ―institutionalized racism‖ in the post-Jim Crow United States by building a black boycott of the 1968 US Olympic team. The movement is more popularly identified with the Black Power fists protest of two black US Olympians, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. As much as that image has come to represent the Sixties in popular and textbook discussions, in many academic and popular discussions, it also represents the failure of the proposed boycott. Observers note that although several blacks protested at the Olympics, they participated first; hence the boycott was a failure. As this dissertation will detail, however, the primary purpose of the OPHR was not the boycott itself, although its supporters did work ardently to produce one and failed; the foremost purpose of the proposed boycott was to raise awareness of the continued denigrating effects of ―institutionalized racism‖ on black life in the immediate post-Jim Crow US. The dissertation will further illustrate that the OPHR shared this agenda with the encompassing Black Power and Black Students‘ movements.1 As such, this dissertation contextualizes the OPHR within these movements rather than focusing exclusively on the failure of a boycott to materialize. The failure of the OPHR was predetermined by its opponents, especially those in the mainstream media, whom asserted that a black boycott of the US Olympic team would be unpatriotic and destructive to racial advancement. In the aftermath of the Olympics, these same opponents asserted that its failure to occur indicated its undesirability and infeasibility, even among blacks, and attached similar unpatriotic and destructive connotations to the Black Power protest at the games. These assertions derived their legitimacy from the established societal belief that blacks‘ presence and accomplishments in sports advanced race relations in the US by improving whites‘ image of blacks. Although referenced by other accounts of the boycott movement and in African American sports history, this belief, prolific as it 1 For a discussion of ―institutionalized racism‖ and Black Power, see Stokely Carmichael, ―Toward Black Liberation‖ in Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writers ed. by Leroi Jones and Larry Neal, (New York: Morrow, Inc., 1968) 123-5. 2 continues to be, has not received much treatment by scholars. OPHR supporters and activist-athletes, however, suggested that their opponents‘ assertion of the belief in the public discourse was the proposed boycott‘s foremost obstacle.2 Therefore, in addition to examining the OPHR, this dissertation also examines the evolution of the belief that blacks‘ presence and accomplishments in sports improved whites‘ images of blacks, thus improved race relations. By the Sixties, the belief had been articulated and widely-accepted in US society for approximately four decades. The dissertation illustrates