Last week, a photograph of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City went viral on social media, as it routinely does on the anniversary of their Black Power Salute, with heads bowed and each of them raising a gloved hand. This year it was yet more powerful, coming as it did against the backdrop of the “take a knee” protests by U.S. sportspersons during the national anthem, bringing into the stadium issues of race and equality in Donald Trump’s time. Smith had broken the world record to win the men’s 200m gold, his compatriot came in third, with the Australian, Peter Norman, taking the silver. Both Americans would suffer consequences in their personal lives and careers, but their heroism on the day made sport a better endeavour for all time to come.
As David Goldblatt recounts in The Games: A Global History of the Olympics , a year before, in 1967, Smith had confirmed to a reporter that a boycott of the Olympics was being considered: “It’s true. Some black athletes have been discussing the possibility of boycotting the games to protest racial injustice in America.” As it happened, there was no boycott, and upon finishing the race, Smith and Carlos “had just twenty minutes to prepare themselves for the final act of this story.” The next day Smith explained: “The right glove that I wore on my right hand signified the power within black America. The left glove my teammate John Carlos wore on his left hand made an arc with my right hand and his left hand, also to signify black unity. The scarf that was worn around my neck signified blackness. John Carlos and me wore socks, black socks, without shoes to signify our poverty.”
Goldblatt reminds us that Norman too was “punished” by his federation, for he had joined the protest. At the podium, he wore the civil right OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge. In fact, he played a role in the choreography of the protest. The reason Smith and Carlos had one glove each, Simon Barnes writes in a detailed recollection in A Book of Heroes , is “Carlos had forgotten his own gloves: but that somehow added to the perfection of this piece of deliberate symbolism. It was Norman… who suggested they wear a glove each.”
And in The Complete Book of the Olympics , David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky close the narrative thus: “On October 3, 2006, Norman died of a heart attack while mowing his front lawn. Smith and Carlos both served as pallbearers at his funeral.”
