On April 4-5, 1968 in New York City there was a disturbance sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. Harlem, the largest African-American neighborhood in Manhattan, was expected to erupt into looting and violence as it had done on July 23–30, 1967, in which two dozen stores were either burglarized or burned and four people were killed.
Mayor John Lindsay traveled through the area and said that he regretted King’s wrongful death which led to the calming of residents. Numerous businesses were still looted and set afire in Harlem and Brooklyn, but a widespread uprising did not occur and the events there paled in comparison to those in Washington DC, Baltimore, and Chicago in which federal troops were called out to quell disorder.
The 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico followed those events. “Police violence and poverty burdened Black communities in ways that attracted international attention,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
Black Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who was born in The Bronx, and raised in Harlem, placed first and third in the 200-meter dash.
Carlos was a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) and had originally advocated for a boycott of the 1968 Games unless four conditions were met: The withdrawal of Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia from the Games; the restoration of Muhammad Ali’s world heavyweight boxing title; Avery Brundage‘s resignation as President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); and the hiring of more African-American assistant coaches.
On October 16, 1968 as the U.S. national anthem played during the medal ceremony, the two men silently bowed their heads and raised black-gloved fists in a protest against racial discrimination and violence in the United States. They wore black socks without shoes and Smith wore a black scarf.
Smith later said that he raised his right fist to represent Black power, while Carlos raised his left fist to represent Black unity. Smith also said the black scarf represented Black pride and their black socks without shoes signified Black poverty in America.
In support of their actions, Peter Norman, the white silver medalist from Australia, participated in the protest by wearing an OPHR badge.
The following day, the US Olympic Committee (USOC) threatened disciplinary action against any other athletes that demonstrated. Acting USOC Director Everett Barnes issued a formal statement to the Olympic International Committee, condemning Smith and Carlos, saying they “made our country look like the devil.”
IOC President Avery Brundage ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the US team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee refused, Brundage threatened to ban the entire US track team. This threat led to the expulsion of Smith and Carlos from the Games.
A spokesman for the IOC called Smith and Carlos’s actions “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.”
Brundage, who was president of the US Olympic Committee in 1936, had vigorously fought to keep that year’s Games in Nazi Germany. He believed that a boycott of the Berlin Games should be used for fundraising, writing, “the fact that the Jews are against us will arouse interest among thousands of people who have never subscribed before, if they are properly approached.”
Brundage made no objections against Nazi salutes during the Berlin Olympics, arguing that the Nazi salute was a national salute, and so acceptable in a competition of nations, while the 1968 athletes’ salute was not that of a nation and therefore unacceptable.
As a result of the actions of these organizers of the Olympic the two athletes faced intense criticism in the media and received death threats when they returned home, where their protest was wrongly perceived as disrespect directed at the American flag and national anthem.
Photos, from above: Civil Rights activists John Carlos (right) and Tommie Smith raise their fists in protest during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City; Tommie Smith (right) in the 1968 Olympics; and John Carlos during a break of his training prior to competition in Mexico City.
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