9781493029198
It was a year in sports best remembered for a scandalous protest and an outrageous guarantee.
Standing on the top step of the medal stand in Mexico City, American sprinter Tommie Smith wore his Olympic gold medal around his neck and a black glove on his upraised, clenched right fist as the U.S. national anthem continued. On the step below, John Carlos wore his bronze medal and a black glove on his upraised, clenched left fist. His head was down, too.
It was a protest, a statement that, at least in their judgment, their nation still wasn't the land of the free. Not everyone and not everywhere, at least.
The gesture became the enduring, defining image of the '68 Games for many Americans, more so than Bob Beamon's stunning 29-foot, 2 1/2-inch leap in the long jump that shattered the world record by nearly two feet. The International Olympic Committee, under the tyrannical leadership of the American octogenarian Avery Brundage, banned both Smith and Carlos from Olympic competition for life. Ironically, the image of Smith and Carlos in protest endures as a touchstone to one of the most turbulent years in American history.
Four years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the forces of change and the resistance to them, affected American life across the board. Sports were not always an escapist oasis any longer; but sometimes they still could be. Confusion, anger, resentment and impatience all were part of its landscape, too, as athletes reacted to, among other things, the murder of Martin Luther King in April and the riots that followed it; the assassination of Robert Kennedy in early June as he celebrated winning the California Democratic presidential primary; the continuing U.S. involvement and American deaths in the Vietnam War; and what many young people believed to be the lack of course-changing options among the choices in the presidential general election that fall.