It is considered to be one of the most iconic moments in the history of the Olympic Games, and for that matter, of all sporting events ; the medal ceremony, following the running of the Men’s 200 Metres Final at the 1968 Olympic Games, in Mexico City.
The trio of medalists strode to the podium, led by the American Tommie Smith, whose winning time of 19:83 seconds, was the first legally recorded one under 20 seconds for the event. Smith was followed by the runner-up, Australian Peter Norman (20:06) and the bronze medal winner, John Carlos (20:10) of the USA.
In those days, of course, there was no internet or social media, and the Olympics on live television was the biggest stage in the world. In the few minutes that followed, those three athletes, Smith, 24, Norman, 26 and Carlos, 23, made the ultimate sacrifice, of willingly put their sprinting careers on the line.
As he mounted the podium to receive the gold medal, the 6’ 3” Smith took off his shoes, (Carlos would also remove his shoes), and spread his arms in the symbolic victory salute. In his left wrist, he held a single track shoe, whilst his right bore a black glove. The trousers of his track suit were rolled up to his shins, revealing knee length black stockings.
After the medals were hung on the necks of the athletes, they turned to face the flags for the playing of the American national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. Smith and Carlos, bowed their heads in defiance, and held their right and left wrists, respectively, adorned in black gloves, in clenched salutes towards the sky. Carlos, also in black stockings, had unzipped the top of track suit, in further defiance of Olympic etiquette, revealing a chain of beads. The single shoe lay idly next to Smith on the top tier of the podium. Norman, whose back was to the protesters, could not see what was taking place, but was well aware of the protest.
The 50,000 crowd were initially stunned into silence while millions of television viewers around the world held their breath. The crowd quickly recovered and started booing, then started screaming the anthem as though in counter protest.
The International Olympic Committee quickly expelled Smith and Carlos from the Games, whilst imposing lifelong bans on any participation in future Games.
Leading up to the 1968 Olympics, America was at a crossroads. The country was caught up in a wave of protests over the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. It was a time of great unrest for the American people.
The protest by Smith and Carlos had been carefully planned and they fully comprehended the potential consequences of their actions. They were both members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, an organization formed a year earlier to protest racism in sport, which had toyed with the idea of a boycott by African American athletes of the 1968 games. As John Carlos would later reveal in his book, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed The World, written by Dave Zirin, they knew it would become “a moment of truth” and they could lose everything.
Smith and Carlos were bringing attention to the inequality of treatment meted out to poor people, especially those of African American descent, all across the USA. The removal of their shoes and the wearing of the black stockings was to protest “all the black poverty I’d [Carlos] had seen from Harlem to East Texas.” Their beads symbolized all the “strange fruit” they had seen in photos of poplar trees in the South; the results of lynchings. His open jacket was a show of support for “all the working-class people – both black and white – who had to struggle and work all day with their hands.”
Smith and Carlos were suspended from the USA Track team and they received death threats upon their return to the USA. Their attempts to make a career out of professional football were short lived.
The role of, and the subsequent consequences for, the silver medalist, the previously unknown, Peter Norman, who created quite a stir by snatching the silver from the favoured Carlos, is more often forgotten. Norman, an anti-racist, from a working class background, was opposed to the “White Australia” policy of stringent non-white immigration and its harsh regulations towards the indigenous aborigines. Informed of the proposed protest, Norman, who had stormed to an Olympic record in the heats, while running on an Olympic track for the first time, duly informed Smith and Carlos, “I stand with you.”
Carlos had forgotten his pair of gloves at the athletes’ village and it was Norman who suggested they wear alternate gloves. Norman showed his solidarity by requesting and wearing one of the Olympic Project for Human Rights badges on his Australian uniform for the medal presentation ceremony.
Norman, despite qualifying many times over for the 100 and 200 metres events for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, was not selected. In spite of setting a Commonwealth record and holding the Australian record for the 200 metres for decades, he was never again selected to represent his country. In Mexico, he had shaved half a second off of his previous best time and upon realizing that his true potential would never be realized, he quit the sport, never to return, following his non-selection for Munich.
When Australia hosted the Olympics in 2000, Norman was still ostracized by his national committee, and not invited in any capacity, despite being Australia’s best ever sprinter. Upon discovering this injustice, the United States Olympic Committee arranged for Norman to be part of their delegation.
Norman passed away twelve years ago this month, and the two lifelong friends he had made on the podium in Mexico City, Smith and Carlos, gave the eulogy and were pallbearers at his funeral.
Fifty years ago yesterday, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos, three sprinters who had the potential to re-write the record books for several years, chose instead to utilize the world’s largest stage, to make a bold statement for human rights.
We will never know, we can only imagine, what were (and continue to be) the personal struggles they endured in their daily lives, having had to turn their backs on what they enjoyed doing the most, sprinting. Their protest, viewed at the time as an act of defiance, can be now be considered an iconic moment, not in sport, but in the history of man. Their actions were the ultimate sacrifice.
