October 16, 1968: The Smith-Carlos Salute

October 16, 1968: American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, teammates at San Jose State University, win the Gold and Bronze Medals, respectively, in the 200 meters, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, Mexico. Smith sets a world record, winning the race in 19.83 seconds, the 1st time 20 seconds had been beaten in the race. Peter Norman of Australia wins the Silver Medal.

But when they take the podium to receive their medals, all 3 -- including Norman, a critic of the infamous White Australia Policy (barring non-Europeans from immigrating), accepting Smith and Carlos' request -- are wearing pins of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Smith and Carlos remove their shoes, revealing not bare feet as is usually remembered, but black socks.

This was further complicated by several black athletes boycotting the Games, including the top amateur basketball player in America, UCLA center Lew Alcindor, a.k.a. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Today, Kareem still says he did the right thing. University of Houston forward Elvin Hayes, who went up against Kareem in 2 epic games in the 1967-68 season, also chose not to play. The situation was also complicated by a story most Americans didn't know about: A massacre of protesting students by the Mexican government, just a few days before. The government kept that story quiet.

Smith, born in Clarksville, North Texas on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), and raised in Lemoore, Central California, wears a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride. Carlos, a black Cuban from Harlem who was a year minus 1 day younger (born on June 5, 1945), had his tracksuit top unzipped, to show solidarity with all blue-collar workers in the U.S., and wore a necklace of beads, which he described as being "for those individuals who were lynched, or killed, and that no one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the Middle Passage." This term referred to the sea voyage taking slaves from Africa to the Americas, North, Central and South.

They had intended to wear black gloves on each hand, but Carlos forgot his pair. Norman suggested that Smith give Carlos his left glove, and that's why Smith raised his right fist in what was then interpreted as "the Black Power Salute" (Smith has always insisted it was "a human rights salute") as "The Star-Spangled Banner" started playing, while Carlos raised his left, which was not the usual Black Power salute. Both men bowed their heads.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were the biggest sports-related story -- of the day, and the year. It would have been the biggest sports-related story of the decade, if not for Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted the year before, and being stripped of the Heavyweight Title because of it.

The U.S. Olympic Committee kicked Smith and Carlos off the Olympic team immediately. Both received condemnation from the white U.S. media and death threats from anonymous sources. A sportswriter for the Chicago American wrote, "Smith and Carlos looked like a couple of black-skinned storm troopers," and called them "ignoble," "juvenile" and "unimaginative." Even if you believe Smith and Carlos were morally wrong, a rational person could not possibly agree with those 3 adjectives. Especially the last: "Unimaginative"?

That sportswriter's name was Brent Musberger. In 1975, he became the host of CBS' studio show The NFL Today. In 1990, he moved to play-by-play of college football and college basketball for ABC and ESPN, retiring after the January 2017 bowl games. In 1999, he addressed his condemnation from 1968: "I object to using the Olympic awards stand to make a political statement." As if the flying of flags and the playing of the Gold Medalist's National Anthem are not, themselves, political statements.

This protest was just 9 days after Jose Feliciano's performance of the National Anthem during the World Series -- which, unlike "The Silent Gesture," was a totally unintentional controversy. It was 7 weeks after the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 4 months after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, 6 months after that of Martin Luther King, 15 months after the race riots in Newark and Detroit, 16 months after the one in Boston's Roxbury.

At the time, no white person was willing to stand up and publicly say that Smith and Carlos had a point. Today, nearly everyone, except for the truly delusional, is willing to admit that they had one. In 2005, San Jose State dedicated a statue of the medal podium, with an empty space where Norman would have stood, so that anyone who wants to can stand with Smith and Carlos in a personal re-enactment.

Smith went on to teach at Oberlin College, outside Jesse Owens' hometown of Cleveland. It had been the 1st integrated college in America, starting in 1835. He accepted a peace offering from the USOC, a coaching position the U.S. track team at the 1995 Indoor World Championships. Carlos was accepted as part of the organizing committee for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and became a high school track coach.

Carlos, left, and Smith receiving the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage

at the 2013 ESPY Awards

On October 16, 2022, Smith is now 75. Carlos is 74. Both have become paid public speakers regarding their stories. Norman died in 2006, and Smith and Carlos traveled all the way to Melbourne for his funeral, and served as the front pallbearers.

On September 28, 2016, the 1st black President, Barack Obama, invited Smith and Carlos to the White House, as part of his reception for the 2016 American Olympic athletes. He said, "We're proud of them. Their powerful silent protest in the 1968 Games was controversial, but it woke folks up, and created greater opportunity for those that followed."

Just 4 months later, Donald Trump was sworn into the office of President. Prior to 1865, we had Presidents who were slaveholders. Afterward, we had Presidents who openly made bigoted statements. But no President has ever pandered more to the elements of bigotry in this country.

Trump has actually voiced support for keeping statues of Confederate "heroes," asking if we would next be tearing down statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson because they were slaveholders. No: Whatever else can be said of them, they fought for America, and never against it.

We have had multiple police brutality cases, and the "Black Lives Matter" movement in response. We have gone from the vilification of Smith and Carlos in 1968, to Michael Jordan refusing to endorse Harvey Gantt against race-baiting Senator Jesse Helms in his home State of North Carolina in 1990 because "Republicans buy sneakers, too," to LeBron James taking the court wearing a hoodie in memory of Trayvon Martin and an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt in memory of Eric Garner, both in 2014.

More recently, in response to Golden State Warriors' leader Stephen Curry said the Warriors would refuse the usual NBA Champions' invitation to the White House, Trump insulted Curry and said he wasn't welcome. LeBron tweeted, "U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!"

In 2019, this problem was solved when the NBA Champions turned out to be Canada's team, the Toronto Raptors. With the COVID-19 epidemic interrupting the 2020 NBA season, LeBron and his World Champion Los Angeles Lakers waited until after the election and the Inauguration, and accepted an invitation from President Joe Biden.

And we have gad Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, blacklisted for kneeling instead of standing during the playing of the National Anthem before games in 2016, and bigots ripping him for it, in print, on the air, and online. Obama suggested that Kaepernick reconsider his action, saying that it bothers war veterans. But Smith and Carlos publicly backed Kaepernick. "Don't hate the kid because he stood up for something to change," Smith said. "He stood up for the right to exercise Amendment 1."

Carlos added, "Protest is a good thing, because you're trying to expose certain things through protest... In any protest, I think you make a statement to try and reach the far ends of the Earth. What better way to do it than if you're in a sport." Sounds like something that Ali, Gold Medalist in heavyweight boxing in the 1960 Olympics under his birth name of Cassius Clay, would have said.

But Donald Trump called Colin Kaepernick "that son of a bitch." And Trump's supporters say that "taking a knee" during the National Anthem is "disrespecting the flag." And Brent Musberger piped up. On October 8, 2017, the yutz, by then 78 years old, tweeted, "Yo #49ers Since you instigated protest, 2 wins and 19 losses. How about taking your next knee in the other team's end zone ?" (In the 2019 season, the 49ers won the NFC Championship.)

Trump doesn't get it. Musberger doesn't get it. All the people calling Kaepernick and the other protestors "disrespectful to the flag" are either too stupid to get it, or too evil to tell the truth. It is not

about the flag, you dumb schmucks. It is about the inalienable right to be treated as a human being, equal to all others.

I am not the first person to say that. Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, a bomber pilot in World War II, and a former Los Angeles policeman, wrote an episode titled "The Omega Glory," imagining a planet paralleling Earth, down to an America with a Constitution and a Stars & Stripes flag, with the exception that a nuclear war was fought in their equivalent to the late 20th Century.

When Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner, a native of Canada but living in America for over 60 years now) sees that the leader of the society that has replaced America won't give his defeated enemies the same rights he claims for his people, he says that the "holy words" the chief proclaims "must apply to everyone, or they mean nothing!"

That episode aired on March 1, 1968, a month before Dr. King was killed, and 7 months before the Smith & Carlos protest. Roddenberry was a middle-aged white man with some power in his field, and a veteran, whose patriotism could not be questioned by a rational person, and he knew.

The 1st Amendment gave Smith and Carlos, their allies then, and Kaepernick and his compatriots, and their allies now, and me, and you -- whether you are their ally or not -- the right to publicly show their discontent with what is being done to your people, or your people-within-a-people.

It does not give you the right to lie about them and defame them, as Trump and his allies do, as Musberger did then and now. If you cannot respect the First Amendment, then THE FLAG MEANS NOTHING.

There is no place in a modern society for the bigotry that made Trayvon Martin (black, murdered in 2012), Matthew Shepard (gay, murdered in 1998) and Brandon Teena (transgender, murdered in 1993) dead and famous. Or treats Alicia Machado and the parents of Captain Humayun Khan as if they are less than full human beings, less than full Americans. Or puts children in cages -- in concentration camps -- because their parents entered America illegally.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood for something. Not because they could, but because someone had to, and their Gold Medal presentation was a golden opportunity.

We don't need a world without Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. We need a world which makes additions to their actions unnecessary.

*

October 16, 1968 was a Wednesday. It was football season, but the middle of the week, so there were no NFL or AFL games. The World Series had ended 10 days earlier, with the Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Cardinals.

The American Basketball Association opened its season 2 days later. But there were 3 NBA games played, including the Milwaukee Bucks making their NBA debut. They played the team that became their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bulls, and lost 89-84 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).

The Cincinnati Royals beat the Atlanta Hawks, 125-110 at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum (now the Hank McCamish Pavilion), on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. And the Baltimore Bullets beat the Detroit Pistons, 124-116 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena).

Of the 12 teams in the NHL, 10 were in action, all but the Detroit Red Wings and the Los Angeles Kings:

* The New York Rangers beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 3-1 at the new Madison Square Garden.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Pittsburgh Penguins played to a tie, 2-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Minnesota North Stars, 10-4 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-2 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the Boston Bruins beat the Oakland Seals, 2-1 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (now the Oracle Arena).