Nineteen Seconds That Changed Sports
On October 16, 1968, Tommie Smith finished the 200-meter final at the Mexico City Olympics in 19.83 seconds — a world record. John Carlos finished third. Peter Norman of Australia finished second.
On the medal stand, Smith and Carlos each wore one black glove — Smith on his right hand, Carlos on his left, because Carlos had forgotten his glove and they split a pair. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck. Carlos wore beads. Both wore no shoes — only black socks.
When the national anthem played, they bowed their heads and raised their fists.
The image became one of the most recognized photographs of the 20th century. Within 48 hours, Smith and Carlos had been suspended from the U.S. Olympic team and expelled from the Olympic village.
What the Gesture Meant
Smith and Carlos were not acting spontaneously. They were acting as members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), an organization founded by sociologist and activist Harry Edwards that had spent a year organizing Black athletes around a series of demands:
- The removal of Avery Brundage as head of the International Olympic Committee (Brundage had supported the 1936 Berlin Olympics and had a documented history of antisemitism and racism)
- The restoration of Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title (stripped for refusing the draft)
- The addition of more Black coaches to the U.S. Olympic staff
- The disinvitation of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics
The raised fists were not about any single issue. They were a statement that Black Americans could not, in good conscience, represent a country that treated them as second-class citizens.
Smith later said: "If I win, I am American, not a Black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are Black and we are proud of being Black."
The Response
The International Olympic Committee, under Brundage, demanded the U.S. Olympic Committee sanction Smith and Carlos. The USOC initially refused. Brundage threatened to expel the entire U.S. track and field team. The USOC complied.
Smith and Carlos returned to the United States to death threats, hate mail, and social ostracism. Both struggled economically for years. Carlos worked as a gym teacher in Palm Springs. Smith coached track at Oberlin College.
Peter Norman, the Australian who stood beside them and wore an OPHR badge on the podium in solidarity, was quietly punished by the Australian Olympic Committee — excluded from the 1972 Munich Olympics despite having qualifying times. He was not officially recognized by Australia until 2012, six years after his death.
Rehabilitation and Its Limits
Smith and Carlos were eventually rehabilitated as American icons. They received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 1997 ESPYs. A statue of the podium moment was erected at San Jose State University, their alma mater, in 2005.
The rehabilitation followed the same pattern as Jesse Owens's Medal of Freedom: decades of marginalization followed by symbolic recognition after the political moment had passed and the gesture had been safely historicized.
The question the rehabilitation raises: if the gesture was heroic, why was it punished? And if the punishment was unjust, what does it mean that the institutions that punished them have never formally acknowledged doing wrong?
1968 and the Athlete-Activist Tradition
1968 was the peak year of what Harry Edwards called the "revolt of the Black athlete." Across sports, Black athletes were being asked — by their communities, by the movement, and by their own consciences — to use their platforms.
Muhammad Ali had already refused the draft in 1967. Bill Russell had refused to sign autographs at an exhibition game in protest. Arthur Ashe had spoken out on South African apartheid. Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) had boycotted the Olympics entirely.
The raised fists in Mexico City were not an anomaly. They were a culmination — and a beginning. The athlete-activist tradition they established runs directly to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016, LeBron James wearing "I Can't Breathe" warmups in 2014, and Naomi Osaka wearing masks bearing the names of Black people killed by police at the 2020 U.S. Open.
