Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language

The time in Mexico, 2am. In Britain, it's 9am. Good morning to you.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two great American Negro sprinters

give the black power salute

as they receive their medals

after the 200m final.

On 16th October 1968, Tommie Smith

and John Carlos's controversial demonstration stunned the world.

Yet it wasn't the only black protest on the victory rostrum.

And nor was it spontaneous.

Tommie and John putting their fist in the air

was something that Americans really connected to because everyone was in some type of dissent to something.

But I have to say

that it is one of those symbols that will be with me all of my life.

It is one of the most definitive expressions of manhood,

of service.

The world in which we live...

cries out for heroes.

We need heroes now as much as we ever did.

I hope that if the occasion ever arose, that I could show even a...

fraction of the kind of courage that those guys showed.

This is the untold story of the people and the organisation behind the stands

and of the man who tried to stop them.

They should support the Olympic Movement.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were members of a political group,

which started at San Jose State College, in the fall of 1967.

The college was a magnet for black activism.

We saw the kinds of conditions in this community

that helped to radicalise us

and there was the attraction of Harry Edwards.

Like most black San Jose State students, Harry Edwards and Ken Noel enrolled on sports scholarships.

They arrived angry at the second-class education accorded to blacks like them.

I brought with me a lot of the distrust

of institutions that had really been inculcated

during the three years that I spent at East St Louis senior high school

so when I saw any degree of racism discrimination, a flag went up

and I automatically began to raise questions and raise issues.

In my freshman year I remember asking the head basketball coach

how can these guys be on this team with me and belong to a fraternities

which have clauses in their charters saying "no Negroes need apply".

And his response was, "You know, I never needed a fraternity."

and I said, "That's not what I asked you.".

Harry would influence and inspire Tommie

and fellow country boy, Lee Evans,

who grew up in California's fertile farming belt.

I did farm labour work till I was 17 years old,

10, 12 hours a day.

I am sure that I saw Lee Evans when I was a kid

in a cotton field.

We weeded cotton, we picked grapes, grapes that they make raisins out of.

That's why I said running was easy.

Cos I had been on my feet for 10, 12 hours.

Sharecropping reinforced the second-class citizenship felt by Tommie and Lee.

the seeds of revolt.

Coming from the fields,

I was subjected to being morbidly thought of as less than.

I didn't like how my parents sorta cowered down to white people.

Cos they were the boss.

As I grew, I began to see the world

as a boiling point of differences.

Tommie enrolled at San Jose State on a basketball scholarship in the fall of 1963.

A year later, Lee came to run in the track team, just as Harry graduated and left to pursue a PhD.

Tommie also decided to focus on track,

if the team's world-renowned coach would have him.

I went to Bud Winter and he turned red, and I could almost see little things in his head. Flipping around.

100, 200, 400, relay, long jump, high jump, I could do all of them.

He took me out on the track and it's history from there on.

Tommie and Lee provided the foundation

for what would soon become the world famous Speed City team.

I knew that he had very successful sprinters plus he was recruiting me too.

You know, they sent me letters and he sent Tommie to talk to me.

Well, Bud Winter

had always been, from anybody who was around the scene,

the number one sprint coach in the world.

But it was not until Tommie came and then the sprinters began to come afterwards

that the Speed City aspect developed.

There was a sort of avalanche of the top sprinters in the country, in the world, there.

Smith begins to pour it on, he literally flies toward the tape

winning in near-record time,

just three tenths of a second off his...

By 1965, Tommie was arguably the fastest man on earth.

As his reputation flourished, fellow athlete Lynda Huey became more than a fan.

We started seeing each other and it lasted for about a year.

He was very secretive. He didn't want anyone to know that we were involved,

we were dating, we saw each other behind closed doors

either at my apartment or at his apartment.

Tommie had good cause to be secretive.

Interracial marriage was still outlawed in many states.

Besides, many young blacks were rejecting whites and multiracial ideals

and a militant school of black human rights activism

was now challenging the dominance of the civil rights movement.

We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us.

But we are not non-violent with anyone who is violent with us.

Malcolm X altered the mindset of many young blacks.

I am the greatest.

Most notably, a charismatic young boxer, whom he persuaded to join the separatist Nation of Islam.

Why do you insist on being called Muhammad Ali now?

It's the name given to me by my leader, Elijah Muhammad,

that's my original name, that's a black man name.

Cassius Clay is my slave name, I'm no longer a slave.

On 21st February 1965,

Ali's mentor was gunned down in Harlem, martyred for the struggle.

He was a hero to me. He showed the white man where it was at.

And the goal of black progress was also being threatened by events overseas.

This was also the time when we were all aware that our peers were being

sent 12,000 miles away to fight in Vietnam,

but they couldn't go to school in Alabama or Mississippi.

This angered us, this made us willing to do whatever we could to transform America.

Tommie served his country by enlisting in the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

By contrast, in April 1967,

outspoken world heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali was drafted into the US military.

Mr Muhammad Ali has just refused to be inducted into the United States armed forces.

Notification of his refusal is being made to the United States attorney.

Muhammad Ali was the godfather of this generation.

I don't see why we and other so-called Negroes go 10,000 miles

to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people

who's never bothered us.

What made Muhammad Ali so important to African America athletes

was the same reason why Bob Dylan was so important to white activists in the late 1960s.

It was they they had seemed to have done it already, you know? They were ahead of the curve.

Ali's principled stand inspired militant black students at San Jose State.

It also galvanized newly appointed sociology of sport professor, Harry Edwards,

who, after gaining his doctorate, returned to teach there in 1967.

What I was doing in the classes was pointing out

that sport inevitably recapitulates society.

You can't have a racist society and not have a racist sports institution and here's the evidence of it.

He was my instructor at a course called Racial Minorities.

When he offered it the first time, I took that course.

And there were 300 to 400 students in an auditorium,

most of them white and he would come in there dressed in

a military Vietnamese jungle-covered outfit

with matches in his pocket and wearing his black beret and at 6'8", 200 lbs he would just walk

down the aisle and scare everybody and it was kinda like "Cool! Scare us, Harry, cool!".

Harry's classes radicalised Tommie.

Yet it was a casual remark Tommie made at the World University Games in Tokyo in November 1967

that precipitated the events, which would trigger the black protests at the Olympics, a year later.

A boycott is possible and it's probable.

The reasoning is why should we participate for a country

and 100% effort and come back to our homes

and are denied some of the rights that should be given us.

I didn't say yes, there would be, I didn't say

no, there wouldn't be. I said,

between the lines there's work for all of us to do. Let's wait and see.

And a major part of it was the media focusing back on us as a consequence of Tommie's

statements in Japan, and Tommie's statements in Japan came directly out of

some of the courses, some of the discussions, debate and so forth

that were taking place on this campus.

I think it was almost accidental,

it wasn't scripted, it wasn't rehearsed, it wasn't planned,

it was in response to a question,

you get an honest answer and a controversy comes out of that answer

that all of a sudden allows people like Harry Edwards and Tommie Smith

to see they were in the middle of something, something was possible.

In the fall of 1967, Harry and Ken became militant.

They challenged the college authorities

to reverse its racist policy towards black athletic scholars.

And more.

And while we are at it, let's look at the housing, let's look at the academic opportunities,

the whole situation with the fraternities and the sororities,

let's look at the whole issue of the hiring. Where are the Negro professors, the Negro coaches,

they're taking our football from us, but if we wanted a job here,

we couldn't work here.

Well, it was disbelief, you know.

Who are these guys, there's no problem,

you guys are creating a problem.

Everything is fine.

Well, the only thing I recall was the list of demands that

Harry made and I remember looking at those thinking they won't be able to meet those.

That's not gonna work! But I had also been very involved in

some of those demands because I had gone and rented apartments

for some of these guys and then turned a key over to them.

Harry and Ken organised a student demonstration.

It changed nothing.

By contrast, their threat to boycott the college's lucrative,

season-opening football match against Brigham Young University reaped rewards.

Success inspired them to act on Tommie's proposal for a black Olympic boycott.

In November 1967, Harry won unanimous support

for the idea at the Los Angeles Black Youth Conference...

His victory would put him on a collision course with international Olympic supremo Avery Brundage,

who was adamant that sport should be a politics-free zone.

And he wasn't alone.

We were in a situation where not all of the athletes

were either accessible or likely to participate

in anything close to a boycott.

Two such athletes were long jumpers Bob Beamon.

and Olympic gold medallist Ralph Boston.

As a guy who was nearing the end of his Olympic career,

my first reaction was I don't want to do this.

I need to go ahead and do this,

this is gonna be my ticket to

earning a good living for my family and so on and so I did... I wasn't...

I wasn't very interested at the time.

We'd been doing this here

half of our lives and suddenly we wanna give it up now,

for whatever he was trying to say?

Harry's proposed black Olympic boycott was anathema to Avery Brundage,

the all-powerful head of the International Olympic Committee.

In Olympic circles, the word boycott is not used - that's a political word.

If they withdraw for political reasons

it's a sign that they do not understand the Olympic philosophy of

no discrimination because of race, religion or political affiliations.

The Olympic Project for Human Rights or OPHR became the vehicle for the proposed black Olympic boycott.

Remarkably, the fledgling group was backed by Dr Martin Luther King,

who signed up as an advisor when he met Harry at the group's press launch in New York City.

Dr King was about 5'9" tall with his hat on and...

about 165lbs so I'm standing there

6'8", about 270lbs and he said, "Well, I see why these folk

"so scared of you. You huge!"

We laughed about it, but he understood that this was merely

an overlay onto athletics of the pattern and paradigm that he had established.

Uniquely, OPHR also won huge support

from the militant human rights wing of the black liberation struggle.

Harry courted activists including Stokely Carmichael.

We want black power, we want black power. Black power!

And H. Rap Brown.

The rebellions that we see

are merely dress rehearsals for the revolution that's to come.

OPHR backed up its call for a black Olympic boycott with a list of incendiary demands.

Their primary objective called for the dismissal of their archenemy, Avery Brundage.

Who we found on a country club in Santa Barbara

which had "no Negroes and no Jews need apply" in its charter

and this guy is the head of the International Olympic committee.

Avery Brundage had form.

He'd been instrumental in winning the 1936 Berlin Olympics for Adolf Hitler.

Two years later, Hitler reciprocated by contracting

Brundage's construction firm to build the German Embassy in America.

We're talking about somebody who was kicked out of the America First Committee in 1940,

which was a horrible Nazi solidarity group in the United States.

trying to keep the US out of World War 2. He was expelled

for being too pro-Hitler, it was embarrassing to them so he was asked to leave.

This is who Avery Brundage was and he made sure that the International Olympic Committee

contained more fascists than the Nuremberg trials.

Another OPHR demand concerned the movement's warrior saint, Muhammad Ali.

He'd been stripped of his world title and banned from boxing for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

OPHR insisted the decision be reversed.

Mr Clay. Muhammad Ali, sir.

Mr Clay... Muhammad Ali, sir.

..or Mr Muhammad Ali, either one. Yes, sir.

Muhammad Ali is important because he is probably

one of the first athletes who begins to

publicly articulate this relationship between sport, race

and politics and crucially begins to do so in a global context.

A third OPHR demand concerned "disinviting" the all-white teams

of Southern Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa to the 1968 Olympics.

Like the group's call for his sacking, it was bound to invoke the ire of Avery Brundage.

Well, in the first place we have not invited South Africa. We don't deal with nations.

We've invited a multiracial team, a mixed team, from South Africa

chosen by a multiracial committee according to Olympic regulations.

Whether we are talking about disinviting apartheid South Africa and southern Rhodesia,

restoring Muhammad Ali's title or the reign of Avery Brundage where he ran

the International Olympic Committee like a racist fiefdom,

you're talking about three points in which the people of the OPHR were proven correct by history.

It became very clear that there was a direct

network of connections

between what we were experiencing here at San Jose State

and what was being experienced on the national level

in the Olympic movement by African Americans

and what was happening in places like South Africa and Southern Rhodesia on the international level.

These were all the same people, it was the same power structure.

OPHR's demands were so outrageous that news headlines were guaranteed.

However, Harry was forced to reinvent himself to keep them in the media spotlight.

Don't forget that about 30 miles from San Jose was Oakland, California, the Black Panther party was born there.

So we started attending some Black Panther party meetings in Oakland

and they said we were militant. We weren't fighting anybody,

but they call you militant cos you wasn't agreeing with the status quo.

The Black Panther party

set...a new bar,

in terms of what was...accessible.

It's pigs, pigs, pigs, there's another pig at his campaign headquarters right up there.

Those suit-wearing days were over with, you didn't have to be polite, in point of fact,

the thing now was to get in their face.

Cos its all one big penitentiary, it's all run by pigs.

It was an aesthetic that was just on the absolute edge of cool.

It marked you as someone who was not gonna do it in the old civil rights way.

And that was something that Edwards adopted, far more than he adopted the actual politics of the Panthers.

In February 1968, OPHR took direct action on one of their demands,

the desegregation of the New York Athletic Club.

They staged a mass boycott of the club's showpiece centennial meet.

The New York Athletic Club was notorious for not allowing Jews or blacks

to come use the facilities.

When the track meet comes around, they want the black athletes to

come and help bring audiences and money to their doors.

That was one of the first things Harry targeted.

If we're good enough to get in and make $15-30,000

on one track meet for the New York Athletic Club,

we should be good enough to do anything

the New York Athletic Club has to offer.

I called some of my friends, the guys I knew. Hey, you know, don't go to the New York AC meet.

To have Igor come from Moscow

and be wined and dined and stay at the Athletic Club and I have never seen the inside

and I'm an American citizen and I'm competing in their meet - that didn't sit very well with me.

The boycott made national news.

Yet OPHR's credibility was undermined by its inability to present a united black front.

Long jumper, Bob Beamon, was one of a handful of athletes who crossed its picket line.

I felt in-between. I just hated for politics to...

..and human right issues... to seep into sports.

I was disappointed that he went to the New York AC meet because

only three or four blacks showed. Bob is lucky somebody didn't beat him down there in New York,

because some Black Panthers said that any black people who went, they were going to beat them down.

We understood what we were asking,

but it was necessary

in order to move this thing ahead.

I think that was one of the high points of the movement -

that was the closest thing to a boycott success.

Despite Bob's participation,

OPHR members had bigger issues.

Not least unwelcome attention, which threatened their goal of a black Olympic boycott.

It started as soon as we joined the proposed boycott,

"We're gonna kill you niggers Friday at two."

It happened on a daily basis almost. Tommie gave me a copy and said, 'Hey, look at this!"

and I say, "You haven't seen anything, look at these!"

So I had a whole box of hate mail.

Harry Edwards had his dogs cut up, killed and slaughtered and cut up in pieces and left on his doorstep.

He did in fact relate to Ken Noel

here's the kind of leadership we need to provide if I'm not gonna be around to complete it.

It got the place where I would not go to a restaurant,

a sit down restaurant where you order food from a menu and eat.

I wouldn't go to any restaurant except a smorgasbord, where they have all the food

laid out and you pay a certain amount at the front when you go in

then eat what you want, because if they didn't know I was coming, they couldn't poison me.

Racist rednecks were the least of Harry's problems.

His position as OPHR's mouthpiece had made him a target for the federal authorities.

There were so many instances where we would go someplace

and the guys would be out there.

We would go in two cars, him in front, I'm behind, I fall out

to a side street and wait and you see people coming by tailing us.

Right on to wherever we're going.

With Harry and co. up against it, Brundage looked set for victory.

OPHR desperately needed a boost.

And in April 1968, it came in the form of John Carlos,

a world-class sprinter-cum-activist from Harlem, who became a student at San Jose State.

Lee Evans and Art Simburg brought Carlos.

And Lee Evans spoke very highly of him and I remember him saying, "This is a guy who gets it.

"He understands what happened at San Jose State because we've talked about it."

These were things that were dear to his heart. These were not bulletins

to him. I mean, to some people these were things that were

a real awakening for people. It's not an awakening for him,

I mean, it was tremendous reinforcement of things that he knew.

He was the most militant of all of those track athletes.

He's the most vocal and the most militant and he would take a stand in anybody's face.

He would say anything to anybody, so yes, he was number one militant man on campus.

In John Carlos you have somebody who I think, much more than other historians give him credit for,

was very responsible for giving what happened in 1968 a certain edge and a certain timelessness

that pushed it from being a symbol of civil rights into a symbol of black power.

For all their athletic prowess and political zeal, Tommie, Lee and John alone

couldn't keep alive media interest in OPHR's proposed Olympic boycott.

Once again, Brundage was poised to silence the upstart Negroes.

Until OPHR got a fillip from a most unlikely source.

the Harvard 8-man rowing crew.

The way that all developed was as we were working to

make the Olympic team and as we were training through that summer

before the Olympic trials there were a number of articles about,

not only about what was referred to as the revolt of the black athletes,

but I think where it was starting to focus was on the notion

that there could be a boycott of the Olympics to highlight these issues.

For them to step up when they did was a crucial thing, to keeping if

not the possibility of a boycott alive

the idea of racial justice really in the public eye.

What we did in fact do was, as each member of the Olympic team

was selected in any sport we wrote them a letter.

We sent them a copy of our original statement. And we basically invited

everybody to make an effort to try to understand the plight of black athletes and the plight

of black people in America.

What was remarkable was how little response there was. It was very much

like dropping the rock in the well and not hearing the splash.

Although timely, the Harvard rowers' support couldn't generate media interest forever.

By August, Harry had a difficult decision to take.

We knew from the outset that we were not going to be able

to pull together a boycott for all the reasons that I've discussed

but that didn't mean that we were not able...that we would not be able to make a statement.

So the headline that came out in the paper after the press conference was "There are many ways to boycott".

Everybody is free to do what they feel,

their commitment permits them to do.

I think he really thought it was over, it was like

his eulogy for the movement and he didn't get it.

He'd really set something in motion that wasn't only not just

winding down but it was in fact looking to its high point.

'In October watch the summer Olympic Games exclusively live and in colour from Mexico City on ABC.'

'We are at Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains,

'scene of the United States Olympic men's track and field trials.'

When the Olympic trials were staged in September, OPHR was in disarray.

Harry didn't attend.

And the members who did were down and lacking direction.

'Here in the woods, we're ready to go now.'

Even so, the group welcomed a former dissenter into its ranks.

When the meetings began in California I starting getting hate mail

and I was nowhere even near that, it made sense to me

that if I'm gonna get hate mail, if I'm gonna get killed,

I might as well get killed - and the threat was there -

I might as well get killed for being a part of something rather than to stand out on this island alone.

World record 44.5 held by Tommie Smith.

Everything now rested on winning Olympic qualification, not hearts and minds.

Then an unprovoked intervention by Brundage

gave impetus to renewed militancy among the angry black athletes.

We went to Lake Tahoe and there was no meetings there was...

We didn't talk about it, but Avery Brundage, idiot that he is,

there was a newspaper article that said Avery Brundage makes a statement and he said,

"If they come to the Olympics and they make trouble we know what to do with them" - he threatened us.

So we started having meetings again.

It's a new world record.

In that meeting, Ralph Boston was a moderator of this meeting,

it was to front the letter that was sent to us by the IOC,

via the USOC that if any athlete step out of line that he would

be immediately kicked off the Olympic team and sent home.

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion there that we gonna go,

we are definitely gonna go, but we have gotta decide how to handle this thing we've got our hands around.

If I can ask you first of all - is the boycott itself dead now?

Is it finished?

I would say the boycott is off.

Now what about other things that might happen at Mexico City?

Well, I couldn't give you any concrete evidence

or any concrete answers on what will happen at Mexico City.

All I can say is, you can expect almost anything.

All I can say is, you can expect almost anything.

The Mexico City Games opened with a colourful display of global togetherness

with the world watching on.

The stage was set for Tommie, John and Lee to make a powerful statement, but what?

Harry wasn't there and his OPHR disciples had no concrete plan, It looked as if Brundage would enjoy

Indeed behind the scenes Brundage's minions, like American official

Bob Paul, were trying to neutralise potential troublemakers.

There were a series of remarkable incidences once we got to Mexico City.

Pete Axthelm, sports editor of Newsweek was initially denied credentials.

He got to the Olympic stadium and Bob Paul walked up to him and said,

"Oh, I see you got in. I hope you've got something better to write about than niggers".

I mean, this is the head of public relations for the Olympic Committee!

Umm, it was just breathtaking stuff.

The world record holder Tommie Smith of America - 6'3" and 14 stone.

Any thoughts Tommie had about representing OPHR's cause

entailed making it to the victory rostrum.

However, a moment of high drama during his semi-final

raised serious doubts about his future involvement at the Games.

Just watch Tommie Smith go from this stage and he's really powering it away.

When I crossed the finish I turned my left leg a little too much.

Again very close, the world record, and disaster for Tommie Smith.

It only took half a stride and I felt it, I said,

"Oh, no I've been shot," because of all the hate mail I had gotten.

That could be the difference between the gold medal and nothing at all.

And you know what I said? To myself of course.

"Oh, it's just a pulled muscle." Now where do those words come from?

You idiot! A pulled muscle means that there is a possibility,

that you will not compete.

I managed to get through some barriers, past some guards,

somehow pull something to get over to the area, where they're, you know they're in a tent.

They actually froze the groin area where the injury had happened and you see his first few steps.

It's very obvious he wouldn't be able to explode off the blocks, if he could run in the final.

After they iced it and Bo had said, "Tom Tom lets go out on the practice track and try it out."

And I said, "OK. coach."

It was a tense time.

And I said, "Coach, I think I'm OK," he said, "OK, in a few minutes they're gonna call

"the final call for the 200 metres, be ready." I said, "OK!"

But when it came to the final he was there and in great

competition with his fellow American John Carlos, this was the final of the 200 metres for men.

It's all or nothing now.

The proposed boycott, all the training, lost my job,

wife needs clothes, Kevin needs milk, cotton fields, all this was here.

Come to your marks! Get set!

Silence! Nothing I heard,

but silence.

Doing well in lane two is Tommie Smith who's got one of the best starts in his career.

I'm in trouble.

Mid turn or coming out of the turn cause I was in third or fourth place.

In lane two is Roger Bamford coming up to John Carlos,

but Carlos coming now.

'At about eighty metres cause it was just out of the turn.'

I made a surge and when I made the surge I could almost feel myself

Tommie Smith of America going well Tommie Smith America out in front and Carlos on the near side.

And I knew that the only way I was going to catch anybody

in front of me was a burst of speed.

And Carlos is being followed by Tommie Smith coming right through,

Tommie Smith wins, what a victor!

'That smile.'

Just before crossing the tape was a smile of genuine elation

that it is over.

I have done

what I'm here to do.

The time inside 19.8, the new world record.

'I had decided to have'

Mrs Smith bring me gloves, but I didn't know what I was gonna do with them.

When they were getting ready to go out for the awards ceremony

it was clear something was up,

um, they had black gloves on,

they had black socks.

I had a left glove and I told John,

"John, this is what I'm gonna do, if you want the left glove,

"you can have it."

The fellow who won the silver medal was an Australian named Peter Norman.

He said, "Mate, I believe in what you believe in and I want to help".

"White boy, you're Australian, I mean come on,

"go get your medal and just, you know..."

so I said no.

And on the way out Paul Hoffman was hanging over the banister.

I was wearing my Olympic Project for Human Rights button

and he looked at me and said "Have you got another one of those?"

And so here's this white Australian with two black Americans about to go

out on an awards ceremony and wants a button,

I'm damned if I'm gonna be the one to say he can't so I said, "You'll wear it?"

and he said "yes" so I gave mine to him.

We were really excited and thrilled and, kind of, not really expecting much from these guys,

maybe from Carlos cos he was the more militant, but not from Tommie, this was a share-croppers son.

from Lemoore who picked cotton, this was the quiet child.

There were more than two hundred of us watching.

the actual event, we knew something was gonna happen.

The star spangled banner,

when they did what they did was absolute eternity.

'But see I did not throw a rock and hide my hand.

'What I did is held my hand up in a cry for freedom.'

We were electrified when they raised their fists,

none of us knew that was coming

and when it happened it was so right.

People called it... "Black power", of course I'm black, of course we represented power,

but it was a cry for freedom.

"Here, notice me, I'm in need..."

"What are you in need of?" Justice.

We were in awe of it, we were silent we just stood there.

Nobody said a word through the Anthem, we just sat there and looked at each other

and looked back at the TV and looked at each other and looked back at the TV.

It was quite a moment.

You know, you're sitting there and saying that's along time for

somebody to take out a gun and shoot them.

You're doing this in the same year that Martin Luther King and a Kennedy are assassinated?!

I think there was a great deal of shock and people,

people were sort of awe struck by what they're looking at.

I don't think until after it was over you heard a huge murmur afterwards, you know, trying to kind of...

what did all this mean?

Tommie can you tell us the significance of the black glove

on the right hand and the black socks?

They represent black America.

I'm proud to be a black man, and all my people back home

know that it's very significant.

Well, the iconography is absolutely, it's fascinating.

So you have the leading arm of Tommie Smith, his right arm raised

and you have the left arm of John Carlos and it forms that nice arc showing the unity.

of black America, so it becomes an aesthetic moment.

They're not wearing shoes as a way to say something about

poverty in black America,

they're wearing beads

around their necks to symbolise the lynchings that had occurred

in the history of black America.

John Carlos's jacket is unzipped which is a tremendous breach in protocol.

He said to me he kept his jacket unzipped because he wanted it to be

a tribute to blue collar workers black and white.

Peter Norman disrupts that simple narrative of it only being

about Black Nationalist politics and it broadens it out.

That's a reason that the image has been so powerful -

you can read into it, so many different stories.

It blows your mind that this isn't just a black thing.

This is a moment of resistance, this is about people who've had enough.

And people who want to stand up and be counted and it gives

taking things away from white people, about the advance of black people.

There is a place for white people, there has to be a place for white people in that struggle.

The American team spokesman said today that United States Olympic officials

wouldn't take any action against American Negroes Tommie Smith and John Carlos

who raised their arms in a Black Power salute during the Olympic medal ceremony.

The officials knew that they planned to do it before the ceremony,

the runners had told their coach who notified Olympic officials

said the spokesman, they said they did it to show black people are united.

Yet Avery Brundage wouldn't let it lie.

He dispatched Jesse Owens

to prevent any repetition of Tommie and John's demonstration.

Jesse did Brundage's bidding, despite his master stripping him

of his amateur status in a fit of pique

after the 1936 Olympics, a decision which had reduced the great Olympian

to racing against horses to make money.

and Avery Brundage in all his mutton-idiocy

decides that "Well, Jesse Owens must be a black icon to these young men because he's black and famous.

"Therefore I will send Jesse Owens in, in all his well-spoken Ohio state four gold medal

"grandeur and Jesse Owens will calm all of this down".

These guys, they didn't want to hear from Jesse Owens

for ten seconds.

As soon as they saw Jesse Owens and knew he was sent there by Brundage that was it.

To me,

politics has no part to play on the field of strife of competition

I've never believed it.

He came in there to our meeting and told us we shouldn't wear black socks

and he gave us some stupid reason

why we shouldn't wear black socks, then he said it was

going to be hard for us to find a job when we get back to America if we do these type of things.

I said, "We can't find a job now.

"We have you know, Tommie and John couldn't find a job

"before they stuck their fists in the air so what's the damn difference?".

And he cried!

There were some athletes said that, you know, you had to do what you did because you're a Tom.

We chased him out, the great, the great Jesse Owens, man.

We looked at him as a Big Uncle Tom.

And what really hurt me was that...

..he was not even allowed a position

on the United States Olympic committee

until after we demanded

that a black person be put on the United States Olympic committee and they put him on.

and attacked us saying that's not the way you get things done.

Although Brundage failed to bring the uppity black boys

back into line, he had a personal stake in ensuring Tommie and John were punished for their stand.

Good morning, the Olympic Games are one week old today,

and yesterday the sixth day was the most dramatic so far.

It started with the news that the Black Power disciples Tommie Smith and John Carlos

the Olympic two hundred metres Gold and Bronze medallists had been suspended

by the United States Olympic committee and given 48 hours to leave Mexico.

I said that if there were any demonstrations

at the Olympic games by anyone, the participants would be sent home.

That demonstration I think aroused resentment among all who saw it,

there's no place for such things

and the boys involved were promptly sent home.

I heard in their expulsion

the hand of Avery Brundage.

And if you don't do anything

I am going to ban the entire American Olympic team, oh, yes.

Brundage couldn't let it go, and for him it was both

a matter of the personal attacks

that he had been subjected to.

Avery Brundage is a racist and I'm very surprised that

they re-elected Avery Brundage.

As a matter of fact, I heard about it cos I see there's n

improvements gone everything is still standing at the same way.

The gesture, you know, some people saw it and were impacted by it,

but it didn't really get big and didn't really offend millions of Americans

until the IOC insisted that Smith and Carlos were removed from the Olympic village.

Do you think the Olympic Games are the right place to do this

kind of thing or to use this as a kind of world stage?

David, since we are athletes, although I am a teacher, but I'm not a politician...

..we used this so the whole world can see the poverty of the black man in America.

Cynics might say that you've got it all, you've got publicity, you got medals,

you got martyrdom as well, what do you say to that?

I can't eat that and the kids round my block they can't eat it,

and the kids that's gonna grow up after them they can't eat it publicity,

they can't eat gold medals as Tommie Smith said.

All we ask for is an equal chance to be a human being

and as far as I see now, we are five steps below the ladder

and every time we try and touch the ladder

they put their foot on our hands and don't want us to climb up.

As Tommie and John received their marching orders, Paul Hoffman became the target

for a United States Olympic Committee disciplinary panel, he'd been seen handing

his OPHR badge to Peter Norman.

He was to answer a conspiracy charge.

If found guilty Paul would forfeit his place in his crews rowing final the next day.

After a long

discussion of really not much, they sent me down

the room to their hospitality lounge

and then after about an hour or so somebody came down and said

"Congratulations, you can race tomorrow".

I had to pretend that somehow I should say thank you.

I heard later part of the discussion was...

Many of these men had met my father who was a judge on the Virgin Islands,

a former track guy staying in the same hotel and they said well, you know,

his father is a judge, he should be a good guy.

That kind of completely irrational irrelevant argument.

Whatever it was however, it got to the result I wanted which was to row the next day.

Two days after Tommie and John's Black Power salutes made headline news around the globe

a black team mate did likewise

with a breathtaking example of athleticism.

'On the long jump runway, Bobby Beamon of the United States,

'the man most feared by every competitor in this competition.'

And I stood there for a minute and I said, you know...

I feel good...

I feel like I'm gonna do something very special.

'And here he goes for his opening leap.'

He comes zipping down the run-up.

And I'm very loose.

And he hits the first jump and he's that far from the end of the take off.

I noticed that I was up there five minutes, ten minutes,

twenty five minutes, an hour, suddenly I landed.

'Ooh, it's an enormous one!'

And when he hits the pit there's a roar. ROAR!

'My goodness me, it's an enormous one!'

I had a sense of people in the stands giving, uh, "Hey, hey!".

'Ralph Boston there, congratulating him.'

They had to find a measuring tape because the site device

would only go to 8 metres 60, they finally rolled out the number.

Which was in metres, and I said, "Hmmm...' I had no idea.

And he came to me and he said,

"how far is that Ralph?" And I'm...

"that's 29 feet."

He said, "No", I said, "no, that's more than 29 feet."

'Good gracious me!

'He's looking around at the judge... My good... If HE'S leaping about!

'Remember this man's done 27 before!'

You know, I was like, are we crazy?

But then he, uh, he walked around a little bit

and he walked up to Charlie Maze and myself

and then he started to collapse and that's the picture that I've seen

where we were trying to pick him up.

Bobs astonishing leap of 29 feet, 2� inches claimed the gold medal.

Ralph won bronze, although they weren't finished yet.

In my mind, we had come this far and you gotta make some sort of statement.

Bob was probably angry, when they kicked Tommie and John off the team

a lot of people who was not involved

got involved because they were angry.

My protest was - my barefoot, my pants rolled up, my whatever you want to call it

defiant looks and so-forth was in support of John and Tommie.

He took his shoes off and I raised my socks.

It could've been interpreted as the same as John and Tommie in a sense.

'The 400m final.'

There was great expectation as Lee lined up for the final which was delayed by Bob's wonder jump.

As the world's top 400m runner and a leading member of OPHR,

the pressure was on to win and to protest.

When the guy said, "Set" a smile came on my face.

'The last to rise there was the Ethiopian, Lee Evans.'

They shot the gun and I was flying, you know.

'Closing up in lane two all the time

'and there goes Evans now on the outside.

I decided to lay it all out, I went up to 100% effort

from 200 metres to the finish.

'Lee Evans nearest the camera and the two Americans on the inside.'

And...the rest is history! I broke the World Record

43.86, it stood for 20 years.

It's gonna be an American one, two, three! Lee Evans slowing up,

he could get beaten, Lee Evans could get beaten!

No, he wins it! Evans wins,

James second, Ron Freeman third, another gold medal for America.

Lee had been so very important to everyone's consciousness changing

before Mexico City.

Lee had been more militant than Tommie.

Lee had been more conscious than John and once Tommie

and John, uh, thrust their fists into the air,

umm, we just couldn't wait for Lee's event.

'And they have made their protest,

'they're all wearing small black berets.'

When we saw him approaching the podium with the beret,

uh, we knew that the sky was the limit.

'The Americans have said that any other athletes will be disciplined and now

'all three of the American negroes who've got medals for 400m wearing tokens of protest.'

Somebody said that they was gonna shoot at us on the victory stand,

so I figured it'd be hard to shoot a guy with a big smile on his face,

I had my biggest smile, because I was scared to death.

'The American Olympic committee on record this morning yet again

'saying that any more demonstrations or gestures

'would result in the athletes being sent home,

'and if the Americans are true to their word, they've just lost their 4 x 400 relay team.'

There was a sense among the black athletes

that Lee had let them down. Like, these two guys got thrown out,

take your own risk and get thrown out, don't be just protecting

your own butt so you can get another gold medal.

Especially when he took the beret off when the National anthem

was playing, there was a visible sense of disappointment in the crowd

that was watching in the dormitory.

Lee was told he was gutless.

That's a tough thing.

What he did wasn't good enough for African Americans

who he was interacting with. Definitely it was too much

for many white folks, so he was very much caught in-between.

He was somebody who really did the dirty work when it came to building

the Olympic Project For Human Rights, I mean he was the person who advocated for it,

who spoke to other athletes, who in Europe spoke to European athletes

about how they fused politics and sports.

It was hard for me to handle because I have, I was... I had no second thoughts about my militancy

and so it didn't... When it was questioned, you know, I became angry and disappointed.

In retrospect, Lee was under even more pressure

than any of us could imagine,

but in our youthful zeal, we wanted him to do something that was impossible.

What could you do beyond what Tommie and John had done?

The Mexico City Olympics were over.

Despite the controversies, they witnessed America's best ever track and field team.

The Black Victory stand protests had given the lie to

Brundage's assertion that politics and sports shouldn't mix.

Now all that remained was for Tommie, John and Lee to return to San Jose State

to complete their studies and face the consequences of their actions.

Tommie and John were never pariahs with us.

When they came back from Mexico City, they were celebrated.

We paraded them around on campus, uh, we couldn't get enough of Tommie and John when they came back.

It was a life-changing experience

and I saw from, directly after Mexico City, I saw students around,

African American students around the country

beginning to do things.

Tommie Smith!! Tommie Smith!!

It gave confidence to people even outside of America that they were part of

a broader movement and this is why

we need to situate that moment alongside the iconography of people

like Pele and Eusebio and the emergence of the West Indies cricket team which begins to take place

in the '60s as a kind of a dominant force.

Where blacks celebrated Tommie and John, whites were generally hostile.

Carlos's dog was slaughtered

and thrown on his front porch, his wife committed suicide, um, I don't know where their daughter is now.

'Tommie Smith - the fastest man in the world has ended up here

'in the northern industrial town of Wakefield.' OK, make a circle, bring it around, all the way around.

I travelled anywhere I could travel to pay the rent and buy food.

'This is how far he has fallen

'four years in which he's been thrown out of the US athletics team,

'his marriage has broken up, he's been spat at in the street

'and has received more than 50 threats on his life.'

Had I been a good boy in Mexico,

I coulda probably been monetarily richer and I would probably have

been a bigger figure than I am right now,

but yet 'n' still I would have to fight myself from the inside.

Lee's fortunes also went into a steep nose-dive.

There was some backlash on Lee when he came back to San Jose.

I've always felt that that was why he went off to Africa and coached

for 20, 30 years, however long he was gone, because he,

he was not welcomed home as a hero like John and Tommie were by the rest of the black community.

Harry Edwards, the architect of the Olympic protests also suffered.

It bothered me that he wasn't at Mexico City.

First of all it was the question might he even have survived there

None of them for example had to deal with

the FBI and other kinds of pressures,

uh, the surveillance of my home,

in my classes or at the places that I that I worked.

I was fired, uh, from here, uh, at San Jose State

right after the Olympic protest so they didn't have to deal with that.

After spending the '70s in the wilderness, Tommie and John were suddenly brought in from the cold.

There was an attempt to tell a new story about race and sports in the United States.

It started in the '80s and really came together with the 1984 Olympic Games.

American optimism is one of its greatest renewable resources

and, America's lost innocence is one of those amazing things where they keep losing it and then

they find it again just in time to be surprised once more.

So their re-incorporation into the story really chimes with how America deals with its past.

The story went from a period of exclusion to the successes

of Jesse Owens right up through Tommie Smith and John Carlos's stand in Mexico City,

and it set in motion a transformation.

It made Smithy and Carlos heroes of the Civil Rights Movement rather than villains of the Black Power phase.

Tommie and John's re-admission into respectable society was completed in October 2005

when a statue of their iconic protest was unveiled at San Jose State University,

the place it all began.

Dr Harry Edwards came and you know, all the athletes came

and I just grabbed Harry and cried. People said, "Why's he crying, hugging that man?", you know?

It wasn't a man I was grabbing, it was history that I'm holding onto,

he's certainly history.

To see that event in Mexico is to see the product of Harry's genius

and it really was genius.

Single-handedly he helped to move individuals who had no real understanding

of the complexity of these matters to form a judgment about what they could do if they were given a chance.

It's not accidental that Smith and Carlos and Evans took courses

from me here at San Jose State.

The struggle in sports not only made sense,

it became the obligation of a generation.

One can measure tremendous progress from that day to this

on the things that they were demonstrating about,

the treatment of frankly black people generally in America

and particularly so for athletes.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were correct and that's the thing that,

I think, drives alot of people crazy about this moment,

because it can't be erased from our collective consciousness because they were correct.

Those guys did more to change this country than, than,

than I think we'll ever realise and I'm glad they're my friends.

# Say it loud I'm black and proud

# Say it loud I'm black and proud

# Lordy lordy lordy

# Say it loud I'm black and proud

# All right now... #

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