Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

male announcer: The following is a presentation

of HBO Sports.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- '68 was cram-packed with enough events

that could have covered the whole century.

♪ ♪

- Many cities blew up in riot, they burned.

Night in and night out.

Smoldering fires of discontent.

- The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

- If his life was not worth very much,

then who am I?

I don't care how fast and how far you can jump.

You're still just another nigger.

- It gave them pause to think

about the hatred, the animosity.

- I am a man. Treat me like a human being.

- You just can't stop the stupidity

and the racism with just words.

- That single gesture was like a stick of dynamite

in a pile of dynamite.

- People thought that victory stand was a hate message.

But it wasn't.

It was a cry for freedom.

male narrator: "Fists of Freedom:

The Story of the '68 Summer Games."

[clamoring]

During the long, hot summer of 1968,

a country stood on the eve of destruction.

Conflict and struggle was everywhere.

Against the war in Vietnam, against racial inequality,

against poverty.

[screaming]

[gunfire]

It was alongside that messy backdrop

of political and social unrest

that a group of America's black track athletes

willingly stepped into the cauldron.

[inspiring music]

Well aware of the wholesale injustice that consumed them,

two of those athletes took a courageous stand

and delivered a single image so powerful and provocative,

it remains a part of them and us to this day.

♪ ♪

[calm music]

What's revealing is how those athletes

arrived at that seminal moment.

John Carlos and his fellow Olympic sprinters,

Tommie Smith and Lee Evans,

each struggled with life's hardships

in different parts of the country.

♪ ♪

But their character and athletic talents

were shaped by similar social and economic conditions.

♪ ♪

- I came into San Jose State 6'3", about 170 pounds.

Dripping wet. "Tommy, you're really strong.

"Guys now just can't keep up with you.

You can run for a mile."

They said, "Did you work out over the summer?"

I said no.

But actually, I did. Because I worked in the fields.

My family background was a farm background.

A hardworking background.

Picking cotton, chopping cotton, cutting grapes,

feeding the hogs, milking the cows, everything.

- Hey, this is sharp, whoa!

- They used to walk up to town with my 25 cents

and buy ice cream, and be heckled on the way up there.

"Get out of the road, little nigger.

Go back to the jungle."

I'm just going to get me some ice cream.

As the seven kids got up, and he said,

everybody up, we're going to work.

I said, "Well, Daddy, I have a meet today."

He said, "You can run this Saturday.

"But if you take a second place,

"you going to be out in the field

with the rest of your brothers and sisters next week."

And ever since then, I got a lot of burn marks

across my chest.

Lee and I met in the grape fields.

- I grew up in rural Fresno California.

I did a lot of farm labor work as a kid.

I did farm labor work until I was 16 years old.

Every summer, all summer. Sun up to sun down.

If you worked 10 to 12 hours in the cotton field,

or the grape patch,

then you come and you bring your cotton

to the scale to be weighed, and the guy's just

cheating you at the scale, call you nigger, you know.

I'd buy a dollar's worth of gas,

and go buy a dollar's worth of worms,

and go fishing, and catch enough fish to eat all week.

[cheers]

- I saw this young kid over there,

talking all this smack, making noise.

And I went over to one of the other

top sprinters at the time, I said,

"Who the heck's this guy over there?"

And he said, "Ah, that's some high school kid named Carlos."

- John Carlos was New York City.

narrator: More specifically, Harlem.

[groovy music]

On those streets, Carlos learned to fight his battles,

and handle his hustles.

- He was boisterous on the track.

He was boisterous in the classroom.

He was boisterous in the parties that he attended.

He was boisterous when he tried to hit on women.

He had an entirely different demeanor.

- Some guy at a service station

was giving his little daughter some grief,

and John just got out of the car and smacked the guy.

He just knocked the guy down.

Put the child in the car and left.

You wanted him to be your friend,

because you didn't want John Carlos as your enemy.

[soft music]

- Athletics was their one chance in life

to escape doom or poverty.

♪ ♪

They had a sense of hope.

narrator: For Smith, Evans, and Carlos,

speed was more than their salvation.

It was also an accurate reflection

of their unique personalities.

- Tommie was the fastest human being that I had ever seen.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Bob Hayes at maximum speed was at 25 miles per hour

between 50 to 75 yards, and Tommie

was actually increasing to 28 miles per hour

at 75 meters to 100 meters.

His stride length, which averaged 8'5",

actually increased to 8'8"

the last 20 meters of a 200 meters.

- In Sacramento, California, 1967.

We came off the curve, I would run, I said, man,

I'm going to beat Tommie Smith today, boy.

I'm going to beat this guy.

My peripheral vision picks up a kneecap.

His knees are about as high as my eyebrows.

When that knee came down,

he's seven meters in front of me.

I said, no one had ever passed me, first of all.

And secondly, no one had ever passed me like that.

It was like he was on a motorcycle.

He was gone.

[whooshing noise]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Majestic, it was gazelle-like.

And you had that feeling that you sometimes

were watching Tommie in slow motion

even when he was at full speed.

- Lee Evans was almost the opposite

of Tommie Smith's grace.

You knew he was working hard.

[inspiring music]

- If you had to pick one athlete in this century

who symbolized what Kipling would describe

of 60 seconds' worth of distance run,

it would be Lee Evans.

♪ ♪

Lee was the most ferocious, tenacious competitor

I've ever watched on a track, and maybe in sports.

His form was not what you would call classic.

♪ ♪

- Lee had a running style that made you call him

The Tasmanian Devil, because he was everywhere.

- I would weave left, I weaved right.

- Sometimes, his arms, instead of going up and down,

you'd see them flailing across the track.

- He was like a drunk on roller skates half the time.

♪ ♪

- As he came down the track,

it looked like he was one step away from death.

- With John, it was as if he was on the street

up in Harlem, running from one fire hydrant to the next.

- He'd eat a hotdog, drink a soda and come out,

and beat most guys.

- They're announcing, last call for the 100 meters.

All of the other guys are down there at the starting line.

John is sitting up in the stands,

joking with his friends.

- Drinking wine, smoking dope.

After being challenged by three sprinters,

he walked down underneath the stands,

took his street clothes off, got in a track uniform.

- And he'd get down in the starting blocks

and be talking to the sprinters.

- Carlos says in his heavy New York accent,

"Come on, sucker, I want to see what you got."

[gun fires]

[cheering]

narrator: All three gifted athletes

eventually came to San Jose State.

Smith first, then Evans, and finally, Carlos.

Each lured to California by the school's

legendary track coach, Bud Winter.

San Jose was Speed City.

- Touchdown, that's all!

- San Jose State was smaller than USC or UCLA,

which were the larger schools.

And so, there was a real expression

that said to the rest of the world,

"Here we are, guys. Come get us.

Let's see if you can handle us."

And it was definitely something

that they knew they had,

and they carried it with them very well.

[soft music]

And "Speed City" became kind of synonymous

not only with just the sprints,

but also a kind of expression of the athlete himself.

And it was primarily through the voices

of the black athletes who were very much individualists,

who also had a certain culture and character about them.

♪ ♪

narrator: Tommie Smith arrived at San Jose State

in the fall of '63.

Afraid of having to go back and work the fields,

he was determined not to fail academically.

- I had my horn-rimmed glasses. I had my big old bag of books.

I had my trails to go to the library.

- He gave me a sheet of paper, he said, Evans--

He always called me Evans.

"These are all the classes you have to take to graduate.

Make sure you take them all."

- Face front. Forward.

narrator: Smith wasn't interested in the politics

of the times.

He even joined the ROTC,

his generation's ultimate conservative symbol.

He was studious, religious,

and not the least bit rebellious.

- We both shared, I think it was $13,

a little phonograph.

He had a couple of religious records

that he had brought from home. I had likewise.

So we'd sit around, generally in the evening

after we'd finished studying and play those.

Because I sang in the choir in church,

and Tommie did as well.

- I thought I was Sam Cook or somebody, you know?

- ♪ Nobody knows ♪

♪ The trouble I see ♪

♪ Glory, hallelujah ♪

[groovy music]

♪ ♪

narrator: Evans and Smith appeared

to have adapted well to college life,

but in reality, they were still black athletes

on a mostly white campus,

surrounded by an overtly racist community.

- After the summer, you'd come to school,

and you'd start looking for an apartment.

You call.

"Oh, yes, we have an apartment for rent."

"Okay, we're going to come look at it."

I walked up.

"I'm a San Jose State student,

and I'm looking for a place to stay."

Curtain closed, chain on the door.

So when you open the door--click.

- "Oh, there's no apartment for rent.

We forgot to take the sign down."

And we weren't the only ones.

The black football players, the black basketball players

were having all the same experience.

- Beyond the athletic realm, there was the message

that once you take off that uniform,

you're just another nigger.

There were places that we couldn't eat.

I was thrown out of restaurants

that were not a block and a half from the campus.

We couldn't join fraternities.

So all of those things created a siege atmosphere.

[soft music]

narrator: In 1967, Harry Edwards

taught a racial minorities course at San Jose State

that attracted many of the school's black athletes.

As a former college athlete,

Edwards had instant credibility.

As an impressive and magnetic speaker,

Edwards used his bully pulpit

to turn athletes into advocates

and start a revolution.

- Sport was a legitimate lever

to bring about changes relative to race.

A battle for dignity and respect.

- We're not animals, we're not ants.

We're not rats, we're not roaches, we're human beings.

It was the message of the larger American society

for African-American people who sought and desired

to be treated with equanimity.

To be treated with justice, and it was painful to them.

And it gnawed at their conscience.

- There was a thing they called a constitution

that just grabbed my soul and just stopped it.

- They felt an increasing obligation

not despite, but precisely because

of their athletic visibility to step up.

- Your eyes are open, and you understand that hey,

maybe I can help do something about this.

I wanted to make sure that everybody knew

that Lee Evans is part

of the black social revolution in America.

- We had something to say to the system.

And we had a platform.

The platform was The Olympic Project for Human Rights.

- Black men and women athletes at a black youth conference

held in Los Angeles on the 23rd of November, 1967,

have unanimously voted to fully endorse

and participate in a boycott

of the World Olympic games in 1968.

- Tommy, a lot of people are taking this

as a sign of a lack of patriotism,

uh, on the part of the black athletes.

- It wasn't a hate campaign. We didn't carry guns.

We didn't beat anybody up. It was a platform of knowledge.

[soft music]

narrator: The project had six aggressive demands,

all of which dealt with

political and racial injustice.

If they were not met, America's black athletes

threatened to boycott the 1968 Olympic games.

♪ ♪

Tommie Smith had reluctantly attended the initial meeting,

but soon became a passionate supporter.

Others, mostly conservative and white,

weren't as accepting,

and their target was Harry Edwards.

- There is a generation coming up who are going to

tear your ass up about these very problems.

- What in the world is he doing here?

He doesn't belong here.

Who is this rabble-rouser coming into our world,

and upsetting the apple cart?

- I hope that this will not be an issue,

and I think that it should not be.

I think it should be the merit of the athlete

and certainly, what he does as an individual is important.

Not what someone tells him he should do.

- I'm all for letting your cause be known,

but when you become militant and you start

really adversely affecting the lives of others,

I think that's kind of where I kind of drew the line.

So I thought he was kind of a radical.

- A good share of the distrust, fear,

even loathing of Edwards,

was that he cut through the hypocrisy

that is both organized sports and the Olympics.

They saw somebody like Edwards standing up there

as a visible sign of something that was dangerous.

- Various forms of defecation

have been smeared on my car and on the windows.

The death threats were daily.

- I spoke out a lot against racism.

I was a captain in the Air Force at that time.

A soldier came up to me and he said,

you say another word

on black athletes and racism in America,

and you're court-martialed,

and you're in Vietnam the next day.

Do you understand me?

And I had to say "yes, sir."

- When I came home to the school

in which I was teaching, the principal said,

what did you think about that?

And I said, I was very supportive.

And he said, well, I think that anybody

who was supportive of that, including them,

should all be shipped to Africa.

- And I got hate mail

that said nobody cares if you go.

You're just another fast nigger.

narrator: Isolated in the face of intense racism,

black athletes found support for their project

in unexpected places.

Among them, the all-white Harvard crew,

themselves Olympic favorites.

- I think everybody on the crew

agreed with the principles.

We felt that we owed it to ourselves

to see how we could at least help get a dialogue going.

The fellows on my crew would write letters

explaining the Olympic Project for Human Rights

asking the people who came on the Olympic team

to join with us in a dialogue

to hear what the black athletes were saying,

and to try to make sure that we as athletes

started to understand that it wasn't the same for everybody

and that it shouldn't be the way it was for many.

In retrospect, what was interesting

is how few of the letters were answered.

The Olympic Project for Human Rights

was a very diffuse statement of ideals.

One of the things that appeared, however,

were buttons. This was the Olympic Project

for Human Rights button that my guys

and many of the black athletes

took to wearing that summer in '68,

and it really was very innocent,

but for us, the only non-disruptive way

we could say to the world "these ideas matter."

all: Racism must go, racism must go!

narrator: But to some, disruption had its place

and its rewards.

In the winter of '68, the Project made headlines

calling for the boycott of the New York Athletic Club's

annual indoor track meet.

[yelling]

- The New York AC had a history of discrimination.

Uh, you know, blacks were not allowed

to do anything in the New York AC but work there.

Thus exploiting black athletes

to support their racist organization.

Why should that go on?

- No! - Now!

[tense music]

narrator: When several black athletes ignored the plea,

a question was raised.

If the project's leaders couldn't get everyone to pass

on a mid-winter meet,

just how realistic was their planned Olympic boycott?

♪ ♪

- Was it an individual thing, or could you get

complete unity, and do you feel

that there is a complete unity now?

Or do you think that's it's still pretty much

an individual thing amongst the black athletes?

- The movement forced all black athletes to take sides.

- Do I do it or don't I? That was the big question.

Should we do this? Can we do this?

How can we do this? What are the benefits?

What are the pitfalls?

- "Black athletes" is a term we use,

but they were all individuals with individual opinions.

- And everybody had their own purpose.

Their own reasons, their own ideas,

their own identity, and you were trying

to blend all of these people together.

- So of course, they had questions.

What's going to happen to us if we don't run?

- It frightened a lot of black people.

But any time that there is change of that magnitude,

people are caught in the lurch.

People are caught in betwixt and in between.

Are you for a change, or are you an Uncle Tom?

- I, at that time, was 28 years old.

I had a wife and family.

I had to go to work once the Mexico City games was over.

I don't want to boycott. I want to go.

- You had athletes

who were in different regions of the country.

- If you're in a small town in Texas,

or you're in Tuscaloosa, Alabama,

or Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina,

you're not going to get it.

- When I approached one athlete:

"You know, brother, it's time for

black athletes to stand up."

He turned to me and looked and said,

"Hey, I'm not black. I'm colored."

I said, oh, okay.

I mean, this was something that had just not gotten

to the South at that point.

- Harry Edwards was in the West Coast being able to talk.

Let him try that in Mississippi at that time.

It wouldn't have worked.

I was the only black at the University of North Carolina,

but I knew that everybody did not welcome me with open arms.

So I had a responsibility that I accepted

when I went there, and I could not

lose sight of that responsibility.

I couldn't be altogether revolutionary,

because then that would close the door

for the other guy behind me.

[somber music]

- I just thought that there was just

too much for me to sacrifice.

I wanted a gold medal.

I just tuned it out and said, "Your goal is Mexico.

And that's it."

- So to try to sell them on the idea

was not just a hard sell; it was almost an impossible sell.

- They were going to go.

And I discovered that when, in the spring of 1968,

when I went to San Jose and spent a week talking

not only with Professor Edwards,

but with the athletes themselves.

But Harry was very smart. The press would just go to him.

- If you go back and look at the earliest pictures,

I was wearing a suit and a tie

anytime I went before the media.

As it became crystal clear that the name of the game

was keeping the media attention on the movement,

one had to go right up to the edge of civility.

I did everything that I could

to speak as uncompromisingly--

We've gotten past this Uncle Jesse Owens generation

that feels, "Well, I'll make my pile,

"and forget about the plight

of the rest of the black people in this country."

As militantly--

The time has passed where those of us who have

achieved some type of social standing,

some type of educational standing

in a racist society can sit back figure,

well, uh, they're just the little Negroes,

and they can do that to them.

But they wouldn't dare do this to me.

This is what got the Jews in trouble in Germany.

Because the white media fed on that.

- And Harry, in all his eloquence and size,

and pointing his finger, would convince them

that a boycott was a reality.

- It was a diabolical conspiracy

on the part of the white racists,

and their, uh, crackerjacks.

- I don't think any of us understood what he was saying.

Talk about polysyllabic words.

- So you had a whole lot of house niggers

say they didn't have anything against old master.

But you didn't see none of them staying at home

when that racist Lincoln let them go.

- I've got to tell you, I still don't understand his message.

narrator: Neither did IOC president Avery Brundage,

who despised the project's position.

Brundage had dedicated his life to the Olympic movement.

First as an athlete, then an administrator.

Now in his 80s, he felt it was his duty

to defend the sanctity and the purity of the games.

- The man was utterly inflexible.

I mean, you could see it in the way he stood,

in the way he walked.

By 1968, he just never began to understand

Harry Edward's position on this.

What he said, again and again, was--

- The fundamental basis of the Olympic movement

is no discrimination whatsoever

because of race, religion, color,

or political affiliations.

- Therefore, how can you use the Olympic Games

as a way to protest racism?

To him, it just made no sense at all.

- Avery Brundage was a pro-fascist racist

who didn't understand and didn't want to understand

what was going on.

- Avery Brundage was to this movement

what Bull Connor was to the Civil Rights Movement.

If he hadn't been there, they would have had to

somehow provoke someone into that role.

Avery Brundage represented a generation which

not only knew Negroes' legitimate place,

knew that Negroes didn't have the necessities,

but they did everything they could

to keep Negroes in that place.

He perceived us as a bunch of misguided clowns.

- Brundage was a known racist.

He had a country club in Santa Barbara

that Jews and blacks couldn't join.

So he was a racist down to his toes.

- And he was blatant about it.

He was blindly open about it.

- A boycott would only be to the disadvantage

of the boys themselves.

- Those boys aren't going to go down there and do anything.

- I don't think any of these boys will be foolish enough

to demonstrate at the Olympic Games.

- And if those boys do do anything--

- And if they do, they'll be promptly sent home.

[gunshot]

- And here they come.

narrator: Just two months before the Mexico City games,

the US track and field team

began a novel training experiment

in Lake Tahoe, California.

- The '68 team was the first team that went

to an extended training camp. It was a very unique setup.

We needed to be at high altitude, at 8,000 feet.

There were no tracks in the country at that high altitude.

So one was built at Echo Summit.

- I have never seen a track like that.

That was the most beautiful place to train.

I mean, it was absolutely heavenly

to get up and go out and train every day,

because there were trees on the infield.

[light applause]

- They just cut a 400 yard oval among trees.

When you were working out, you disappeared

behind the trees for a while.

Which got to be fairly interesting

in some of the practice races we had.

- It looks like Gitten's out front

as they go behind the trees.

- Because if you misjudged your pace,

and you knew you were going to have a poor finish

some people just stopped running behind the trees,

and went back to their dorm room

without finishing the race.

narrator: But Echo Summit's idyllic setting was deceiving.

While the black athletes trained

in solitude and serenity,

they agonized over the summer's troubling events.

As the violence in America's cities intensified,

so did debate over the movement.

To ensure team unity,

the Olympic boycott had long been abandoned.

But the summit's environment compelled athletes

previously uncommitted to the project

to get involved.

- The events of 1968, especially during that hot,

smoldering, sweltering summer,

propelled them into a political consciousness

that they had not yet enjoyed.

- We, as a people, will get to the promised land.

- The death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

was extraordinarily catalytic.

It really made them think hard and sharp

about the wages of race in American society.

And then, with the death of Bobby Kennedy,

who never intended anything but goodwill toward Americans

of all stripes and hues,

what then are they trying to tell us?

And so, those black athletes were a bit more angry,

a bit more willing to be sacrificial.

- You had them living in trailers.

You had them very close.

You had them really bonding out of that community.

Out of that camaraderie, out of that commitment.

Something was happening.

There was a rumble in the midst.

- And at that point, we could interact with each other

and we could talk about things.

- You can play a part.

You don't have to just stand there

and just watch everybody else.

Do something; don't be on the sideline.

- They began to be persuaded by the logic of Tommie Smith.

They saw he wasn't a fire-breathing radical.

He wasn't some behemoth of ideology against white people.

He was simply saying, look, I want to be treated like a man.

- We were not there to pull the athletes in,

point our fingers at them and say,

you do this, or you do that.

No, we found another echelon of understanding.

The more I thought about us, the hate letters,

the phone calls, it kind of made me realize

that these guys are saying something that made sense.

- It was okay to be different.

It was okay to have an opinion.

That when you go to the Games, you take yourself with you.

What you do, and how you do it,

is going to have an impact.

[uplifting music]

It boiled down to, well, you're not going to boycott,

but what are you going to do?

- Everybody was going to wear black socks.

- Some guys said, well, I can't run in socks.

We said, well, let's all wear black armbands.

"Oh, I can't run with a black armband," some guy would say.

- I remember going out with a fever,

going shopping for shoe polish to dye my shoes black.

- We thought a minute, oh, we paint our shoes black,

then we can't get our money

under the table from the shoe companies.

[laughs]

Right, because, you know, Adidas and Puma

would give you some money to wear their shoe.

We couldn't come to a uniform protest, so finally--

- What we concluded, let us not try and do one thing.

Let everybody choose their own way to express their feelings.

- Do your own thing. - And we will be heard.

[uplifting music]

narrator: Ironically, after finally coming to a consensus,

America's black track athletes

headed straight into another political mess.

In the weeks leading to the Olympics,

Mexico City, the host of the '68 games, was under siege.

- There was a history of confrontations

between small student demonstrations,

and groups in Mexico City and elsewhere in the country.

And in the city, particularly between students

and the Granaderos, the riot police,

who were a particularly brutal lot composed

largely of former felons.

- The government didn't accept any kind of real opposition

or any kind of other alternatives

to open their system. To make it more democratic.

The government continued its repression,

and the movement continued to expand,

and the movement became national.

[indistinct yelling]

- This was the first time any third world country

had ever hosted an Olympic games.

The government felt itself to be under enormous pressure.

To make sure the Games went off efficiently.

That all of the construction projects were finished.

That nobody had any trouble.

This is a matter of national security.

The Olympics are a matter of national honor,

and something has to be done.

The way you solve this problem is you clean the streets.

- They decided to start shooting.

- And down in Mexico City,

students threatened the Olympic Games,

and the government sent troops.

[gunshots]

[screaming]

[gunshots]

- All the people that got wounded,

calling for help, and that smelling of blood.

For us, it's a genocide.

[somber music]

- They reported that there had been some clashes.

Thirty-seven had died; everyone knew in Mexico City

that the number 37 was too small,

that the government was lying,

Some people actually counted more bodies.

- There was a military camp close to Mexico City.

They did have the ovens to burn trash.

Many of those bodies were burned there.

Others were thrown in the Pacific Ocean.

We counted one after another one.

I should say that at least,

between 300 and 500 people got killed there.

Men, women, and children.

It was something that I will never forget.

It's always hurting my heart, hurting my conscience.

And it won't go away.

- I got a call from Associated Press in New York,

reporting that they had slaughtered

a couple hundred students, and they wanted to know,

would the Olympic team move out as scheduled?

And without even waking up the brass,

I said, we will be on that plane

at 8:00 tomorrow morning, which we were.

We got to Mexico City.

Those that had survived the, uh, shootout,

had been sent off to the mountains

to remain until the Games were over.

- When I first arrived in Mexico City,

the drive from downtown, where the hotels were,

where the elite of the world were going to be staying,

to the Olympic stadium, on both sides of the road,

were these old shanties.

In that week from when I arrived

until the Games began, every one of those shanties

was painted a brilliant color.

[soft music]

♪ ♪

- The government wanted to give an image

to the whole world of control and order.

- From the moment we arrived there,

we were kind of suspicious.

This is very strange, and a little ominous

to see the entire stadium

surrounded by military with weapons

at every portal, every gate, every staircase.

♪ ♪

- We've conferred with the Mexican authorities,

and we have been assured that nothing will interfere

with the peaceful entrance of the Olympic flame

into the stadium on October 12th,

or with the competitions which follow.

narrator: In that schizophrenic air,

the Mexico City games began.

Vibrant and colorful, they contrasted sharply

with the tension that had gripped the host city,

and the American team.

- The backdrop was insanity.

[uplifting music]

And the electricity of all this energy,

negative, positive, got into us, and we performed.

The gun went off, and I was bulletproof.

There was nothing that I couldn't do.

We performed superhuman stuff.

- Al Oerter winning a fourth consecutive gold medal.

Randy Matson winning the shot put.

Bob Seagren in the pole vault.

And of course, who could forget

Dick Fosbury in the high jump?

Coming in with a new style that was laughed at.

[inspiring music]

And here's Fosbury, very much an individualist,

saying "I can do it my way," and he did it.

narrator: On the track, black women,

whose opinions had been regretfully

ignored by the men, won three gold medals.

Two by Wyomia Tyus.

♪ ♪

The performance of the men's team was astounding,

in some ways, even historic.

Led by the sprinters, black athletes won seven

of the track team's remarkable 12 gold medals

and smashed five world records.

♪ ♪

- 1968 was a sort of coming out party

for these black athletes.

Because for the first time,

the image of the lone, isolated black athlete--

Jackie Robinson, Rafer Johnson, Jesse Owens,

was deferred to this powerful notion

that most of the athletes are black.

[inspiring music]

These black men, in all of their black pride and beauty

at this spectacle of their own achievement,

were representing America.

♪ ♪

Regardless of their own disgruntlement,

they represented America at its best.

The athletic field was the one domain

where sheer ability was to win the day.

♪ ♪

There was no affirmative action on the one hand,

no segregation or Jim Crow law on the other hand.

This was about "can you do the do?"

Can you go out there and run the run?

Can you best the person next to you?

♪ ♪

There was a stylization of black rage.

It's not about hatred. It's about joy.

It's about celebration.

[inspiring music]

- Standing up at the head of that runway, you're onstage.

A feeling that you're between time and space,

where you really don't hear anybody around you.

I only heard myself. Heard my heartbeat.

I heard the sounds of the pounding of my feet

going down the runway.

[soft music]

♪ ♪

I'm now ready to make my attempt

to win the gold.

Bam.

♪ ♪

- He had the most perfect run up he's ever had in his life.

He went zoom.

- And suddenly, just by instinct,

I just wanted to fly.

[cheering]

- It looks like a marvelous jump.

♪ ♪

- He just looked like he was soaring.

He's going, he's going, he's going.

Past 27 feet, past 28 feet, past 29 feet.

- And when he landed in the pit,

there was a collective "whoa!"

- Wow! - Whoo!

- I jumped out of the pit, and I turned around,

and I saw this man standing at the scope,

trying to measure the distance out.

He just stood there for a good two or three minutes.

"What is going on?" So they said that

they're bringing in a manual tape.

- And they finally found a tape to measure,

because the sight device would only go to eight meters 60,

which is 28 feet, and they measured it,

and flashed the distance on their board.

- He jumped eight meters 90.

Me and Ralph couldn't believe

that he had jumped eight meters 90,

because we thought it was 809, 27 or 26 feet.

- Bob came to me and said, "Ralph, how far is that?"

- He was calculating because he's so used to doing meters.

He said, Bob, you just jumped-- - 29 feet.

That's more than 29 feet. And he said--

- Wow.

[uplifting music]

I collapsed.

♪ ♪

While I was down on the ground,

I just thought that maybe I'm going to wake up

and say "Wow, this was a great dream."

narrator: Beamon leaped 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches.

A record that stood for more than 20 years.

The jump's immediate impact

was eclipsed by two men who ran 200 meters

straight into history.

- You had Tommie Smith and Johnny Carlos, my goodness.

To us, third place was for somebody else.

When the guy said "on your mark," I said a little prayer.

It was like a volcano getting ready to explode.

- That's a good start.

And Carlos, as usual, has burst out of the blocks.

- With about 40 meters of the race gone,

John had a gold medal in his hand.

In the next 50, Tommie Smith came through

like a bullet with his Tommie jet gear.

- And I quickly found Carlos.

- Looked at his face and said good-bye.

Lifted his knees, and just went on down the straightaway.

- Right now, it's Carlos and Smith.

And here comes Tommie Smith!

Smith has done it, with his hands in the air!

narrator: Tommie Smith won the race in world record time.

But John Carlos finished third

behind Australian Peter Norman.

- If you look at my face at the end of the race,

it's a genuine smile.

Now, the next step was the victory stand.

- It was on the way up to the podium that I said to John,

have you got one of those buttons that I could wear?

And he said, "If I give you one, would you wear it?"

I said yeah, sure.

Even though I was probably the wrong color,

I believe in human rights.

I believed in what these two guys were about to do.

[dramatic music]

narrator: As he approached the victory stand,

a lifetime of building emotion washed over Smith.

He had won his race.

The eyes of the world would now be on him and John Carlos.

And no one would look away.

- Tom and I, we were sitting in the stands

during the 100 meter final.

And Avery Brundage came out to present

the 100 meter medal to Jim Hines.

I thought that this meant that every medal ceremony,

Avery Brundage come out and give you the medal.

I said, Tommy, I don't want to shake Avery Brundage's hand.

I said, I know what we'll do. Let's get some black gloves.

Tommie's wife was Denise then.

- And I called her in Mexico City, I said, Denise,

bring me some gloves.

So I had the gloves in my bag.

I knew whatever I did had to be visual.

[uplifting music]

As soon as the National Anthem started playing,

my glove is going toward God.

♪ ♪

The black fist in the air was only in recognition

of those who had gone. It was a prayer of solidarity.

It was a cry for help by my fellow brothers

and sisters in this country who had been lynched,

who had been shot, who had been bitten by dogs,

who water hoses had been turned on.

A cry for freedom.

♪ ♪

You could almost hear the wind blowing around my fist.

But I heard Lee Evans, very, very vividly, said "Oh, shit."

And I looked up and I saw animals.

I saw animal faces. The jeers, the fingers.

- There were boos, there were whistles, there were tears.

- The leadership of the US team was aghast.

- We are not antichrists. We're just human beings

who saw a need to be recognized.

I don't like the idea of people looking at it as negative.

It was nothing but a raised fist in the air

and a bowed head,

acknowledging the American flag.

Not symbolizing a hatred for it.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

What hurt, an agonizing hurt, for the old heart of America,

was everybody saw it; the entire world saw it.

- They were wrong.

You are supposed to observe due order and decorum

to the Nth degree at every victory ceremony.

- If you're invited to someone's home,

and they say you have to wear a shirt and tie,

you wear a shirt and tie, or else you don't go.

- The USOC felt that these boys should be grateful

for the opportunity that we gave them

and how dare they have the audacity

to embarrass their country in the eyes of the world?

- The IOC board met the following morning.

Mr. Brundage blew his stack.

"You tell your board that if you don't take action

"by tomorrow at noon, your whole track team

is disqualified for the remainder of the Games."

With that threat, the board voted unanimously

to send these two boys home

and ban them from the Olympic Games for life.

- Get your medal, go home, a pat on the head.

Go back to where you were, nigger.

- I'm pretty pissed off already

with a lot of white people, so leave me alone, okay?

I'm asking you the last time.

The next man come up and put a camera in my face,

I'm going to knock him down and jump on him, you hear?

[dramatic music]

narrator: Many in the mainstream American media

reacted with venom.

Brent Musburger of "The Chicago American"

wrote in his column:

"Airing one's dirty clothing before the entire world

"during a fun and games tournament

"was no more than a juvenile gesture.

"Smith and Carlos looked like a couple

of black-skinned storm troopers."

- Give us a few seconds, huh?

[grunts]

narrator: Angry and disillusioned

over their team's dismissal,

other black Olympians considered further protest.

Typically, the USOC's plan to stop them

was hopelessly misguided.

- They knew somebody had to speak directly

to those who potentially might do something more.

- Jesse Owens was recruited.

- Jesse was an icon. He was from another planet.

He was not black; he was an American.

And Jesse walked in with a big smile.

- Jesse Owens was Avery Brundage's poster boy.

- Politics has no part to play

in any athletic program whatsoever,

and particularly so as far as

the Olympic Games are concerned.

- We felt like they had brought in somebody

to try to tame us.

- I said, we go back home from here, we can't even get a job.

He said, oh, I'll find you a job.

And you know he was lying.

It was pitiful; he was giving his speech to the wall.

- The black athletes could look at Jesse Owens

and say we could do what you did.

We could go to the Olympics, keep our mouths shut.

We could come back, and we'd be racing horses.

[somber music]

With all your great gold medals, when you came back,

nothing really great happened for you.

- We don't want you here, Uncle Tom.

Get the hell out of here.

And Jesse started to cry.

I saw him wiping tears away, and he said,

"How can my brothers do this to me

"when I was responsible for getting them to this position

of prominence at their end of day?"

♪ ♪

- Well, you may actually want something to say.

narrator: Enraged by his friend's expulsion,

Lee Evans first decided not to run the 400 meters.

But in their last act before leaving the village,

Smith and Carlos convinced him to reconsider,

even as Evans feared for his life.

- Nothing, okay? Leave me alone, okay?

I checked my mailbox in the morning of the race.

I had telegrams from the Ku Klux Klan.

The White Angels, we know,

they're going to shoot me today.

You know, at 2:00, I mean,

they give you the time they was going to kill you.

Ooh, man.

It was heavy on my back. I was in shock.

I was afraid for my life the whole time.

[uplifting music]

You know how, before a thunderstorm,

how the wind stops and it gets really quiet?

♪ ♪

I'm going to lay it out in this race.

Burn up this emotion I have inside.

They shot the gun, I was gone, man.

- Lee Evans is really going

as they head toward the top of the stretch.

The Americans are going to go one, two, three.

Lee Evans beating out Larry James,

with Ron Freeman third.

narrator: Amid the fury, Evans led

a United States sweep,

blazing around the track in world record time.

♪ ♪

- Howard Cosell was calling me.

"Hey, Lee, Lee.

Just wanted to come over for an interview."

I said, who won, who won?

Who won?

He wanted to ask me what I was going to do

on the victory stand, of course.

- The big question, what are you going to do

at the award ceremony?

- We did what we said we were going to do.

We wore our black berets.

Black berets then were worn by the Black Panthers.

We took them off during the playing

of the National Anthem.

I wanted to show black pride.

[uplifting music]

I'm doing my part.

♪ ♪

- The young man you're looking at is George Foreman--

narrator: Nearly a week later,

as the controversy surrounding the track athletes

continued to swirl, boxer George Foreman

applied a red, white, and blue bandage

on a hemorrhaging America.

- I hit this guy, and I'll never forget hitting him

real hard a few times, and he kept coming.

The only dominant thing I had was my left jab.

- Oh, that left is getting in to Chepulis very effectively.

Oh, another left.

- Eventually, I decided, maybe I should throw

a right hand too.

- He caught him with a right, and then a follow-up left.

Oh, the Russian is being beaten all over the ring.

- And when I did, the fight was over.

- Referee stops contest.

George Foreman with a tremendous,

and overwhelmingly powerful performance.

- But I remember at ringside, looking up and seeing George

pull out an American flag, and walk around the ring.

- I felt so good about having that flag in my hand.

I started waving it. We did it!

And I wanted to show the whole world.

Not only George Foreman had won a gold medal,

but America did it.

- We were frankly a little bit down

after the Smith and Carlos incident,

and those of us who were at ringside

were really emotionally moved.

[uplifting music]

- In 1964, I was a mugger, a thief.

Digging my way into the mud

so that dogs can sniff me out and take me to jail.

Less than four years later, I'm standing on a platform

putting a gold medal around my neck

with the promise of a better life.

narrator: Coming on the Games' final weekend,

Foreman's act was positive and patriotic.

The last image of a troubling Olympics.

But not its lasting image.

That remained John Carlos and Tommie Smith's

simple but stark protest.

A powerful moment that galvanized black unity

in ways even they could not have imagined.

- We saw the fist as not only a courageous gesture,

but we also saw the fist as symbolic of

black men who would stand up and erase this society.

[warm music]

♪ ♪

- That moment was as profound to those of us who were young

as Rosa Parks' refusal to stand up on the bus

in Montgomery and to give up her seat

was to a prior generation.

Black people throughout the country

were greeting each other and signaling our own pride

with a raised fist.

- Everybody stood up and did this.

- We are an African people!

all: We are an African people!

- I want you to take--

- It really affected the black college students.

[crowd cheering]

It made them heroes in the black community.

- You'd go into a party or somewhere,

and you'd see a poster.

Tommie Smith, John Carlos.

I had no idea it would have that much impact.

all: Racism must go! Racism must go!

narrator: In the shadow of the fist,

each had done what they thought was right--

for their country, for their people, for themselves.

And for those beliefs, however strong,

each would be held accountable.

- A friend of mine walked up to me and asked me

"How could you do that?"

I said, what do you mean? "You know, with the flag."

- While he may have been an innocent kid

going into those Games,

George Foreman became an object of disgust.

We saw George as standing for the old style Negro.

- It didn't occur to me, nor did it matter to me,

that people would take it one way or another.

I went there to win a gold medal.

- That's why there was such a celebration

by political activists, by black militants,

when Mohammad Ali dusted old flag-carrying George

in Zaire in 1974.

[dramatic music]

Ali didn't just defeat George Foreman.

He defeated what many from my generation

still consider to be the ultimate Uncle Tom.

Uncle George, who had carried the flag in Mexico City,

while others had stood for human dignity.

- Actually, you won this for a cause, as you see it.

- Yes, I did. - What's that cause?

- For black people all over the world,

and for my friends and family in San Jose.

narrator: Those friends believed Evans

would also make a powerful statement.

When he didn't, they felt betrayed.

- People thought that I should throw

a Molotov cocktail at the victory stand.

I guess this is what people thought

I should have done back at home,

because when I got home, everybody was angry with me.

"Oh, you let us down."

- There was a teasing of Lee that got really ugly

when he came back to the streets of San Jose.

Many people thought that he had done

just a watered-down demonstration.

And he was stunned, he tried to explain.

- Well, why are you guys smiling so much

on the victory stand?

I say, shit, man, some guys are supposed to shoot me now.

But I smile a lot, man.

And maybe they can't shoot a guy who's smiling, you know?

That was the only thing that was on my mind

at the victory stand. Being shot dead.

- And very few people would listen.

- I said, look, man, if you wanted to raise your fist up

in the Olympic Games, you should have made the team

and did it yourself.

- His tremendous contributions were all forgotten.

His tremendous performance on the track was ignored

by the people that he really wanted to impress.

[somber music]

narrator: John Carlos returned a hero

in the same community.

Though valiant and courageous, his gesture was perceived

by some as ironic,

given his level of commitment in the previous year.

[groovy music]

- I was really surprised he did anything.

I asked Tommie, I said, how'd you get Carlos to do that?

Because John never came to any meetings.

He said, oh, I just gave him my left glove

and told him to do what I do.

♪ ♪

I said, is that it? He said, yes.

[laughs]

I said, shit.

Then Carlos come back,

and all of a sudden he's a black spokesman.

- This was an individual thing.

Everyone did what they thought that was right.

- Tommie and John were making speeches around the country.

Tommy came to me, "You know what Jonny's saying

at these speeches about you?"

That I got more concerned about winning medals

than for the black movement.

And he was the guy who never even came to a damn meeting.

♪ ♪

I went to his house and called him out the lawn.

I wanted to kick his ass.

[soft music]

narrator: Many felt the same way about Harry Edwards.

The Olympic Project's principal architect,

and instrumental leader in the movement's early stages.

- He did something great, man.

He brought black consciousness to me and to a lot of guys.

But he had nothing to do with the protests in Mexico City.

From June to October, we never even

heard or saw Harry Edwards.

We never talked about him. He never called us.

We never saw him. We hadn't seen him since June.

The Olympics was in October.

So he had nothing to do with the protests.

[tense music]

- He didn't go to Mexico City. He should have been there.

- He sent his troops off to battle in Mexico City,

and he himself stayed home

because he had received death threats.

Well, so did everybody who went to Mexico City

who was thinking of speaking out.

- And then, when Tommie and John

came back from Mexico City, Harry got all the rewards.

Harry got his position at Cal.

He got all these speaking engagements.

Tommie and John had nothing.

- The bottom line with Harry Edwards in my mind

is I feel that Harry Edwards was a great opportunist.

- Opportunists, typically, take advantage

of situations wherein for them,

there is some gain.

For me, in this situation, there has been a tremendous

amount of pain, loss.

I was immediately fired from my job at San Jose State.

I was put under intense FBI surveillance

at my home, any place I went for the next ten years.

- He climbed the backs of many athletes

to enhance Harry Edward's goals in life.

- I don't buy that. I don't respond to it.

I mean, everybody is supposed to be piloting their own ship.

[soft music]

narrator: History now links Smith and Carlos forever.

One minute of their life

for which they payed the steepest price.

After the games, both were branded as outcasts.

Carlos suffered immensely,

eventually losing his wife to suicide,

while the pain and anguish of exclusion

nearly took down Tommie Smith.

- We were hungry. We were broke.

We had no place to go, I had to go back

to the house which I had, which was behind rent.

We borrowed $2,000 from Jim Brown, the great Jim Brown,

and when I got back, he asked for it back.

We were destitute.

[somber music]

I had to wash cars.

World record holder of 11 records,

down at North American Pontiac washing cars in the back

with a big sign out front.

"Come and see our Olympian, Tommie Smith."

They would call me out in the back.

"Uh, Tommie, you have a customer up front."

Like I was a salesperson or something.

I had to pull off my old dungarees,

and fluff my little tie up, and come up

with a big smile on my face.

"Hi, I'm Tommie Smith, how are you?"

They'd talk to me a few minutes, get the autograph.

Oh, little Jonny get an autograph.

And as soon as they finish up,

I go back out to the back lot out there,

put my washing clothes on, and continue washing cars.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

[uplifting music]

narrator: Tommie Smith could have avoided the despair.

He could have escaped the misery.

Instead, on a warm October night in Mexico City,

he and John Carlos turned a simple race

into a defining moment in American history.

♪ ♪

In victory, they bowed their heads and drove to the sky

their fists of freedom.

♪ ♪

- They were not terrible people,

but they were people who saw wrong and tried to right it.

Much as Gandhi, or King, or Malcolm.

Remember them as people who were brave.

♪ ♪

- It yanked me out of the cocoon of my innocence.

And I didn't understand all of the sophisticated nuances

or the political implications of it.

But what I understood was,

that they were identifying with black people.

♪ ♪

- Look, you can be both part of an American tradition,

but you don't have to forget where you came from.

And you don't have to forget

the people who were left behind.

- I was one of those who said,

"My God, who do these guys think they are?"

Three decades later, these guys proved to be correct.

It opened everybody's eyes

like anybody that starts a revolution.

- You can read things into the picture,

but you can't help but be caught up in the drama of it.

There's a sense of grief.

But on the other hand,

we're hoping to go into a future that's better.

- There were people who had sweat great drops of hardship.

That had dropped to their knees and prayed

for a Tommie Smith, and a John Carlos,

to be able to be in a point at which they could speak.

It was Tommie and John's contribution to history,

no matter what situation that you were going through.

Whether it be athletics, education, in the workplace,

at home, against all hope.

No matter what the adversities.

It was okay to make a stand.

[inspiring music]

♪ ♪

Two simple athletes who ran in circles

captured the entire world for a brief moment.

♪ ♪

[soft music]

♪ ♪

male announcer: This has been a presentation

of HBO Sports.