For the Old Timers: What Did You Think of Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968

The 68 Olympics were my first exposure to track and the Olympics. I remember watching all these outstanding performances and shattered world records.

I didn't see the medal ceremony live but when they showed clips over and over, it was kind of huh, what's all that about? That was a crazy year with assassinations, the war, riots, the election, but this was a big story. They were more or less villified by many in the mainstream, and if anything the conventional wisdom of middle America was that they should be sent home. Carlos was still a big draw the next year in USA and international track.

Hard to say if it did any good. Certainly brought widespread attention to the issues, but did it improve race relations in this country?

HRE wrote:

Don't feel bad. They were very well ostracized.

To what extent?

Everybody is all about protesting now

They complain now that they were banned but the ban only saved them embrassment of being destroyed the next olympics

Thanks, man. I do, too! I was pleased to read about a major trade publisher putting out a long book about the rivalry between Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes of U. of Michigan and O.S.U., respectively, from the same era as my book. I also write about the two Stanford Rose Bowl teams that defeated Bo and Woody's teams in consecutive Januarys... And a lot of the same cultural politics I write about in the world of track & field were there in spades in football as well.

I don't know if your book is "scholarly" enough, but have you talked to the folks at McFarland? Breakaway?

Getting kicked out of the Olympics seems to me like ostracism. And while I haven't read about this recently and can't recall specifics I know they had trouble finding jobs after the Olympics.

Yes, as time passed they've been much better received and maybe nothing I mentioned strikes you as being ostracized but it does to me and I doubt I'm alone.

I checked out Macfarland and Breakaway -- thanks for the tips. Macfarland looks promising, actually. My book is really thorough, and specific; don't know if I'd call it scholarly, though. Lotta stuff about sex drugs & rock 'n' roll, political protest, the war, hippiedom, you name it. All of the big names of the day in track make an appearance: Pre (who I ran against three times), Shorter, Ryun, Lindgren (ran against them all -- well behind them, needless to say...) Don Kardong and Duncan Macdonald were a year ahead of me on The Farm; I've run many miles with them both. Payton Jordan is a major character -- nemesis, perhaps more accurate to say (although he always said he was my biggest supporter...) Finally, I hope the book is more than a little track memoir: I want it to be cultural history, too. This is an excerpt from the Preface:

"The “I” in this book moves through a Sixties' tale, full of high ambitions and lost ideals. He re-tells our nation’s oft-repeated dialectic of high achievement followed by violent disappointment – our perennial national re-discovery of possibilities beyond our wildest imaginings, giving way to soul-wrenching disappointment... Is this book a cautionary tale about a divisive time in our nation’s history? Yes, if you care to look at it that way. But it doesn’t feel that way to me, and I lived through it. Full-blown regrets should be reserved for more substantive matters, like a broken friendship or a failed investment – not for the symbolic, existential passions of youth. I seldom daydream any more about how fast I might have run the Mile, or what else I might have achieved as an athlete, had I continued to run through injuries, illnesses and myriad disappointments further into my twenties, after graduating from school. In a casual way I might occasionally regret not running for a few more years, because I had such a great time while it lasted. But without Leland Stanford Junior University as the part of the picture, I found it all too easy to walk away..."

I was 12 at the time, with a sense of social justice, but didn't like the mixing of sports and politics or the clenched black-power, black-gloved fist. I still don't like it, and I voted for Obama.

The quotes on "scholarly" was recognition that a good, well-written, detailed, and factually accurate memoir can cross that line, but very clearly the editorial powers that be must buy into that line of thinking. I guess life in the land of the marching pine tree?? trained you well.

Jayhawk wrote:

I was 12 years old and grew up in a lilly white town in Kansas. I was following the Olympic build up closely because of Jim Ryun. Harry Edwards was a pivotal player despite what's been posted so far. I was concerned that American black athletes would boycott the games. For those of you old enough to recall Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did just that.

At the time I understood why Smith and Carlos did what they did. I think Avery Brundage was a Nazi, and I mean Nazi and what it stands for. U.S. track and field athletes both black and white were nothing but slaves of the A.A.U. and U.S.O.C. I admired their courage then just as I admire it now.

I think some of you old enough have forgotten just how racist America was in 1968.

My parents showed me home a home movie with me drinking water out of a drinking fountain in Alabama. Above the drinking fountain was a sign that read, "Coloreds Only." You could be ARRESTED for drinking out of the "wrong" fountain (even me, a white kid, drinking out of a drinking fountain for blacks). That's how bad things were back then for blacks. I've met Tommie Smith (he was the track coach at Santa Monica College for many years) many times. He's a great guy and I totally respect the stand he and John Carlos took--and they paid a big price.

But people who aren't old enough can't understand just how big Jim Ryun--a distance runner--was in America back then. We watched Beamon, Tommie, Jim Hines....

But Jim Ryun WAS SUPERMAN. That's who the whole country wanted to watch--and the effect on him from losing to "some African tribesman," as the media put it back then, was something from which I don't think he ever recovered.

Actually I was a member of the very last class at Stanford to spend my entire time as an "Indian..." Indulge me: Here's a little more from the book... (not unrelated to Smith & Carlos, if you think about it:)

"...Care to feel the winds of change? Check out the halftime shows, where the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band raced like boiling molecules from one spot on the field to another in red jackets, pink tutus, heart-covered boxer shorts, even wet suits and snorkels, playing Motown music and rarely if ever marching in unison while they poked fun at anything in the news that week. Care to hear the answers blowin’ in the wind? Then listen to the voices raised against the very symbol of "Indian" football: A google-eyed, bulbous-nosed, Al Capp-like Native American caricature that made a Negro lawn jockey look like a model of racial dignity. ("Indian" decals had adorned the windshields of my family’s cars for as long as I could remember.) The newsletters Brook [Thomas, the team Cross-Country Captain) had mailed out over the summer had been mimeographed on shiny red Athletic Department letterhead decorated with various cartoon representations of that Stanford Indian practicing a variety of sports. One showed him diving into a swimming pool wearing nothing but moccasins; my favorite had him pole-vaulting.

Saying farewell to this ghastly, grinning cartoon would also mean saying bye-bye to Timm Williams, aka Prince Lightfoot, a Native American Yurok who had danced at every Stanford home game since 1951. “He’s a Native American Uncle Tom” was a line you heard a lot that fall, and I was hard pressed to disagree. Exploiting a sideshow version of an oppressed racial minority was so retrograde, it hurt.

And yet I still found it moving when the stadium hushed and the Prince appeared in his finest white chaps, moccasins and turf-length feathered war bonnet, bare brown-skinned chest lifted high as he danced and soared with heart-rending beauty – almost as if the players were his totem animals, and he wasn’t their prancing mascot. Prince Lightfoot always claimed that his dances were “authentic;” it wasn’t until years later that we learned that they were Native American – they just weren’t from his tribe..."

I was 31 at the time of the '68 Olympics. Earlier that year, when the black athletes were considering a boycott, I wrote a letter to Track and Field news about it. It was published along with several others. jsquire posted the link but mentioned only Bruce Kidd, the great Canadian distance runner. Here's the link again.

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/display_article.php?id=2354

My letter is 3rd from the bottom. I stand by it - and am glad I have proof of my views at the time.

It amazes and disappoints me to see a few people even today who are still very critical of Smith and Carlos. Try to put yourself in their place, experiencing the segregation and discrimination - and worse - that blacks lived with every day of their lives. Smith and Carlos didn't shout or scream or burn flags or anything else; they stood, dignified and quiet, with heads bowed and symbolic fists raised. I was very moved then; I still am today.

Thought I would bump this thread with all the hate the NFL players getting.

As a white American and an Air Force veteran, I have nothing but respect for the NFL players involved with this protest.

Police brutality needs to end.

And a lot of players are not even going that far. Many are simply protesting the leagues' attempt to minimize their viewpoint or to silence them.

To the people who feel this has no place in the NFL or athletics, I'd say who better than athletes to grab the attention of the nation? These guys are not disrespecting the flag, but rather protesting the injustices still present in the United States today.

Too young for '68 wrote:

Thought I would bump this thread with all the hate the NFL players getting.

As a white American and an Air Force veteran, I have nothing but respect for the NFL players involved with this protest.

Police brutality needs to end.

And a lot of players are not even going that far. Many are simply protesting the leagues' attempt to minimize their viewpoint or to silence them.

To the people who feel this has no place in the NFL or athletics, I'd say who better than athletes to grab the attention of the nation? These guys are not disrespecting the flag, but rather protesting the injustices still present in the United States today.

amen +1000

Gregg Popovich:

Was impressed with them at the time. I remain so today.

Silicon Valley produced many great revolutionaries like Black activists John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Hispanic-White Civil Rights leader Cesar Chavez, and Syrian-Muslim computer genius Steve Jobs. We owe so much to our heros.

Don't forget Harry Edwards.

Haha...you guys are responding to the first post of an 8 year old thread.

I would be more interested to hear how the older generation views the NFL protests going on today...are they similar to '68.

Not being around in 1968, my first thought is that what Carlos and Smith did took a lot more courage. But still, a lot of similarities to the environment today.

Apparently there has been no progress in equality and race relations since then.

I'm glad someone bumped this because it proves that no matter how hard we try, or how much progress is made, or how much time goes by... the race hustle game will NEVER end. In the year 2068 the grievance business will still be going strong. All you young guys who think the older generation is racist, and that you are better than that, and that you'll set it right, that you'll finally make equal rights a reality, and that one day you'll get credit for it ... you are wrong.

How do I know? Because MY generation was that generation. We've been through all this. We were better than that, we did set it right, we did make equal rights a reality, but we didn't get credit for it. We got kicked in the nuts instead.

No matter what we did it wasn't enough.

First it was doing away with all explicit discrimination like segregation. - DONE

Then it was quotas to make up for past discrimination. - DONE

Then it was persecution of any white who uttered a racial slur. - DONE

Then it was persecution of any white who refused to admit their guilt. - DONE

Now it's persecution of whites for simply having white skin. - DONE

But it's still not good enough. Now we are labelled "NAZIs" and "white supremacists" for any PC infraction. Every day we wake up and there's a new group with a new grievance against us, continually blaming us for things we haven't done. I've been a decent guy all my life but the older I get the more evil I get in the eyes of society.

The race hustle never ends. Don't play it.