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

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

I'm wondering what Carlos and Smith think about Dubai not letting Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer play in last week's tournament. Sports and politics are still intertwined!

The Gaza Masscre has not stopped and is still going on. Israel has not stopped incarcerating and torturing it's own Semetic people, the Palestinian refugees, in the Gaza "Warsaw Ghetto" and West Bank "Concentraion Camp". Israel should be banned from the Olympics and all international sports competitions. Amnesty International has called on all countries to halt all ammunition and weapons shipments to both Israel and Palestine.

I felt that since the gloves fit, I had to aquit.

I was 10 years old during the 1968 Olympics. I remember thinking that Smith and Carlos had to have been really brave to do what they did. It was such a dramatic act.

Even as 10 year old, living in New Jersey, one had a very strong sense of racial conflict in the US--there had been riots in Newark and Plainfield the year before, Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Racial conflict and questions of racial justice were constantly being talked about.

The 1968 Olympics were really the first Olympics that I followed and watched. All of the athletic excitement and national competition, winners were not only just individuals, they were representatives of their countries. And there was so much drama and excitement in the competition--Jim Ryun and Kip Keino, Bob Beamon, Lee Evans, Al Oerter, Jim Hines--there were amazing ahtletes and amazing competitions

The fact that Smith and Carlos refused to pretend that there was unity and solidarity in the US on racial issues while they were symbolically being celebrated as US winners (standing on a victory podium, while the flag was being raised and the national anthem was playing) was really a searing statement.

I still get chills every time I see the photograph

The 1972 Olympics and Dave Wottle was my first Olympic memory, so this was a little before my time, but I do remember seeing that image quite a lot as a kid, and it has been burned into in my memory since then. I always thought it was so cool. It definitely made a strong impression on me growing up, and I got quite emotional watching the ESPN and HBO programs.

I was 22 and old enough to know what was going on. They were racist assholes not heroes.

Saw the ESPN show last night and glad I did. It gave me more of an appreciation to the thoughts behind the symbolic gesture and was worth watching.

I'm not sure if it did anything significant in moving us as a country forward because many just took it as a racist gesture and disrespecting the country/flag. But I have agreater appreciation.

It would have been interesting in the show digging more into the rift that occured between Smith and Carlos. Felt it was glossed over.

I also felt that maybe they have used this as a crutch too much for their years that followed, A lot of olympians during that era never achieved great heights after fulfilling their olympic dreams since there wasn't the money and career paths you see today. They seemed to have an excuse built in for therir hard lives afterwards.

I was trying to make the 1968 Olympic Team but didn't.. I remember all the talk at the trials about a total boycott.. I hated to see the Olympics loose these tremendously talented athletes.. the protest that Carlos and Smith made was a very controled protest and made it's point without overstating.. I don't think they should have been dismissed from the team... They made their point without demeaning the Olympics...

I admit to being totally disgusted with their actions at the time (I was 16). The whole scene played with my sensibilities. Now that I am older and wiser and I know what I know about Brundage and his minions, I have a very different outlook. Quite frankly I think it was a bold move at a time when a bold move was needed, that is to say, people like me needed to have our sensibilites played with! I think in retrospect its one of the best things that ever happened at an Olympics.

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I'm wondering what Carlos and Smith think about Dubai not letting Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer play in last week's tournament. Sports and politics are still intertwined!

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The Gaza Masscre has not stopped and is still going on. Israel has not stopped incarcerating and torturing it's own Semetic people, the Palestinian refugees, in the Gaza "Warsaw Ghetto" and West Bank "Concentraion Camp". Israel should be banned from the Olympics and all international sports competitions. Amnesty International has called on all countries to halt all ammunition and weapons shipments to both Israel and Palestine.

Your stupid comment only confirms my point! Check the facts before spouting all that hate. Israel waited seven years and thousands of rocket attacks into Israel to retaliate.

Still, the point is that 40 years after the 1968 Olympics sports and politics are still intertwined!

The Zionist occupiers have no claims or recognizable positions in Palestine. They are occupiers with no rights whatsoever. The 1948 occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end. The Zionist occupiers must agree to leave Palestine or relinquish control to the local Arab, Druze, Jewish and Christian people. A Palestine with full rights for all people regardless of religion is the goal of all parties and is the only solution for a lasting peace. Until then the war to liberate Palestine from the foreign Zionists will go on.

I don't want to reduce this all to a fifth grade level of simplicity, but the people running track and field and the Olympics back in that era and before (and at least into the 1970s, as all of you Prefontaine fans know) were, plain and simply, very bad people. Evil even.

Mass murderers and serial killers aside, Brundage was one of the great villains of the 20th century. He wasn't particularly interested in athletes having ANY kind of voice. Sometimes it took an extraordinary gesture to make a point.

Maybe no one felt like responding, but it seems like it might be more than a coincidence that no one has dealt with my previous post.

Does anyone see why the gesture was at best ambiguous to some people because of the Black Power movement's advocation of violence? As I said previously, I think it's a mistake to equate that movement with the nonviolent Civil Rights movement. in fact, I think a strong argument can be made that the Black Power movement helped to kill the Civil Rights movement.

Smith and Carlos have claimed that their gestures weren't about "black power," although I certainly thought so at the time, as most people did. But your characterization of "Black Power" is inaccurate anyway. All of the "black power" movement was not advocating violence, anymore than all of the "American Conservative Movement" is currently about blowing up abortion clinics.

Actually -- I see now at the end of your Wikipedia citation earlier you hedge your bet when you say that civil rights and black power are not mutually exclusive. That was always the case. Civil rights IS black power, and black power is civil rights, in my book. The rest is politics, which of course is nothing to sniff at...

I was 12 at the time. I had then and still have mixed feelings. I have read both Smith's book and Murphy's on Lee Evans. Like Murphy "I love those guys" as track atheletes. I also respect Tommie Smith greatly for what he did, and support his cause. But as someone who loves the Olympics, I think the 68 protest had lasting adverse consequences on the Games. The next 4 Olympics were for politcal protests, which almost destroyed the Game. Yes there has always been some politics in the olympics, but Smith and Carlos took it to another level, and others (not having as pure of motives) followed. One cannot blame Smith and Carlos for the sickening 72 attack on the Israelis, but I think the 68 protest showed the terrorist what a great international forum the Olympics could be for a political act. In 76 you had the African boycott, in 80 the US-led boycott and 84 the Soviet led boycott. All used the Olympics as a internation venue to make a political statement. After 84 people like Ted Turner started proposing alternaitve Games, as the Olympics had become a dysfuctional political showcase. The Olympics survived, but were in the ICU for a while, and it started in 68.

The Olys itself was started for political purposes to unite the world in some idealstic dream never-land.

Hitler's 1936 Olympics was the biggest abuser of the Olympic platform for politics and propaganda.

The 1948 invasion, genocide, and occupation of Palestine was the principal cause of the military operations at the 1972 Munich games. The occupation continues today and we can expect more miltary actions across the globe as a result of the inaction of the UN and the United States to terminate the foreign occupation of Palestine.

The 76 Boycott was due to the European colonization of Africa and the efforts of countries to forcibly end the last vestiges of apartheid in South Africa.

In short, you can't avoid politics in the Olympics. Beijing was a huge political statement from the Chinese Communists and their Japanese buddies that Nike and the Walmart Supercenter is only the beginning...

I think it's a very, very long stretch to blame Smith and Carlos even in the most tangential way for any of the political occurrences in 1972, 1976, 1980, or 1984.

As someone else pointed out, the Olympics were political at least as far back as 1936, and Avery Brundage was instrumental in keeping two American Jews off a 4x100 relay. God forbid he should piss off Hitler. Brundage had no business complaining about what Smith and Carlos did.

Nazi Germany wasn't the only anti-Jew country in 1936. Ivy League schools during that time had instituted racial quotas to limit the number of Jews. Shockingly, todau in the U.S. the Ivy League still has racial quotas that limit the number of Asians from enrolling.