Absurd comparison wrote:
Federal Blvd wrote:
I would not be surprised at all if Tommie Smith thought he might get shot. Besides the MLK, RFK and JFK, Malcolm X had also been assassinated while addressing an audience.
It was a very violent time and there was a lot of anger. The race riots in places like Detroit and Watts made the GF protests seem like children's games.
That is a ridiculous comparison seeing as how blacks were the ones committing the violence in the race riots. They weren’t mere bystanders who were shot by random people!
And I don’t believe for one second that Tommie Smith ever thought he would be shot at the Olympics. That sounds like some left-wing revisionist “history.”
You are missing the point. Yes, Blacks were the ones who rioted but a lot of White Americans were angry about the riots and there was a lot of racial tension. A White man shot MLK so was it really far-fetched to think another Black man protesting during the national anthem might experience so fear standing up there in such a vulnerable position.
Here is a quote from a SI piece done 3 years ago on the anniversary:
"At the first notes of the anthem, both men turned 90 degrees to the right and struck their poses. Carlos has said that his arm was bent to shield his face from sniper fire, Smith that his posture was ramrod straight as a remnant of his ROTC training. Smith told me, “I was afraid the whole time. I prayed. I said the Lord’s Prayer all the way through. Then I listened to the national anthem, because that’s a powerful thing, hearing that anthem knowing how many people died so that belief could remain a part of America.”
At the end of the day the only one who knows if he was afraid of getting shot was Tommie Smith, and memories tend to become distorted with the passage of time.
https://www.si.com/olympics/2018/10/03/john-carlos-tommie-smith-1968-olympics-black-power-salute#gid=ci0254f7f4400a2580&pid=tommie-smith-medal-inline-diptychjpgAnd here is another account:
"a stunned silence fell over the stadium. “There’s something awful about hearing 50,000 people go silent, like being in the eye of a hurricane,” Carlos later wrote in his memoir.
According to The Washington Post, it wasn't long before the momentary stillness yielded to a swell of jeers and boos, with some spectators even shouting the words to the national anthem in a sort of counter-protest. Smith and Carlos were ushered out of the arena and swiftly evicted from the Olympic Village. "
So clearly, many spectators responded with anger and emotion to the protest.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/625175/tommie-smith-john-carlos-1968-olympic-protest-racism