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00:22Hi everybody, I'm Brian Kenney and welcome to ESPN Classics' Top 5 Reasons You Can't
00:26Blame. In this show, we consider two men who made a powerful symbolic statement about race
00:31in America during the 1968 Olympic Games. Two men who merely put on black gloves to raise
00:37the consciousness of millions of African Americans and all Americans. We will on this program
00:42count down the top five reasons you can't blame Tommy Smith and John Carlos for their
00:47black power salute. Our reasons range from an unwitting comrade to the very essence of
00:52the African American condition. First though, let's examine how Smith and Carlos shouldered
00:57the burden of a country not yet ready to deal with the strong undercurrent of anger.
01:09The 60s became a very, very turbulent time in race relations in this country. In some respects,
01:161968 was the worst year in America in history. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, 39 years
01:26old, and the leader of the non-violent civil rights movement in the United States was assassinated
01:31in Memphis tonight. Oh my God. Senator Kennedy has been shot.
01:37The 68 was the year that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And there
01:43was a perception of revolution. There was a perception of rebellion.
01:52There were tensions there that basically had been repressed or suppressed that percolated to the surface
01:58of blacks and minorities. America's cities exploded. You had rioting. You had thousands of cases of
02:10arsen. I mean, the cities literally were on fire. All during the summer there was a talk of black Americans
02:19not participating in the Olympic Games as a protest to the social injustices. And we sat down and we could
02:26have not come to a consensus as to what to do. The U.S. team thought that it would make
02:32more of a stand
02:33and more of a difference by going than by staying home and just being an asterisk in the book.
02:40Among those who chose to make a statement at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City were American sprinters
02:47Tommy Smith and John Carlos. Both were from San Jose State, a college in Northern California.
02:53Smith was from another planet. I've seen him take a baton 15 yards behind a world-class sprinter and just
03:03fly by him.
03:05Smith begins to pull it on and forges to the front. He literally flies toward the tape.
03:10Carlos was very deceptive. I mean, he could run fast, but he didn't look like he was going fast.
03:14Easily, John Carlos. They knew they wanted to make some significant statement.
03:20There was this sort of anticipation. What would happen?
03:24Now, what about other things that might happen in Mexico City?
03:27All I can say is you can expect almost anything.
03:32On October 16, 1968, after Carlos and Smith won in separate 200-meter semifinal heats,
03:39they took their positions at the starting line for the final.
03:43There's Smith. He usually starts kind of slow, makes his bit in the stretch.
03:47Carlos should burst out of the block. He's a strong hard runner.
03:50When that gun went off, it was just phenomenal. John just took off.
03:57There's Questad. It's a good start. And Carlos, as usual, has burst out of the block.
04:02Then, with about 60 meters to go, 60 yards to go, Tommy Smith turned on what he called his Tommy
04:09Jets and just...
04:11And here comes Tommy Smith!
04:15Smith has done it with his hands in the air!
04:23If they didn't want Smith and Carlos to win the silver and gold,
04:29if they didn't want them to demonstrate they shouldn't have let them finish first and second.
04:38First and third? Top three.
04:44Later, when Smith and Carlos approached the podium to receive the gold and bronze medals,
04:49they prepared themselves for what many would scorn as an unwelcome act of defiance.
04:54What I wanted to do was make a visual stand and not say a word because I didn't know what
05:03to say.
05:03Mrs. Smith came walking down with Smith and Carlos and she gave them the black gloves as they walked into
05:14the infield on the way to the victory stand.
05:18I was so afraid on the victory stand that I could hear wind and noises and not people.
05:29When you are so stressed that you don't know where to go, what do you do?
05:37You just stand.
05:50I can remember being in a stadium for other events and when Tommy and John raised their fists and got
05:56real quiet.
05:58Then the booze started.
06:02I looked up and I saw nothing but animals. Animals of different type with fangs, with teeth.
06:09And the last what I heard was nigger.
06:13Within two hours of the Black Power salute, the head of the American contingent received a message
06:18from the high-handed old school president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage.
06:24The next thing I knew, Doug Robey, our president, had gotten word from Mr. Brundage that we had to kick
06:33them off the team.
06:35Doug Robey went back to Brundage and said, we're not going to do anything about it. So sorry.
06:41At that point, Brundage went ballistic and he said, if you don't take them out of the relay and kick
06:48them out of the Olympic Village, then we're going to ban the entire United States track and field team from
06:57every other event in the Olympics.
06:59Doug came back. They said, Avery is not fooling.
07:04The United States Olympic Committee elected to suspend Smith and Carlos from the team.
07:13John Carlos was even more defiant after the American Olympic Committee ordered him off the American team.
07:20I'm pretty pissed off already with a lot of white people. So leave me alone, okay?
07:26The salute caused such a stir that even Jesse Owens, who in 1936 won four Olympic gold medals before a
07:33Nazi-dominated throng in Berlin, expressed his displeasure.
07:37I certainly feel that politics has no part to play in any athletic program whatsoever.
07:44It was a great intense feeling about it.
07:47Part of it was this idea that, A, you're embarrassing America, but B, you're desecrating the Olympics.
07:52No one had ever mocked the ceremony.
07:56Ten days after Smith and Carlos' actions, a backdraft to the raging controversy was set off by George Foreman's patriotic
08:04celebration
08:05after he won gold in the heavyweight division.
08:08There he is holding an American flag.
08:11George Foreman became the good Negro, and Tommy Smith and John Carlos were the bad Negroes.
08:18When they put their hands up like that, people are saying this is just another part of that kind of
08:23chaos that black anger is bringing.
08:25Smith and Carlos essentially became pariahs from the moment they stepped off the podium.
08:30They lost jobs and inability to work.
08:34There were death threats against them.
08:36They were essentially left to suffer alone.
08:40And they feared for their lives.
08:46In the 1960s, he was a rich.
08:53Then, after the 1968 Olympics, a Chicago newspaper described Smith and Carlos as, quote,
08:59black-skinned stormtroopers, end quote.
09:01You've seen and heard the case against the two sprinters.
09:04Before we get to the top five reasons you can't blame them, let's take a look at the few reasons
09:08that didn't make the cut.
09:11Muhammad Ali, he set the precedent.
09:15I don't have a mark on my face, and I upset Sonny Liston, and I just turned 22 years old.
09:20I must be the greatest.
09:21In 1967, three years after wresting the heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston, Ali was stripped of his title for taking
09:29a stand against the Vietnam conflict.
09:32I will not go 10,000 miles simply to continue the domination of white slave masters.
09:42And not only was he forced to give up his title, his passport was taken.
09:47He couldn't box. He couldn't travel.
09:50The man was denied the opportunity to make a living.
09:54Like Muhammad Ali before them, Carlos and Smith put everything that they had accomplished on the line to express their
10:01political beliefs.
10:04Our other best of the rest, Peter Norman, the Australian runner who took second place in the 200 meter race.
10:11Tommy and John's wives had gone to the store to buy black gloves for the two of them to wear.
10:21And somewhere in the process, John Carlos had lost his gloves.
10:27Peter suggested that one person take each glove, and on the awards stand, they could form a U for unity.
10:36Peter Norman showed what could be done if the athletes in particular recognized that they have social and political responsibilities
10:44that they must take very, very seriously.
10:48When we come back, Smith and Carlos shatter a long-held myth.
10:53The idea that the Olympics would be anything that's not political is an absolute joke.
11:04We're counting down the top five reasons you can't blame Tommy Smith and John Carlos for their black power salute.
11:12Welcome back. We begin our countdown with reason number five.
11:16Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French aristocrat, revived the ancient Olympic Games in the late 19th century.
11:24While it is announced as an event of peace and sportsmanship and good fellowship, underneath it contains a certain amount
11:32of politics that has gone on.
11:34Sports have been political since de Coubertin reestablished the games in 1896.
11:41It was begun as a way to get French boys in shape to beat German boys in a rematch for
11:48the Franco-Prussian War.
11:51The whole Cold War was fought out in the Olympics.
11:53It was not demonstrations as much as it was the communists trying to prove the superiority of their system.
12:01What made the salute by Smith and Carlos so disturbingly different was that the two athletes were not acting as
12:08part of a national power structure.
12:10When the Germans won a medal at the 1936 Berlin Games, they raised their arms in the Nazi salute.
12:18That was okay.
12:20What Smith and Carlos did was different.
12:31They were showing support for a non-governmental movement.
12:36Nazi salute, okay.
12:38Black power salute, not okay.
12:39Tommy and John are just the slaves in some ways, the servants.
12:44All they're supposed to do is perform on the field and keep their mouths shut.
12:50We shouldn't blame Carlos and Smith.
12:52Politics has always been in the Olympics, whether we want to admit it or to verbalize it or not.
12:59And for those who think that it isn't, then you're being very naive.
13:06That brings us to reason number four, Dr. Harry Edwards.
13:10The San Jose State professor had started a grassroots campaign called the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
13:17We are sick and tired of being treated as subhumans.
13:21We're men and human beings and we're going to be treated as such.
13:23What Harry did was suggest to his students, think about the power that you have.
13:29Think about what you can do to effect change.
13:33And Tommy and John Carlos heard it, they knew they were on a mission.
13:37I would like to see it develop into the biggest movement possible to rid this whole earth of racism.
13:43Dr. King was the first national leader to endorse the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
13:51We support it because this is a protest and a struggle against racism and injustice.
14:01Among the many athletes Edwards inspired to speak out was a world class sprinter.
14:07Before the idea of my becoming involved in the Olympic Project for Human Rights, I didn't want to get involved.
14:13Harry convinced me that, no, you can't be left alone.
14:16If you are left alone now, you'd be alone all your life.
14:20As far as patriotism, I think this has not that much to do with patriotism.
14:24If it were, we would be treated just like any other human being on the face of the earth, which
14:29is obviously we are not.
14:31Harry Edwards is the wick. He is the person with the match. He is the person who makes this happen.
14:38And in that respect, none of this happens without Harry Edwards.
14:43When we come back, Smith and Carlos are condemned for being something they aren't.
14:49For a lot of Americans, the Black Panther.
14:51Martin Luther King.
14:53I have a dream. My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
15:01judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream for me.
15:09Instead of being grouped with the non-violent forces of Dr. King, Smith and Carlos were misperceived as militants, more
15:16closely associated with the Black Panthers.
15:24In terms of the symbolic power of that picture, that was Black Panther to America.
15:35We love our people so much that if the pigs attack us, we're going to defend ourselves rightfully with guns
15:41and force.
15:42The Black Panthers were the most feared political organization in the United States.
15:49The Black Panthers were promoting community-oriented needs like food and shelter and schooling.
15:56But the imagery of the Black Panthers was so stark that as soon as Smith and Carlos stepped on the
16:02podium with just the black gloves, it was enough of an association to the Black Panther Party to create white
16:10America's worst nightmare.
16:13If white fear was the result of their action, such was not the intention of Smith and Carlos.
16:19They acted in the highest tradition of non-violent protest.
16:23Martin Luther King, before his assassination in April, said that he was in support of them for taking any kind
16:30of stand they needed to take in the Olympics.
16:33Dr. King felt very good about it. It was a non-violent act. It was a statement of conscience.
16:38The left glove, my teammate John Carlos, who wore his left hand, made an arc, my right hand to his
16:47left hand, also signify black unity.
16:51John Carlos had on beads and he said that stood for love and then lynchings in black America.
16:58John Carlos and me wore socks, black socks, about shoes, to also signify our poverty.
17:06You can't blame Tommy Smith and John Carlos for this protest.
17:10It was a very peaceful, silent, but profound protest.
17:19That brings us to reason number two.
17:21Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee.
17:26Mr. Brundage, a prominent American Negro athlete, has called an American Negro athlete to boycott the Olympics.
17:32What's your reaction to that?
17:34That's something no one can understand.
17:37It's about anti-Semite and anti-Negro personality.
17:42This is a man who owned the Montecito Country Club in Santa Barbara, which had no Negroes, no Jews need
17:50apply.
17:51An early glimpse of Brundage's social views was caught at the Berlin Games in 1936, when he was president of
17:58the U.S. Olympic Committee.
18:00Two Jewish athletes, Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman, were slated to run on the 400-meter team that was favored
18:09to win a gold medal.
18:10And they were replaced at the last minute.
18:13There's always been the feeling that Avery Brundage had a hand in this.
18:17You know, that if he didn't order it himself, he certainly expressed his opinions to the coaches of the U
18:25.S. team.
18:2732 years later, Brundage, as IOC president, threatened to expel the entire U.S. track and field team from the
18:34Mexico City games if Smith and Carlos weren't sent packing.
18:39Brundage, because he went crazy about this, he actually helped make this a big event.
18:46Think what would have happened if Avery Brundage had not been a fascist, and had said, okay, let's move on.
18:55We would barely remember it.
19:03They were right.
19:04Racism was very much alive in America when Smith and Carlos ascended the podium.
19:14Tommy Smith and John Carlos not only had every right and every reason to speak out and to protest, but
19:20they had an obligation to do it.
19:25We can participate in the Olympic Games, but when we go back home, we can't live wherever we want to.
19:32We can't ride on any bus.
19:34We can't sit at a lunch counter.
19:36We can't go to any school.
19:45African Americans were indeed not equal to whites, having to use separate, you know, facilities, separate drinking fountains.
19:55The 1960s marked a time when African Americans were making their voices heard in the streets and the voting booths.
20:03By raising their fists in 1968, Smith and Carlos took the movement worldwide.
20:09Black Americans felt frustrated in our lives and had to make the world aware.
20:16It seemed like no one cared.
20:19There was a chance to make a statement to the world.
20:24We are human beings.
20:26If we can come here being the greatest athlete in the world, why can't we be treated the same way
20:33when we go back?
20:34If I were going to come back and be classified as second class citizen, I wanted my feeling known where
20:42I was seen the most.
20:43These young men made a statement not about killing, but about hear us.
20:48We have a platform.
20:49Hear us.
20:50Our quest for dignity and defiance must be taken to the world.
20:53Also, rest in peace, Jesse Jackson.
20:58They did just that.
21:03Now, how do you blame these guys for being patriots in their own way?
21:10Well, we're going to hold up our hand and we're going to bow our heads and say, shame on you,
21:15America.
21:16Shame on you for all the things that have gone on.
21:23During their track careers, Tommy Smith set seven individual world records and Giancarlo's two.
21:30All their marks on the track have since been broken.
21:32Their act of courage on that podium has proven much more lasting.
21:36I'm Brian Kenney.
21:37Thanks for joining us.
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