Sidelined (21 page)

Similarly, the symbolism of the salute by Smith and Carlos has been diluted in an attempt to create a usable past. It provides a cultural reference within a popular narrative of the black freedom struggle that highlights a number of heroic moments that changed the racial landscape. This simplifies the reality of race relations and narrows the scope of the civil rights struggle.
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In the short- and medium-term aftermath of the 1968 Olympics the sprinters were represented as angry young black men who disrespected the nation that gave them the opportunity to compete and succeed on the world stage. Within twenty years of their stand they were transformed into American heroes whose personal courage drew attention to the struggle for human rights and racial equality. These two extremes ignore a much more nuanced reality.

There is a tendency to see the symbol of the podium salute without exploring the crucial messages inherent in it. It is important to look closely at what Smith and Carlos's actions said about the state of the racial struggle in America in the late 1960s and what this now says about the situation forty years later. The image of Smith and Carlos was rehabilitated in the lead-up to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and in the years thereafter. Both Smith and Carlos were enlisted as consultants by the Los Angeles Organizing Committee. In popular culture their stand has increasingly been seen as heroic.
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A statue commemorating their protest was built
on the San Jose State campus, and in 2008 they were presented with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage. The statue was erected in 2005 after a campaign by students to honor the stand of the two sprinters. The statue is an example of an effort to both redress the racial transgressions Smith and Carlos faced and memorialize their stand. It is designed to allow individuals to interact with the memory it is commemorating, as the second-place spot on the podium is empty.
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Yet in so doing the statue ignores the role of Peter Norman and represents an incomplete memorial to that iconic moment in Mexico City.

To unsophisticatedly categorize the podium gesture as a Black Power salute misses a far more nuanced reality. Simple classification of the black freedom struggle into nonviolent and violent, moderate and radical phases, and integrationist and Black Nationalist impulses perverts the complexity of the racial struggle. Smith and Carlos's podium salute encapsulated that complexity in many different ways. If the iconic image of those bowed heads and raised fists is accompanied by the simple title “Black Power salute,” then the subtle ways in which the podium protest reflected the civil rights landscape in 1968 will be lost, as will some important racial challenges for the future. Over forty years hence it is important that this is not lost. If it is, if the search for meaning is diluted, then the significance of Smith and Carlos's effort is compromised.
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The reactions of those on the U.S. Olympic team, both at the time and since, reflect a contested interpretation of the memory of Smith and Carlos's stand. The way that their teammates interpreted and responded to the podium salute further highlights the important search for the meaning of their stand. The fact that even after the passage of forty years many teammates are still critical of various elements of Smith and Carlos' protest is interesting. The failure of some to embrace the now-dominant popular memory of the podium incident as an example of individual courage in support of an abstract notion of equality is illuminating. The concept of team and the traditional ideals of sporting competition have a critical influence on memories of the protest.

The initial response to the suspension of Smith and Carlos was a radicalization of leading black athletes, many of whom had made statements against the original boycott aims of the OPHR. Following the Smith and Carlos protest the black athletes who were not competing crowded into
section twenty-two of the Olympic stadium and gave a clenched fist salute every time a black athlete won a medal.
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There was now an impulse to protest not just racial injustice but the specific treatment of Smith and Carlos. Ron Freeman, a black sprinter, commented, “This is terrible. I think there will be a lot of guys going home.”
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Ahead of his long jump final Ralph Boston stated, “I don't want Brundage giving me a medal either, if I win one.”
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On the victory podium Boston and world-record breaker Bob Beamon made a symbolic protest against the treatment of their African American teammates. Incensed by the treatment received by Smith and Carlos, 400-meter runner Vincent Matthews wrote “down with Brundage” on his bedsheet and hung it from his window in the Olympic village.
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For many, the reactions of the USOC were symptomatic of the problems of interracial sport that the OPHR was protesting. Black athletes were given conditional equality. They were expected to play whites' games by whites' rules. In protesting against racial injustice they had transgressed to the extent that they were removed from the U.S. team. The medals they had won were retained in order to improve the competitive standing of that team, however.

For the black athletes on the U.S. team who were due to compete in the days after the suspension of Smith and Carlos, there was tremendous pressure to make some sort of statement of protest. Particularly affected by this pressure was 400-meter runner Lee Evans. Evans had been one of the founding members of the OPHR and had originally favored the boycott of the games. He and Smith were the most prominent athletes to join with Harry Edwards. The events surrounding his 400-meter final show the twin pressures that threatened the success of the OPHR. These twin pressures came from the Olympic authorities on the one hand and the radicalized wing of the black athletic revolt on the other. At first Evans felt as though he could not run his race after seeing what had happened to Smith and Carlos. His Speed City coach, Bud Winter, thought otherwise, however. Winter used several relaxation techniques to calm Evans down on the afternoon of the 400-meter final.
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Furthermore, Evans's suspended teammates reminded him of what the athletes involved in the OPHR had agreed: “You run, you win, and then you do your thing.”
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Evans had received numerous death threats before and during the Olympics and felt the weight of both expectation and condemnation around his neck. As he and his fellow competitors were warming up for the race, USOC representative Douglas Roby approached Evans, Larry James, and Ron Freeman (the two other African American finalists) and read the sprinters “the riot
act.” Evans remembered he was “talking about if we make it to the victory stand and if we try something, it was hard to listen to this guy, because it was ten minutes before the race, we were nervous, we [couldn't] be still, we were fidgeting and rolling our eyes.”
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The runners went on to take all three medals, with Evans winning while setting a new world record. “God, I think I would have run even faster if I did not have that [political pressure] around my neck,” Evans later reflected.
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Attention then switched to the medalists' actions on the victory podium. Under the subheading “Not Quite the Same Thing,” the
New York Times
carried a picture of the men smiling and wearing black berets, with their right fists (without gloves) held in the air. When the national anthem began the men stood perfectly still, conventionally respectful.
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Evans explained, “It was planned some months earlier and we did not change it because of what Tommie and John did. We did it by event and our protest was to wear black berets.”
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After winning the 400-meter relay Evans and his teammates—Vince Matthews joined the three individual medal winners to make up the quintet—held their left hand under their jersey until they had received their medal and then as one they held them in the air in salute before standing motionless for the national anthem.
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The athletes faced questions about whether they were holding back during the individual 400-meter ceremony and whether they felt they had done enough to protest. Speaking about the second medal ceremony, Ron James said, “By then I could do without the ceremony. They could even keep the medal. It was the year and a half getting ready for this that was important. The victory ceremony? That seemed as if it were for someone else.”
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For many, the 400-meter runners, and Evans in particular, had not done enough. Evans had “disappointed his people,” as Edwards described it in a stinging attack in his account of the OPHR. Edwards explained, “Torn between his desire to capitalize on his Olympic victories and his need to maintain the respect of his wife and of black people at home Evans tried to do the impossible—he attempted to stand up and be counted on both sides of the fence at once.”
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Much was made of the professional football contract that awaited Evans on his return to the United States, and certainly the fear that any actions might jeopardize their future played heavily on the minds of the young sprinters, especially in light of the treatment received by Smith and Carlos.
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Evans remains hurt by Edwards's criticism and explained, “Without me he would never have had Carlos and Tommie, I always had to convince Tommie to come to the [OPHR] meetings.”
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Nevertheless, Evans returned to San Jose State as something of
a “pariah” in the black community.
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That this should be the case highlights the great difficulty for those involved in the OPHR in attempting to communicate their grievances and express solidarity with the actions of Smith and Carlos. Black athletes faced pressure not only from the IOC and USOC but also from radical leaders in their own community.

The USOC also displayed its great anger at the role played in events by Harvard rowing coxswain Paul Hoffman. Hoffman had given his OPHR button to Peter Norman, who then wore it on his jersey during the victory ceremony. He later explained, “I must have been seen by Bob Paul or someone. I was certainly seen hovering around there with them.” The U.S. rowing team officials felt that Hoffman had participated in the political protest of Smith and Carlos and they were under instructions from the IOC and USOC to ensure that the coxswain was questioned concerning his involvement. Hoffman remembered that one of the rowing officials approached some of the crew the day before their final and said, “Listen, don't worry, we have got a ruling that if you are suspended from a team sport for a political protest we can get a substitute; even if something happens to Paul you guys will still be able to row.”

Later in the day it became clear that Hoffman had been suspended from competition pending an enquiry. Hoffman was brought before a committee of between eight and twelve administrators from the USOC. “I was charged with conspiring to aid a demonstration, and I had one very simple position on that—I was not guilty because I had not done it.” Hoffman was cross-examined with his coach, Harry Parker, alongside him. They probed his political beliefs and questioned his actions after the 200-meter final. Hoffman explained, “The closest it got to spiraling out of control was when they asked me didn't I think this [his part in aiding Smith and Carlos' protest] was violating the spirit of the Olympics. I thought what they [Smith and Carlos] were doing was within the Olympic spirit of brotherhood.”
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Another member of the team, Scott Steketee, had told journalists on the day after the Smith and Carlos suspension that their punishment was “unfair and tragic.”
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This was clearly not a view shared by the USOC.

Men like Lee Evans, Vince Matthews, and the Harvard rowing crew represent examples of U.S. Olympians who supported the actions of Smith and Carlos. One of the rowers, Cleve Livingston, reflected on the symbolism of those actions over thirty-five years after the games in Mexico City. He argued, “I thought it was a very forceful but affirmative message of both protest and hope. I think it was a statement of two black athletes who had been brought up in poverty … and who had been able to excel
in track and field, it was a message saying that the United States needs to do better in both its tolerance, but more importantly, appreciation of the value of diversity…. It was also a statement of hope, an affirmative statement of hope that the message would be heard and through peaceful and nonviolent means.”
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By making such a statement Livingston showed he embraced the dominant popular meaning of the podium salute that emerged from the 1980s onward. Yet oral histories show that this is not the dominant interpretation of events among many of the athletes who made up the U.S. team in 1968. This reveals the important role played by concepts of team and traditional sporting ideals in the interaction between sport and the civil rights struggle.

Athletes at the time and in their reflections some years later criticized the forum used by Smith and Carlos and the nature of their protest. Decathlete Bill Toomey argued that the Olympics was a place for competition only, and swimmer David Perkowski stated that the games was not the place for politics and that Smith and Carlos were not acting like members of a team.
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Water polo player Bruce Bradley asserted that it was an honor to receive a medal and that, having seen Smith and Carlos behave as they did, the U.S. Olympic Committee was “well within its rights [to send them home]. It must maintain some sort of order.”
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Speaking years later, Bradley softened his stance a little, suggesting that the decision to send Smith and Carlos home was somewhat harsh. The criticism of the podium salute itself remained, however. Bradley asserted, “I don't think they should have used the forum” to make the statement that they did.
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Pole-vaulter Bob Seagren, who had secured his own gold medal moments before Smith and Carlos took the podium, responded to their gesture with the comment, “If they don't like the United States they can always leave.”
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Seagren's criticism was noted by his black teammate Lee Evans, who recalled seeing television interviews in which Seagren “said some things which I thought were stupid.”
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Speaking with the considerable benefit of hindsight, the pole-vault champion conceded that he had been somewhat naïve in his outlook as a young athlete in 1968. Seagren argued that the timing of the protest by Smith and Carlos, taking place during the national anthem, contributed to the overreaction of many athletes and administrators.
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