1968 Olympics Black Power Salute: Tommie Smith and John Carlos

The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute took place on 16 October 1968 in Mexico City, when the American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium after the 200 metres final. Standing beside them, the Australian silver medallist Peter Norman wore a human rights badge in support. The silent protest against racial injustice led to the two Americans being sent home, but the photograph of the moment became one of the defining images of the twentieth century and a landmark in athlete activism.

Background: a year of upheaval

The 1968 Summer Olympics, the first held in Latin America, opened in Mexico City on 12 October. Mexico saw the Games as a chance to present itself as a modern, stable nation, and they were notable for many firsts: the hurdler Enriqueta Basilio became the first woman to light the Olympic cauldron, and the Games were among the first broadcast widely in colour. They came at the end of a turbulent year. In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in April and Robert F. Kennedy in June, and riots, anti-war protests and campaigns for civil rights dominated the news.

In Mexico itself, on 2 October 1968, ten days before the Games began, troops and police opened fire on a student protest at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City. The number of dead is disputed, with estimates ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. The Olympics went ahead as planned.

The Olympic Project for Human Rights

In 1967 the sociologist Harry Edwards, then teaching at San José State College in California, helped found the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). Smith and Carlos, both students there, were among its supporters.

The OPHR proposed that Black American athletes boycott the 1968 Games. Its demands included restoring Muhammad Ali’s world heavyweight title, which had been stripped after he refused military service; removing Avery Brundage as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); excluding apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia from the Games; and hiring more Black coaches.

South Africa’s invitation to the Games was withdrawn after many countries threatened to boycott. The proposed boycott by Black American athletes did not take place, and individual athletes were left to decide how, or whether, to protest in Mexico City.

The race and the podium protest

The men’s 200 metres final was run on 16 October 1968 at the Estadio Olímpico Universitario. Tommie Smith won in 19.83 seconds, a world record and the first time the event had been officially timed under 20 seconds. Peter Norman of Australia finished second in 20.06 seconds, an Australian national record that stood for more than half a century. John Carlos took bronze in 20.10 seconds.

The high altitude of Mexico City, more than 2,200 metres above sea level, helped sprinters and jumpers set exceptional marks at these Games. Two days later Bob Beamon would win the long jump with a leap of 8.90 metres, a world record that stood for almost 23 years.

Both American medallists had grown up in hardship. Smith, born in 1944 in Clarksville, Texas, was the son of farm workers who moved to California’s Central Valley, where he picked cotton as a boy. Carlos, born in 1945, grew up in Harlem in New York City. By 1968 both were among the fastest men in the world, and Smith had already set several world records.

Smith and Carlos had planned a gesture. They walked to the medal ceremony in black socks without shoes, carrying their track shoes, to represent Black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck for Black pride. Carlos wore his tracksuit top unzipped, in solidarity with blue-collar workers, and a necklace of beads, which he later said honoured people who had been lynched.

Carlos had left his gloves at the Olympic Village. According to the athletes’ accounts, Norman suggested that they share Smith’s pair, so Smith wore the right glove and Carlos the left. All three men wore OPHR badges; Norman had borrowed his from an American rower, Paul Hoffman.

As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and raised their gloved fists. The stadium fell quiet, then parts of the crowd booed. Photographers, including John Dominis of Life magazine, captured the scene. The image of three men on the podium, two with raised fists and one standing still beside them, was printed around the world within days. Because it was largely silent and lasted only the length of the anthem, the gesture’s force came almost entirely from the photographs.

The backlash

The IOC president, Avery Brundage, regarded the gesture as a political statement that violated the spirit of the Games. Under pressure from the IOC, the US Olympic Committee suspended Smith and Carlos from the team and ordered them to leave the Olympic Village. They were not stripped of their medals.

At home the reaction was harsh. Much of the press condemned the protest, and both men and their families received hate mail and death threats. They struggled for years to find steady work. Both briefly played professional football, Smith in the American National Football League and Carlos in the Canadian Football League, and both later built careers in coaching, teaching and community work.

Some American athletes and officials criticised the protest, while others defended it. The sprinter Wyomia Tyus later said that she and her teammates dedicated their 4 x 100 metres relay gold medals to Smith and Carlos. Critics of Brundage pointed out that, as head of the US Olympic Committee in 1936, he had opposed a boycott of the Nazi-hosted Berlin Games.

Other American athletes also made gestures. On 18 October the 400 metres medallists Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman, all Black Americans, wore black berets on the podium, but they removed them during the anthem and were not punished.

Peter Norman’s role

Peter Norman’s support surprised many. A Salvation Army member who opposed racism, he had spoken out against the White Australia policy, which restricted non-European immigration and was being dismantled at the time.

Norman was reprimanded by Australian officials but not formally punished at the Games. He was not selected for the 1972 Olympics. Whether this was linked to the protest is disputed: some accounts say he was being punished, while the Australian Olympic Committee has said that he did not meet the selection standards.

Norman’s role was little known for decades, even in Australia. A documentary, “Salute” (2008), made by his nephew Matt Norman, helped bring his story to a wider public.

In 2012 the Australian House of Representatives passed a motion apologising to Norman for the treatment he received after 1968. He had died in 2006, and Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral in Melbourne. In 2018 the Australian Olympic Committee posthumously awarded him its Order of Merit.

Legacy

Over time, attitudes changed. In 2005 San José State University unveiled a large statue of Smith and Carlos with their fists raised. At Norman’s request the second-place position was left empty, so that visitors could stand there in solidarity. In 2008 Smith and Carlos received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, and in 2019 they were inducted into the United States Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame.

The salute is regularly cited as a forerunner of later protests by athletes, from boycotts of apartheid-era sport to the kneeling protests by American football players during the national anthem from 2016. The IOC’s Rule 50, which restricts political demonstrations at the Games, has been the subject of continuing debate, and in 2021 the IOC relaxed some of its restrictions on athletes’ expression before competition.

The 1968 protest is often compared with earlier moments when the Olympics and politics collided, such as the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and with later crises such as the Munich massacre of 1972.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Smith and Carlos had their medals taken away. Fact: They were suspended and sent home but kept their medals.
• Myth: Peter Norman was banned from the Olympics for life. Fact: He was never formally banned; he was not selected in 1972, and the reasons remain disputed.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1967, October: Harry Edwards and athletes found the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
• 1968, April: The IOC withdraws South Africa’s invitation to the Games.
• 1968, 2 October: Security forces fire on student protesters at Tlatelolco, Mexico City.
• 1968, 12 October: The Mexico City Olympics open.
• 1968, 16 October: Smith wins the 200 metres; he and Carlos raise their fists on the podium.
• 1968, 17–18 October: The two athletes are suspended and expelled from the Olympic Village.
• 2005: San José State University unveils a statue of Smith and Carlos.
• 2006, October: Peter Norman dies; Smith and Carlos carry his coffin.
• 2012, October: The Australian parliament apologises to Norman.

Why it matters

The podium protest of 1968 showed that a silent gesture on a world stage could carry a powerful political message. Condemned at the time, it is now widely honoured as an act of courage, and it remains the reference point for debates about athletes, protest and the Olympic movement.