October 16, 1968 - Two Americans Give the Black Power Salute at the Olympics

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals in the 200m sprint. During the medal ceremony, the two men planned their wardrobe in one of the most political visual statements in recent memory. The two men received their awards without shoes but wearing black socks to represent the poverty of African Americans in the United States. Smith in particular wore a black scarf as a symbol for black pride and woke a bead necklace for all of the lynched blacks in the south.

Even though the two black sprinters stole the show, Australian Peter Norman won the silver medal in the race and stood on the podium next to Carlos and Smith wearing an OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge to show support and to protest against the White Australia bill passed by his own government. This statement was so powerful because of the volatile conditions in the United States for black people following the assassination of Martin Luther King a few months before the Olympics. It showed that the struggles of the blacks to be recognized as equals along with white people were not in vain. Furthermore, the black power salute put the Civil Rights Movement on a global stage as more countries became aware of what was happening in the American south.

However, as heroic and brave the salute was, at the time it was considered villainous. There was a backlash from the groundbreaking gesture as the newspapers compared the men to Nazis as the salute is visually similar to the Nazi Salute. ABC reporter Brett Musburger likened them to storm troopers with dark complexions. TIME Magazine called their salute reprehensible and ugly and the black sprinters’ actions led to Smith being discharged out of the military for his “Un-American” actions and both sprinters receiving death threats after the event. The final straw was reached when someone threw a rock through a plate glass window at Smith’s baby’s crib.

Negative reception aside, this event is important to American history as a whole because of how it coincided with the Black Power movement in the United States but diffused the criticism about how the Black Power Movement was primarily violent. This event showed that people of all races could in fact come together and combat racism and all those who practice it. In conclusion, the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics put the United States on notice that it could not keep its bigoted customs any longer.

- Anthony S. and Joe E.