The Olympics & Civil Rights 40 Years On

As we approach this year’s Olympics we also see the 40th anniversary of the Mexico 1968 protest made by American athletes Tommie Smith & John Carlos. There are two threads to this story:
1) The American Civil rights movement and
2) The IOC (International Olympic Committee) involvement.
The iconic picture above was indeed a representation of black power but the raised fist was also a cry for freedom, ( Smith say’s “we had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard”) there was a need of justice and a desire for an equal chance to be a human being. The black glove represented black power, the socks without sports shoes represented poverty, the beads represented lynching and the unzipped jacket of Carlos was a tribute to the blue collar worker . The protest was to highlight issues in America and represented a growing view of injustice that had come to the fore during the previous years leading up to Mexico. It was not a spontaneous act, they were both members of a militant black student group in San Jose, led by Harry Edwards and inspired by the likes of Martin Luther King & Muhammad Ali. In the build up to the Olympics, there was talk of a boycott and constant conflict with the IOC and in particular the then IOC president Avery Brundage (the man who was instrumental in the 1936 Olympics going to Hitler’s Germany & frequently operated in various clubs & committee’s a no jews or blacks policy).
So what happened afterwards and 40 years on have things progressed? Brundage & the IOC immediately suspended the athletes and pressured the American Olympic Committee to banish Smith & Carlos. Both men received death threats and Carlos’s wife committed suicide partly because of the pressure and both struggled for work. Smith’s mother died of a heart attack when local farmers sent her manure & dead rats through the post & Carlos was reduced to chopping his furniture for firewood.
Now that we are about to see Barack Obama run for president, it would seem that racial apartheid has eradicated, however within health there still seems to be discrimination. Minority doctors are frequently not accepted with the excuse being that the physician’s patients (most of whom are minority) are allegedly too sick & therefore too expensive. For the American cities that saw the riots in the 60’s, regeneration has been slow and often what has been replaced is not for the former communities, with poverty areas being moved rather than solved. In education & wealth too, there is still a great divide. A quarter of African Americans live in poverty, ( compared to 8% of whites), 7 out of 10 black boys drop out of school and in some states are 60 times more likely to be expelled, there are more black men in jail than in college and life expectancy is 6 years lower. If you were to compare the income of people in their 30’s in 2004 with the previous generations in the 70’s, black men earn on average 12% less than their fathers and the gap between white & black incomes has risen not fallen. In 1974 black families earned two thirds of what whites did, by 2004 that had fallen to 58%. Despite the success of black politicians the economic problems highlighted by ML King are still there. King’s son, Martin 3rd is now campaigning for the next president to create a cabinet level post whose sole task would be to begin eradicating poverty.
Now that the IOC have awarded the games to Beijing, Smith & Carlos talk about how nothing has changed, “ 40 years have passed and we’re back in the same situation”. China now has its own human right issue’s and you do wonder at the IOC’s wisdom of choosing such a strong human rights violator as host of the games. It seems money is indeed more important than any Olympic ethos, what price on an athlete this summer showing some solidarity or protest and will the media let us see it? I just hope that by 2048 they’re further down the road than America are today!

The idea for this week’s post was inspired by the BBC documentary “Black Power Salute” (still currently available on BBC iPlayer) and I have referenced The Times, The Guardian and The Washington Post together with interviews with Jesse Jackson, Tommie Smith, John Carlos & Martin Luther King 3rd.