Fifty years ago, the power of protest in sports took hold.
Throughout this month, we’ll read numerous stories celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Olympic protest by Tommy Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City, where the Olympic medalists bowed their heads and raised their glove-covered fists during the U.S. national anthem.
Smith, who won the gold in the 200 meters, and bronze-medalist Carlos were part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which included a number of high-profile black athletes who chose to boycott the 1968 Summer Games. Most notably was UCLA basketball All-American Lew Alcindor, who soon changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Charlie Scott, UNC’s first black scholarship athlete, was approached by OPHR organizer Harry Edwards at the 1968 Final Four in Los Angeles and asked to join Alcindor and others by not attending the Olympic trials. Scott and coach Dean Smith discussed the option upon returning to Chapel Hill.
Scott decided he would be a hypocrite by boycotting the Olympics. He reasoned that his decision to break the athletic color barrier at Carolina would be seen as self-serving if he turned his back on his country. Scott played in Mexico City, joining other African Americans such as Jo Jo White and Spencer Haywood in leading the USA to the gold medal.
In my book “Game Changers,” Scott recounts how International Olympic Committee Chairman Avery Brundage met with the other black athletes after the Smith-Carlos protest, which led to their expulsion from the Olympic Village and the rest of the games. “They pooled us all together,” Scott said, “and told us what not to do. We couldn’t show any form of protest or they would reprimand us. I understood this to mean that they would strip us of our medals.”
Scott also recalled how former Olympic superstar Jesse Owens talked to the black athletes and discouraged them from protesting, which Scott and his U.S. teammates took as Owens selling out to Brundage, a well-known racist and anti-Semite who was eventually booted from the IOC.
In today’s air of social protest, it is even more reason to celebrate what courageous athletes Smith and Carlos started a half-century ago.
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