It was the summer of 1968 in Mexico City.
Fresh off of breaking a record for the Summer Olympics 200-meter event, Tommie Smith stood adjacent to San José State track-and-field teammate, John Carlos at the podium while receiving their medals during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Smith stood shoeless, with black socks, a black scarf and a black glove. Carlos took the third-place spot, with an unzipped jacket and a necklace of beads.
Their heads bowed and their fists raised in disapproval of injustice and inequality. This was a major historical mark in the movement of Black Power in the United States.
Harry Edwards, the orchestrator of the Olympic Project of Human Rights and former San José State student-athlete, said he took the title of “scholar-activist” because of the adversity he faced.
San José State earned the name ‘Speed City’ beginning in 1956 because of the famously fast athletes the school produced.
The school garnered 43 world records and 49 national records, according to the Online Archive of California.
“Speed City was a characterization of a very special group of athletes,” Edwards said. “They had swept so many sprint events they came to be known as Speed City.”
However, it was only half a century after the 1915 rally that punctuated the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, according to an April 12, 2020 article GQ Online Sports archive.
“The reason it froze like that is because all the happiness instantaneously turned to anger,” Carlos said in an interview with WNDU television news on April 12, 2024. “They started booing, they started throwing things, they started spitting and calling me names. It sent me into shock the whole day.”
Smith and Carlos were merely athletes aiming to change the U.S. Harry Edwards created the Olympic Project for Human Rights, according to the Cal State University website.
Edwards was the first Black student-athlete since the 1950s to graduate from SJSU within the years of his athletic eligibility.
Chris Giovannetti, former sports editor and executive editor for the Spartan Daily, said he recalls that Smith and Carlos were not embraced by Americans.
“I think it’s always important to remember those people as contributors . . . and break that social membrane of people really recognizing what was going on in America,” Giovannetti said.
Yet, it cost them their future participation in the Olympic Games by the President of the Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage. After their audacious stand against racism, Smith and Carlos were banned from the games and were subject to hate mail and death threats, according to an Aug. 6, 2021 New York Times article.
“We knew (Avery Brundage) was a racist from the get-go,” Smith said. “He represented a country that had deep roots in racism. He loved Hitler more than he loved the American people.”
“The message was simply, ‘World, we know what we’re dealing with’,” Edwards said. “Our leaders are being murdered because they have the audacity to say we want to be equal and want to be treated as such.”
In 2005, the legacy of Smith and Carlos was officially inducted into San José State lore, as statues depicting the athletes were unveiled depicting the moment in Mexico City, according to the Visit San Jose website.
“The black glove was a sentiment of power, " Smith said. “It was a move for equality, justice and freedom. We never had a chance to speak (at the podium), only to run fast.”
In 2008, Smith and Carlos were presented with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, where then U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged their struggle for justice, according to the BBC website.
Edwards said the message is the same today as it was in 1968 — every athlete should be able to use sports as a platform.
“They came on and made a statement about Black athletes, not just about a text or an email or an Instagram,” Edwards said. “ “But to get up and do something in terms of changing the course of trajectory of human rights in a broader society.”
In 2019, Smith and Carlos were inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame class, according to the BBC website.
“I’ve passed that spot numerous times before the statues were built, headed to the library many times,” Smith said. “I’ve been on campus when nobody knew who I was in the past six or seven years. People ask me, ‘Do I know these guys?’ and I respond, ‘Yes, I do. They were courageous athletes who stood for human beings in a natural state.’ That statue represents freedom.”
