African American Policy ForumVarmennettu tili

Earlier in the year Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. A police mob in Chicago had beaten anti-war protestors at the Democratic National Convention. Muhammad Ali was still banned from boxing and fighting his conviction for refusing to be drafted.

Days before the Olympic games began in Mexico City, police and troops gunned down hundreds of student activists who had gathered in the city's Three Cultures Square to protest. All of this was fresh in the minds of Tommie Smith and John Carlos when they ran the 200-meter race.

As they went to the podium to receive the gold and bronze medals, Smith and Carlos decided to send a message to the world. "I had a moral obligation to step up. Morality was a far greater force than the rules and regulations they had" John Carlos would later say.

The athletes recognized that their protest would have consequences. They were undeterred. When the Star Spangled Banner began playing, they bowed their heads and raised their black-gloved fists. Immediately the crowd began to boo, with spectators shouting out racist slurs.

No one was more furious than Avery Bundage, the American head of the International Olympic Committee. He ordered Smith and Carlos to be suspended from the U.S. national team and kicked out of the Olympic Village. He labeled their act "a violent breach" of the Olympic spirit.