All language subtitles for BBC.Black.Power.Salute.2008.WS.PDTV.XviD.MP3.MVGroup.org.en

This programme
contains some strong language

The time in Mexico, 2am. In Britain,
it's 9am. Good morning to you.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the
two great American Negro sprinters

give the black power salute

as they receive their medals

after the 200m final.

On 16th October 1968, Tommie Smith

and John Carlos's controversial
demonstration stunned the world.

Yet it wasn't the only black
protest on the victory rostrum.

And nor was it spontaneous.

Tommie and John putting
their fist in the air

was something that Americans really
connected to because everyone was in
some type of dissent to something.

But I have to say

that it is one of those symbols
that will be with me all of my life.

It is one of the most definitive
expressions of manhood,

of service.

The world in which we live...

cries out for heroes.

We need heroes now
as much as we ever did.

I hope that if the occasion ever
arose, that I could show even a...

fraction of the kind of courage
that those guys showed.

This is the untold story
of the people and the organisation
behind the stands

and of the man
who tried to stop them.

They should support
the Olympic Movement.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos
were members of a political group,

which started at San Jose State
College, in the fall of 1967.

The college was a magnet
for black activism.

We saw the kinds of conditions
in this community

that helped to radicalise us

and there was the attraction
of Harry Edwards.

Like most black San Jose State
students, Harry Edwards and Ken Noel
enrolled on sports scholarships.

They arrived angry at
the second-class education
accorded to blacks like them.

I brought with me a lot of
the distrust

of institutions that had
really been inculcated

during the three years that I spent
at East St Louis senior high school

so when I saw any degree of racism
discrimination, a flag went up

and I automatically began to
raise questions and raise issues.

In my freshman year
I remember asking
the head basketball coach

how can these guys be on this team
with me and belong to a fraternities

which have clauses in their charters
saying "no Negroes need apply".

And his response was, "You know,
I never needed a fraternity."

and I said,
"That's not what I asked you.".

Harry would influence and inspire
Tommie

and fellow country boy,
Lee Evans,

who grew up in California's
fertile farming belt.

I did farm labour work
till I was 17 years old,

10, 12 hours a day.

I am sure that I saw Lee Evans
when I was a kid

in a cotton field.

We weeded cotton, we picked grapes,
grapes that they make raisins out of.

That's why I said running was easy.

Cos I had been on my feet
for 10, 12 hours.

Sharecropping reinforced
the second-class citizenship
felt by Tommie and Lee.

the seeds of revolt.

Coming from the fields,

I was subjected to being
morbidly thought of as less than.

I didn't like how my parents sorta
cowered down to white people.

Cos they were the boss.

As I grew,
I began to see the world

as a boiling point of differences.

Tommie enrolled at San Jose State
on a basketball scholarship
in the fall of 1963.

A year later, Lee came to run in the
track team, just as Harry graduated
and left to pursue a PhD.

Tommie also decided
to focus on track,

if the team's world-renowned coach
would have him.

I went to Bud Winter and he turned
red, and I could almost see little
things in his head. Flipping around.

100, 200, 400, relay, long jump,
high jump, I could do all of them.

He took me out on the track
and it's history from there on.

Tommie and Lee
provided the foundation

for what would soon become
the world famous Speed City team.

I knew that he had very
successful sprinters
plus he was recruiting me too.

You know, they sent me letters and
he sent Tommie to talk to me.

Well, Bud Winter

had always been, from anybody
who was around the scene,

the number one sprint coach
in the world.

But it was not until Tommie came
and then the sprinters began
to come afterwards

that the Speed City
aspect developed.

There was a sort of avalanche of
the top sprinters in the country,
in the world, there.

Smith begins to pour it on,
he literally flies toward the tape

winning in near-record time,

just three tenths of a second
off his...

By 1965, Tommie was arguably
the fastest man on earth.

As his reputation flourished,
fellow athlete Lynda Huey
became more than a fan.

We started seeing each other
and it lasted for about a year.

He was very secretive. He didn't want
anyone to know that we were involved,

we were dating, we saw each other
behind closed doors

either
at my apartment or at his apartment.

Tommie had good cause
to be secretive.

Interracial marriage
was still outlawed in many states.

Besides, many young blacks
were rejecting whites
and multiracial ideals

and a militant school of
black human rights activism

was now challenging the dominance
of the civil rights movement.

We are non-violent with people
who are non-violent with us.

But we are not non-violent with
anyone who is violent with us.

Malcolm X altered the mindset
of many young blacks.

I am the greatest.

Most notably, a charismatic young
boxer, whom he persuaded to join
the separatist Nation of Islam.

Why do you insist on being
called Muhammad Ali now?

It's the name given to me by my
leader, Elijah Muhammad,

that's my original name,
that's a black man name.

Cassius Clay is my slave name,
I'm no longer a slave.

On 21st February 1965,

Ali's mentor was gunned down in
Harlem, martyred for the struggle.

He was a hero to me. He showed
the white man where it was at.

And the goal of black progress
was also being threatened
by events overseas.

This was also the time when we were
all aware that our peers were being

sent 12,000 miles away to fight
in Vietnam,

but they couldn't go to
school in Alabama or Mississippi.

This angered us, this made us
willing to do whatever we could
to transform America.

Tommie served his country
by enlisting in
the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

By contrast, in April 1967,

outspoken world heavyweight
boxing champion, Muhammad Ali
was drafted into the US military.

Mr Muhammad Ali has just refused to
be inducted into the United States
armed forces.

Notification of his refusal is being
made to the United States attorney.

Muhammad Ali was the godfather
of this generation.

I don't see why we and other
so-called Negroes go 10,000 miles

to drop bombs and bullets on other
innocent brown people

who's never bothered us.

What made Muhammad Ali so important
to African America athletes

was the same reason
why Bob Dylan was so important to
white activists in the late 1960s.

It was they they had seemed to
have done it already, you know?
They were ahead of the curve.

Ali's principled stand
inspired militant black students
at San Jose State.

It also galvanized newly appointed
sociology of sport professor,
Harry Edwards,

who, after gaining his doctorate,
returned to teach there in 1967.

What I was doing in the classes
was pointing out

that sport
inevitably recapitulates society.

You can't have a racist society and
not have a racist sports institution
and here's the evidence of it.

He was my instructor at a course
called Racial Minorities.

When he offered it the first time,
I took that course.

And there were 300 to 400 students
in an auditorium,

most of them white and he would
come in there dressed in

a military Vietnamese
jungle-covered outfit

with matches in his pocket and
wearing his black beret and at 6'8",
200 lbs he would just walk

down the aisle and scare everybody
and it was kinda like "Cool!
Scare us, Harry, cool!".

Harry's classes radicalised Tommie.

Yet it was a casual remark Tommie
made at the World University Games
in Tokyo in November 1967

that precipitated the events, which
would trigger the black protests
at the Olympics, a year later.

A boycott
is possible and it's probable.

The reasoning is why should we
participate for a country

and 100% effort and come back to
our homes

and are denied some of the rights
that should be given us.

I didn't say yes, there would be,
I didn't say

no, there wouldn't be. I said,

between the lines there's work for
all of us to do. Let's wait and see.

And a major part of it was
the media focusing back on us
as a consequence of Tommie's

statements in Japan,
and Tommie's statements in Japan
came directly out of

some of the courses, some of the
discussions, debate and so forth

that were taking place
on this campus.

I think it was almost accidental,

it wasn't scripted, it wasn't
rehearsed, it wasn't planned,

it was in response to a question,

you get an honest answer and a
controversy comes out of that answer

that all of a sudden allows people
like Harry Edwards and Tommie Smith

to see they were in the middle of
something, something was possible.

In the fall of 1967,
Harry and Ken became militant.

They challenged
the college authorities

to reverse its racist policy
towards black athletic scholars.

And more.

And while we are at it, let's look
at the housing, let's look at
the academic opportunities,

the whole situation with the
fraternities and the sororities,

let's look at the whole issue of
the hiring. Where are the Negro
professors, the Negro coaches,

they're taking our football from us,
but if we wanted a job here,

we couldn't work here.

Well, it was disbelief, you know.

Who are these guys,
there's no problem,

you guys are creating
a problem.

Everything is fine.

Well, the only thing I recall
was the list of demands that

Harry made and I remember looking at
those thinking they won't be able to
meet those.

That's not gonna work! But I had
also been very involved in

some of those demands because
I had gone and rented apartments

for some of these guys and then
turned a key over to them.

Harry and Ken organised
a student demonstration.

It changed nothing.

By contrast, their threat to boycott
the college's lucrative,

season-opening
football match against Brigham
Young University reaped rewards.

Success inspired them to act
on Tommie's proposal
for a black Olympic boycott.

In November 1967,
Harry won unanimous support

for the idea at the Los Angeles
Black Youth Conference...

His victory would put him on a
collision course with international
Olympic supremo Avery Brundage,

who was adamant that sport
should be a politics-free zone.

And he wasn't alone.

We were in a situation where not
all of the athletes

were either accessible
or likely to participate

in anything close to a boycott.

Two such athletes were
long jumpers Bob Beamon.

and Olympic gold medallist
Ralph Boston.

As a guy who was nearing the end of
his Olympic career,

my first reaction was
I don't want to do this.

I need to go ahead and do this,

this is gonna be my ticket to

earning a good living for my family
and so on and so I did... I wasn't...

I wasn't very interested at the time.

We'd been doing this here

half of our lives and suddenly
we wanna give it up now,

for whatever he was trying to say?

Harry's proposed black
Olympic boycott
was anathema to Avery Brundage,

the all-powerful head of
the International Olympic Committee.

In Olympic circles,
the word boycott is not used -
that's a political word.

If they withdraw
for political reasons

it's a sign that they do not
understand the Olympic philosophy of

no discrimination because of race,
religion or political affiliations.

The Olympic Project for Human Rights
or OPHR became the vehicle for the
proposed black Olympic boycott.

Remarkably, the fledgling group was
backed by Dr Martin Luther King,

who signed up as an advisor
when he met Harry at the group's
press launch in New York City.

Dr King was about 5'9"
tall with his hat on and...

about 165lbs so I'm standing there

6'8", about 270lbs and he said,
"Well, I see why these folk

"so scared of you. You huge!"

We laughed about it, but he
understood that this was merely

an overlay onto athletics of
the pattern and paradigm
that he had established.

Uniquely, OPHR also won
huge support

from the militant human rights wing
of the black liberation struggle.

Harry courted activists
including Stokely Carmichael.

We want black power,
we want black power. Black power!

And H. Rap Brown.

The rebellions that we see

are merely dress rehearsals for
the revolution that's to come.

OPHR backed up its call for
a black Olympic boycott
with a list of incendiary demands.

Their primary objective called for
the dismissal of their archenemy,
Avery Brundage.

Who we found on a country club
in Santa Barbara

which had "no Negroes and no
Jews need apply" in its charter

and this guy is the head of the
International Olympic committee.

Avery Brundage had form.

He'd been instrumental
in winning the 1936 Berlin
Olympics for Adolf Hitler.

Two years later, Hitler
reciprocated by contracting

Brundage's construction firm to
build the German Embassy in America.

We're talking about somebody
who was kicked out of the America
First Committee in 1940,

which was a horrible Nazi solidarity
group in the United States.

trying to keep the US out of World
War 2. He was expelled

for being too pro-Hitler,
it was embarrassing to them
so he was asked to leave.

This is who Avery Brundage was
and he made sure that the
International Olympic Committee

contained more fascists
than the Nuremberg trials.

Another OPHR demand concerned
the movement's warrior saint,
Muhammad Ali.

He'd been stripped of his world
title and banned from boxing
for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

OPHR insisted the decision
be reversed.

Mr Clay. Muhammad Ali, sir.

Mr Clay... Muhammad Ali, sir.

..or Mr Muhammad Ali, either one.
Yes, sir.

Muhammad Ali is important
because he is probably

one of the first athletes
who begins to

publicly articulate this
relationship between sport, race

and politics and crucially begins
to do so in a global context.

A third OPHR demand concerned
"disinviting" the all-white teams

of Southern Rhodesia and apartheid
South Africa to the 1968 Olympics.

Like the group's call for his
sacking, it was bound to invoke
the ire of Avery Brundage.

Well, in the first place we
have not invited South Africa.
We don't deal with nations.

We've invited a multiracial team,
a mixed team, from South Africa

chosen by a multiracial committee
according to Olympic regulations.

Whether we are talking about
disinviting apartheid South
Africa and southern Rhodesia,

restoring Muhammad Ali's title
or the reign of Avery Brundage
where he ran

the International Olympic Committee
like a racist fiefdom,

you're talking about three points
in which the people of the OPHR
were proven correct by history.

It became very clear
that there was a direct

network of connections

between what we were experiencing
here at San Jose State

and what was being experienced
on the national level

in the Olympic movement
by African Americans

and what was happening in places
like South Africa and Southern
Rhodesia on the international level.

These were all the same people,
it was the same power structure.

OPHR's demands were so outrageous
that news headlines were guaranteed.

However, Harry was forced to
reinvent himself to keep them
in the media spotlight.

Don't forget that about 30 miles from
San Jose was Oakland, California, the
Black Panther party was born there.

So we started attending some Black
Panther party meetings in Oakland

and they said we were militant.
We weren't fighting anybody,

but they call you militant cos you
wasn't agreeing with the status quo.

The Black Panther party

set...a new bar,

in terms of what was...accessible.

It's pigs, pigs, pigs, there's
another pig at his campaign
headquarters right up there.

Those suit-wearing days
were over with, you didn't have to
be polite, in point of fact,

the thing now
was to get in their face.

Cos its all one big penitentiary,
it's all run by pigs.

It was an aesthetic that was
just on the absolute edge of cool.

It marked you as someone
who was not gonna do it
in the old civil rights way.

And that was something that Edwards
adopted, far more than he adopted
the actual politics of the Panthers.

In February 1968, OPHR took direct
action on one of their demands,

the desegregation of the
New York Athletic Club.

They staged a mass boycott of the
club's showpiece centennial meet.

The New York Athletic Club
was notorious for
not allowing Jews or blacks

to come use the facilities.

When the track meet comes around,
they want the black athletes to

come and help bring audiences
and money to their doors.

That was one of the first things
Harry targeted.

If we're good enough to get in
and make $15-30,000

on one track meet
for the New York Athletic Club,

we should be good enough
to do anything

the New York Athletic Club
has to offer.

I called some of my friends,
the guys I knew. Hey, you know,
don't go to the New York AC meet.

To have Igor come from Moscow

and be wined and dined and stay
at the Athletic Club
and I have never seen the inside

and I'm an American citizen
and I'm competing in their meet -
that didn't sit very well with me.

The boycott made national news.

Yet OPHR's credibility
was undermined by its inability
to present a united black front.

Long jumper, Bob Beamon,
was one of a handful of athletes
who crossed its picket line.

I felt in-between.
I just hated for politics to...

..and human right issues...
to seep into sports.

I was disappointed that he went
to the New York AC meet because

only three or four blacks showed.
Bob is lucky somebody didn't beat
him down there in New York,

because some Black Panthers
said that any black people who went,
they were going to beat them down.

We understood what we were asking,

but it was necessary

in order to move this thing ahead.

I think that was one of
the high points of the movement -

that was the closest thing
to a boycott success.

Despite Bob's participation,

OPHR members had bigger issues.

Not least unwelcome attention,
which threatened their goal
of a black Olympic boycott.

It started as soon as we joined
the proposed boycott,

"We're gonna kill you niggers
Friday at two."

It happened on a daily basis almost.
Tommie gave me a copy and said,
'Hey, look at this!"

and I say, "You haven't seen
anything, look at these!"

So I had a whole box of hate mail.

Harry Edwards had his dogs cut up,
killed and slaughtered and cut up
in pieces and left on his doorstep.

He did in fact relate to Ken Noel

here's the kind of leadership
we need to provide if I'm not
gonna be around to complete it.

It got the place where
I would not go to a restaurant,

a sit down restaurant where you
order food from a menu and eat.

I wouldn't go to any restaurant
except a smorgasbord,
where they have all the food

laid out and you pay a certain
amount at the front when you go in

then eat what you want,
because if they didn't know I was
coming, they couldn't poison me.

Racist rednecks were the
least of Harry's problems.

His position as OPHR's mouthpiece
had made him a target
for the federal authorities.

There were so many instances
where we would go someplace

and the guys would be out there.

We would go in two cars, him
in front, I'm behind, I fall out

to a side street and wait and
you see people coming by tailing us.

Right on to wherever we're going.

With Harry and co. up against it,
Brundage looked set for victory.

OPHR desperately needed a boost.

And in April 1968,
it came in the form of John Carlos,

a world-class sprinter-cum-activist
from Harlem, who became a student
at San Jose State.

Lee Evans and Art Simburg
brought Carlos.

And Lee Evans spoke very highly
of him and I remember him saying,
"This is a guy who gets it.

"He understands what happened at
San Jose State because we've
talked about it."

These were things that were dear to
his heart. These were not bulletins

to him. I mean, to some people
these were things that were

a real awakening for people.
It's not an awakening for him,

I mean, it was tremendous
reinforcement of things that he knew.

He was the most militant
of all of those track athletes.

He's the most vocal and the most
militant and he would take a stand
in anybody's face.

He would say anything to anybody,
so yes, he was number one
militant man on campus.

In John Carlos you have somebody
who I think, much more than
other historians give him credit for,

was very responsible for giving what
happened in 1968 a certain edge
and a certain timelessness

that pushed it from being
a symbol of civil rights
into a symbol of black power.

For all their athletic prowess
and political zeal,
Tommie, Lee and John alone

couldn't keep alive media interest
in OPHR's proposed Olympic boycott.

Once again, Brundage was poised
to silence the upstart Negroes.

Until OPHR got a fillip
from a most unlikely source.

the Harvard 8-man rowing crew.

The way that all developed
was as we were working to

make the Olympic team and as we were
training through that summer

before the Olympic trials there
were a number of articles about,

not only about what was referred to
as the revolt of the black athletes,

but I think where it was starting to
focus was on the notion

that there could be a boycott of the
Olympics to highlight these issues.

For them to step up when they did
was a crucial thing, to keeping if

not the possibility
of a boycott alive

the idea of racial justice
really in the public eye.

What we did in fact do was, as
each member of the Olympic team

was selected in any sport
we wrote them a letter.

We sent them a copy of our original
statement. And we basically invited

everybody to make an effort
to try to understand the plight
of black athletes and the plight

of black people in America.

What was remarkable was how little
response there was. It was very much

like dropping the rock in the
well and not hearing the splash.

Although timely,
the Harvard rowers' support couldn't
generate media interest forever.

By August, Harry had
a difficult decision to take.

We knew from the outset
that we were not going to be able

to pull together a boycott for
all the reasons that I've discussed

but that didn't mean that
we were not able...that we would
not be able to make a statement.

So the headline that came out in the
paper after the press conference was
"There are many ways to boycott".

Everybody
is free to do what they feel,

their commitment permits them to do.

I think he really thought
it was over, it was like

his eulogy for the movement
and he didn't get it.

He'd really set something in motion
that wasn't only not just

winding down but it was in fact
looking to its high point.

'In October watch the summer Olympic
Games exclusively live and in
colour from Mexico City on ABC.'

'We are at Lake Tahoe in the
Sierra Nevada Mountains,

'scene of the United States Olympic
men's track and field trials.'

When the Olympic trials were staged
in September, OPHR was in disarray.

Harry didn't attend.

And the members who did
were down and lacking direction.

'Here in the woods,
we're ready to go now.'

Even so, the group welcomed
a former dissenter into its ranks.

When the meetings began in California
I starting getting hate mail

and I was nowhere even near that,
it made sense to me

that if I'm gonna get hate mail,
if I'm gonna get killed,

I might as well get killed -
and the threat was there -

I might as well get killed for being
a part of something rather than to
stand out on this island alone.

World record
44.5 held by Tommie Smith.

Everything now rested on
winning Olympic qualification,
not hearts and minds.

Then an unprovoked intervention
by Brundage

gave impetus to renewed militancy
among the angry black athletes.

We went to Lake Tahoe and
there was no meetings there was...

We didn't talk about it, but Avery
Brundage, idiot that he is,

there was a newspaper article
that said Avery Brundage
makes a statement and he said,

"If they come to the Olympics and
they make trouble we know what to do
with them" - he threatened us.

So we started having meetings again.

It's a new world record.

In that meeting, Ralph Boston was
a moderator of this meeting,

it was to front the letter
that was sent to us by the IOC,

via the USOC that if any athlete
step out of line that he would

be immediately kicked off
the Olympic team and sent home.

It was pretty much a foregone
conclusion there that we gonna go,

we are definitely gonna go, but we
have gotta decide how to handle this
thing we've got our hands around.

If I can ask you first of all -
is the boycott itself dead now?

Is it finished?

I would say the boycott is off.

Now what about other things
that might happen at Mexico City?

Well, I couldn't give you
any concrete evidence

or any concrete answers on what
will happen at Mexico City.

All I can say is, you can
expect almost anything.

All I can say is, you can
expect almost anything.

The Mexico City Games
opened with a colourful display
of global togetherness

with the world watching on.

The stage was set
for Tommie, John and Lee to make
a powerful statement, but what?

Harry wasn't there and his OPHR
disciples had no concrete plan,
It looked as if Brundage would enjoy

Indeed behind the scenes Brundage's
minions, like American official

Bob Paul, were trying to
neutralise potential troublemakers.

There were a series of
remarkable incidences
once we got to Mexico City.

Pete Axthelm, sports editor of
Newsweek was initially denied
credentials.

He got to the Olympic stadium and Bob
Paul walked up to him and said,

"Oh, I see you got in.
I hope you've got something better
to write about than niggers".

I mean, this is the head of public
relations for the Olympic Committee!

Umm, it was just breathtaking stuff.

The world record holder Tommie Smith
of America - 6'3" and 14 stone.

Any thoughts Tommie had about
representing OPHR's cause

entailed making it
to the victory rostrum.

However, a moment of high drama
during his semi-final

raised serious doubts about his
future involvement at the Games.

Just watch Tommie Smith go from
this stage and he's really
powering it away.

When I crossed the finish I turned
my left leg a little too much.

Again very close, the world record,
and disaster for Tommie Smith.

It only took half a stride
and I felt it, I said,

"Oh, no I've been shot," because
of all the hate mail I had gotten.

That could be the difference between
the gold medal and nothing at all.

And you know what I said?
To myself of course.

"Oh, it's just a pulled muscle."
Now where do those words come from?

You idiot! A pulled muscle
means that there is a possibility,

that you will not compete.

I managed to get through
some barriers, past some guards,

somehow pull something to
get over to the area, where they're,
you know they're in a tent.

They actually froze the groin
area where the injury had happened
and you see his first few steps.

It's very obvious he wouldn't be able
to explode off the blocks,
if he could run in the final.

After they iced it and Bo had
said, "Tom Tom lets go out on the
practice track and try it out."

And I said, "OK. coach."

It was a tense time.

And I said, "Coach, I think
I'm OK," he said, "OK, in a few
minutes they're gonna call

"the final call for the 200 metres,
be ready." I said, "OK!"

But when it came to the final
he was there and in great

competition with his fellow American
John Carlos, this was the final
of the 200 metres for men.

It's all or nothing now.

The proposed boycott,
all the training, lost my job,

wife needs clothes, Kevin needs
milk, cotton fields,
all this was here.

Come to your marks! Get set!

Silence! Nothing I heard,

but silence.

Doing well in lane two is
Tommie Smith who's got one
of the best starts in his career.

I'm in trouble.

Mid turn or coming out of
the turn cause I was in third
or fourth place.

In lane two is Roger Bamford
coming up to John Carlos,

but Carlos coming now.

'At about eighty metres cause
it was just out of the turn.'

I made a surge and when I made
the surge I could almost feel myself

Tommie Smith of America going well
Tommie Smith America out in front
and Carlos on the near side.

And I knew that the only way
I was going to catch anybody

in front of me
was a burst of speed.

And Carlos is being followed
by Tommie Smith coming right
through,

Tommie Smith wins, what a victor!

'That smile.'

Just before crossing the tape
was a smile of genuine elation

that it is over.

I have done

what I'm here to do.

The time inside 19.8,
the new world record.

'I had decided to have'

Mrs Smith bring me gloves,
but I didn't know what
I was gonna do with them.

When they were getting ready to
go out for the awards ceremony

it was clear something was up,

um, they had black gloves on,

they had black socks.

I had a left glove and I told John,

"John, this is what I'm gonna do,
if you want the left glove,

"you can have it."

The fellow who won the silver medal
was an Australian named Peter Norman.

He said, "Mate, I believe in what
you believe in and I want to help".

"White boy, you're Australian,
I mean come on,

"go get your medal
and just, you know..."

so I said no.

And on the way out Paul Hoffman
was hanging over the banister.

I was wearing my Olympic
Project for Human Rights button

and he looked at me and said
"Have you got another one of those?"

And so here's this white Australian
with two black Americans about to go

out on an awards ceremony
and wants a button,

I'm damned if I'm gonna be the
one to say he can't
so I said, "You'll wear it?"

and he said "yes"
so I gave mine to him.

We were really excited and
thrilled and, kind of, not really
expecting much from these guys,

maybe from Carlos cos he was the
more militant, but not from Tommie,
this was a share-croppers son.

from Lemoore who picked cotton,
this was the quiet child.

There were more than two hundred
of us watching.

the actual event, we knew
something was gonna happen.

The star spangled banner,

when they did what they did
was absolute eternity.

'But see I did not
throw a rock and hide my hand.

'What I did is held my hand up
in a cry for freedom.'

We were electrified when they raised
their fists,

none of us knew that was
coming

and when it happened it was so right.

People called it...
"Black power", of course I'm black,
of course we represented power,

but it was a cry for freedom.

"Here, notice me, I'm in need..."

"What are you in need of?" Justice.

We were in awe of it, we were
silent we just stood there.

Nobody said a word through
the Anthem, we just sat there
and looked at each other

and looked back at the
TV and looked at each other
and looked back at the TV.

It was quite a moment.

You know, you're sitting there
and saying that's along time for

somebody to take out a gun
and shoot them.

You're doing this in the same year
that Martin Luther King and a Kennedy
are assassinated?!

I think there was a great deal
of shock and people,

people were sort of awe struck
by what they're looking at.

I don't think until after it was over
you heard a huge murmur afterwards,
you know, trying to kind of...

what did all this mean?

Tommie can you tell us
the significance of the black glove

on the right hand
and the black socks?

They represent black America.

I'm proud to be a black man,
and all my people back home

know that it's very significant.

Well, the iconography is
absolutely, it's fascinating.

So you have the leading arm of
Tommie Smith, his right arm raised

and you have the left arm of
John Carlos and it forms that
nice arc showing the unity.

of black America, so it
becomes an aesthetic moment.

They're not wearing shoes as a way
to say something about

poverty in black America,

they're wearing beads

around their necks to symbolise
the lynchings that had occurred

in the history of black America.

John Carlos's jacket is
unzipped which is a
tremendous breach in protocol.

He said to me he kept his jacket
unzipped because he wanted it to be

a tribute to blue collar
workers black and white.

Peter Norman disrupts that
simple narrative of it only being

about Black Nationalist politics
and it broadens it out.

That's a reason that the image has
been so powerful -

you can read into it,
so many different stories.

It blows your mind
that this isn't just a black thing.

This is a moment of resistance, this
is about people who've had enough.

And people who want to stand up
and be counted and it gives

taking things away from
white people, about the advance
of black people.

There is a place for white people,
there has to be a place for white
people in that struggle.

The American team spokesman
said today that United States
Olympic officials

wouldn't take any action
against American Negroes
Tommie Smith and John Carlos

who raised their arms in
a Black Power salute during
the Olympic medal ceremony.

The officials knew that they planned
to do it before the ceremony,

the runners had told their coach who
notified Olympic officials

said the spokesman, they said
they did it to show
black people are united.

Yet Avery Brundage
wouldn't let it lie.

He dispatched Jesse Owens

to prevent any repetition of
Tommie and John's demonstration.

Jesse did Brundage's bidding,
despite his master stripping him

of his amateur status
in a fit of pique

after the 1936 Olympics, a decision
which had reduced the great Olympian

to racing against horses
to make money.

and Avery Brundage
in all his mutton-idiocy

decides that "Well, Jesse Owens
must be a black icon to these young
men because he's black and famous.

"Therefore I will send Jesse
Owens in, in all his well-spoken
Ohio state four gold medal

"grandeur and Jesse Owens
will calm all of this down".

These guys, they didn't want
to hear from Jesse Owens

for ten seconds.

As soon as they saw
Jesse Owens and knew he was sent
there by Brundage that was it.

To me,

politics has no part to play on
the field of strife of competition

I've never believed it.

He came in there to our meeting and
told us we shouldn't wear black socks

and he gave us some stupid reason

why we shouldn't wear
black socks, then he said it was

going to be hard for us to find
a job when we get back to America
if we do these type of things.

I said, "We can't find a job now.

"We have you know,
Tommie and John couldn't find a job

"before they stuck their fists in the
air so what's the damn difference?".

And he cried!

There were some athletes said
that, you know, you had to do what
you did because you're a Tom.

We chased him out, the great,
the great Jesse Owens, man.

We looked at
him as a Big Uncle Tom.

And what really hurt me was that...

..he was not even
allowed a position

on the United
States Olympic committee

until after we demanded

that a black person be put on
the United States Olympic
committee and they put him on.

and attacked us saying that's
not the way you get things done.

Although Brundage failed
to bring the uppity black boys

back into line, he had a personal
stake in ensuring Tommie and John
were punished for their stand.

Good morning, the Olympic Games
are one week old today,

and yesterday the sixth day
was the most dramatic so far.

It started with the news that
the Black Power disciples Tommie
Smith and John Carlos

the Olympic two hundred metres
Gold and Bronze medallists
had been suspended

by the United States Olympic
committee and given 48 hours
to leave Mexico.

I said that if there
were any demonstrations

at the Olympic games by anyone,
the participants would be sent home.

That demonstration I think aroused
resentment among all who saw it,

there's no place
for such things

and the boys involved were
promptly sent home.

I heard in their expulsion

the hand of Avery Brundage.

And if you don't do anything

I am going to ban the entire
American Olympic team, oh, yes.

Brundage couldn't let it go,
and for him it was both

a matter of the personal attacks

that he had been subjected to.

Avery Brundage is a racist
and I'm very surprised that

they re-elected Avery Brundage.

As a matter of fact,
I heard about it cos I see there's n

improvements gone everything
is still standing at the same way.

The gesture, you know, some people
saw it and were impacted by it,

but it didn't really get
big and didn't really offend
millions of Americans

until the IOC insisted that
Smith and Carlos were
removed from the Olympic village.

Do you think the Olympic Games are
the right place to do this

kind of thing or to use this as
a kind of world stage?

David, since we are athletes,
although I am a teacher,
but I'm not a politician...

..we used this so the whole
world can see the
poverty of the black man in America.

Cynics might say that you've
got it all, you've got publicity,
you got medals,

you got martyrdom as well,
what do you say to that?

I can't eat that and the kids round
my block they can't eat it,

and the kids that's gonna
grow up after them they can't
eat it publicity,

they can't eat gold
medals as Tommie Smith said.

All we ask for is an equal chance
to be a human being

and as far as I see now,
we are five steps below the ladder

and every time we try
and touch the ladder

they put their foot on our
hands and don't want us to climb up.

As Tommie and John received
their marching orders, Paul Hoffman
became the target

for a United States Olympic
Committee disciplinary panel,
he'd been seen handing

his OPHR badge to Peter Norman.

He was to answer
a conspiracy charge.

If found guilty Paul would forfeit
his place in his crews
rowing final the next day.

After a long

discussion of really not much,
they sent me down

the room to their hospitality lounge

and then after about an hour or so
somebody came down and said

"Congratulations, you
can race tomorrow".

I had to pretend that
somehow I should say thank you.

I heard later
part of the discussion was...

Many of these men had met
my father who was a judge
on the Virgin Islands,

a former track guy
staying in the same hotel
and they said well, you know,

his father is a judge,
he should be a good guy.

That kind of completely irrational
irrelevant argument.

Whatever it was however,
it got to the result I wanted
which was to row the next day.

Two days after Tommie and John's
Black Power salutes made headline
news around the globe

a black team mate did likewise

with a breathtaking example
of athleticism.

'On the long jump runway,
Bobby Beamon of the United States,

'the man most feared by every
competitor in this competition.'

And I stood there for a minute
and I said, you know...

I feel good...

I feel like I'm gonna do
something very special.

'And here he goes
for his opening leap.'

He comes zipping down the run-up.

And I'm very loose.

And he hits the first jump
and he's that far from
the end of the take off.

I noticed that I was up there
five minutes, ten minutes,

twenty five minutes, an hour,
suddenly I landed.

'Ooh, it's an enormous one!'

And when he hits the pit
there's a roar. ROAR!

'My goodness me,
it's an enormous one!'

I had a sense of people in the
stands giving, uh, "Hey, hey!".

'Ralph Boston there,
congratulating him.'

They had to find a measuring
tape because the site device

would only go to 8 metres 60,
they finally rolled out the number.

Which was in metres, and
I said, "Hmmm...' I had no idea.

And he came to me and he said,

"how far is that Ralph?"
And I'm...

"that's 29 feet."

He said, "No", I said,
"no, that's more than 29 feet."

'Good gracious me!

'He's looking around at the judge...
My good... If HE'S leaping about!

'Remember this man's done 27 before!'

You know, I was like, are we crazy?

But then he, uh,
he walked around a little bit

and he walked up to Charlie Maze
and myself

and then he started to collapse and
that's the picture that I've seen

where we were trying to pick him up.

Bobs astonishing leap of 29 feet,
2� inches claimed the gold medal.

Ralph won bronze,
although they weren't finished yet.

In my mind, we had come this far
and you gotta make some sort of
statement.

Bob was probably angry, when they
kicked Tommie and John off the team

a lot of people who was not involved

got involved because they were angry.

My protest was - my barefoot,
my pants rolled up,
my whatever you want to call it

defiant looks and so-forth
was in support of John and Tommie.

He took his shoes off
and I raised my socks.

It could've been interpreted
as the same as John and Tommie
in a sense.

'The 400m final.'

There was great expectation as
Lee lined up for the final which
was delayed by Bob's wonder jump.

As the world's top 400m runner
and a leading member of OPHR,

the pressure was on
to win and to protest.

When the guy said, "Set"
a smile came on my face.

'The last to rise there
was the Ethiopian, Lee Evans.'

They shot the gun
and I was flying, you know.

'Closing up in lane two all the time

'and there goes Evans now
on the outside.

I decided to lay it all out,
I went up to 100% effort

from 200 metres to the finish.

'Lee Evans nearest the camera and
the two Americans on the inside.'

And...the rest is history!
I broke the World Record

43.86, it stood for 20 years.

It's gonna be an American one, two,
three! Lee Evans slowing up,

he could get beaten,
Lee Evans could get beaten!

No, he wins it! Evans wins,

James second, Ron Freeman third,
another gold medal for America.

Lee had been so very important to
everyone's consciousness changing

before Mexico City.

Lee had been more militant
than Tommie.

Lee had been more conscious
than John and once Tommie

and John, uh, thrust their fists
into the air,

umm, we just couldn't wait
for Lee's event.

'And they have made their protest,

'they're all wearing
small black berets.'

When we saw him approaching
the podium with the beret,

uh, we knew that
the sky was the limit.

'The Americans have said that
any other athletes
will be disciplined and now

'all three of the American negroes
who've got medals for 400m
wearing tokens of protest.'

Somebody said that they was gonna
shoot at us on the victory stand,

so I figured it'd be hard to shoot
a guy with a big smile on his face,

I had my biggest smile,
because I was scared to death.

'The American Olympic committee on
record this morning yet again

'saying that any more
demonstrations or gestures

'would result in the athletes
being sent home,

'and if the Americans are true
to their word, they've just lost
their 4 x 400 relay team.'

There was a sense among
the black athletes

that Lee had let them down. Like,
these two guys got thrown out,

take your own risk and get thrown
out, don't be just protecting

your own butt so you can
get another gold medal.

Especially when he took the beret
off when the National anthem

was playing, there was a visible
sense of disappointment in the crowd

that was watching in the dormitory.

Lee was told he was gutless.

That's a tough thing.

What he did wasn't good enough
for African Americans

who he was interacting with.
Definitely it was too much

for many white folks, so he was
very much caught in-between.

He was somebody who really did the
dirty work when it came to building

the Olympic Project For Human
Rights, I mean he was the person
who advocated for it,

who spoke to other athletes, who in
Europe spoke to European athletes

about how they fused politics
and sports.

It was hard for me to handle because
I have, I was... I had no second
thoughts about my militancy

and so it didn't...
When it was questioned, you know,
I became angry and disappointed.

In retrospect,
Lee was under even more pressure

than any of us could imagine,

but in our youthful zeal,
we wanted him to do something
that was impossible.

What could you do beyond
what Tommie and John had done?

The Mexico City Olympics were over.

Despite the controversies,
they witnessed America's best ever
track and field team.

The Black Victory stand protests
had given the lie to

Brundage's assertion that
politics and sports shouldn't mix.

Now all that remained was for
Tommie, John and Lee
to return to San Jose State

to complete their studies and face
the consequences of their actions.

Tommie and John were never pariahs
with us.

When they came back from Mexico City,
they were celebrated.

We paraded them around on campus,
uh, we couldn't get enough of Tommie
and John when they came back.

It was a life-changing experience

and I saw from, directly after
Mexico City, I saw students around,

African American students
around the country

beginning to do things.

Tommie Smith!! Tommie Smith!!

It gave confidence to people
even outside of America
that they were part of

a broader movement and this is why

we need to situate that moment
alongside the iconography of people

like Pele and Eusebio and the
emergence of the West Indies cricket
team which begins to take place

in the '60s as a kind of
a dominant force.

Where blacks celebrated
Tommie and John,
whites were generally hostile.

Carlos's dog was slaughtered

and thrown on his front porch, his
wife committed suicide, um, I don't
know where their daughter is now.

'Tommie Smith - the fastest man
in the world has ended up here

'in the northern industrial town
of Wakefield.' OK, make a circle,
bring it around, all the way around.

I travelled anywhere I could travel
to pay the rent and buy food.

'This is how far he has fallen

'four years in which he's been
thrown out of the US athletics team,

'his marriage has broken up,
he's been spat at in the street

'and has received more than
50 threats on his life.'

Had I been a good boy in Mexico,

I coulda probably been monetarily
richer and I would probably have

been a bigger figure
than I am right now,

but yet 'n' still I would have
to fight myself from the inside.

Lee's fortunes also went
into a steep nose-dive.

There was some backlash on Lee when
he came back to San Jose.

I've always felt that that was why
he went off to Africa and coached

for 20, 30 years, however long
he was gone, because he,

he was not welcomed home as a hero
like John and Tommie were
by the rest of the black community.

Harry Edwards, the architect of
the Olympic protests also suffered.

It bothered me that he wasn't
at Mexico City.

First of all it was the question
might he even have survived there

None of them for
example had to deal with

the FBI and other kinds of
pressures,

uh, the surveillance of my home,

in my classes or at the places
that I that I worked.

I was fired, uh, from here,
uh, at San Jose State

right after the Olympic protest so
they didn't have to deal with that.

After spending the '70s in the
wilderness, Tommie and John were
suddenly brought in from the cold.

There was an attempt
to tell a new story about race and
sports in the United States.

It started in the '80s and really
came together with the 1984
Olympic Games.

American optimism is one of its
greatest renewable resources

and, America's lost innocence is
one of those amazing things where
they keep losing it and then

they find it again just in time
to be surprised once more.

So their re-incorporation into
the story really chimes with
how America deals with its past.

The story went from a period
of exclusion to the successes

of Jesse Owens right up through
Tommie Smith and John Carlos's stand
in Mexico City,

and it set in motion
a transformation.

It made Smithy and Carlos heroes of
the Civil Rights Movement rather than
villains of the Black Power phase.

Tommie and John's re-admission
into respectable society was
completed in October 2005

when a statue of their iconic
protest was unveiled at San Jose
State University,

the place it all began.

Dr Harry Edwards came and you know,
all the athletes came

and I just grabbed Harry and cried.
People said, "Why's he crying,
hugging that man?", you know?

It wasn't a man I was grabbing, it
was history that I'm holding onto,

he's certainly history.

To see that event in Mexico is to
see the product of Harry's genius

and it really was genius.

Single-handedly he helped to move
individuals who had
no real understanding

of the complexity of these matters
to form a judgment about what they
could do if they were given a chance.

It's not accidental that Smith
and Carlos and Evans took courses

from me here at San Jose State.

The struggle in sports
not only made sense,

it became the obligation
of a generation.

One can measure tremendous progress
from that day to this

on the things that they
were demonstrating about,

the treatment of frankly black
people generally in America

and particularly so for athletes.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were
correct and that's the thing that,

I think, drives alot of
people crazy about this moment,

because it can't be erased from
our collective consciousness
because they were correct.

Those guys did more to change
this country than, than,

than I think we'll ever realise
and I'm glad they're my friends.

# Say it loud
I'm black and proud

# Say it loud
I'm black and proud

# Lordy lordy lordy

# Say it loud
I'm black and proud

# All right now... #

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