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Author John Carlos wrote in the Introduction to this 2013 book, “I’m no star, I’m no hero. I’m a guidance counselor at Palm Springs High School in California. As recently as three years ago, I was loneliner than a raindrop in the Sahara. No one wanted to talk to me. No one wanted to say my name… Then I was just a survivor and I was simply alone… Now I’m waiting to get on this plane and go to Mexico City because people want to hear what I think… the cameras want to record a story about the progress made by black people and how far we’ve come. If they want to hear that story, they’re talking to the wrong man. I have a story… But it’s not that story.” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “Let’s start with that phrase defining who we were: ‘The Revolt of the Black Athlete.’ … I don’t think of it as the revolt of the black athlete at all. It was the revolt of the black man… I didn’t do what I did as an athlete. I raised my voice in protest as a man… Racism meant that none of us could truly have our day in the sun. Without education, housing, and employment, we were going down the drain… That’s why people turn to drugs and why our communities have been destroyed. And that’s why there was a revolt. That’s also why I wrote this book, Not to tear anyone or anything down, but to rebuild.” (Pg. 4)
As a teenager often involved in petty crime, he recalls, “I kept risking my freedom by playing Robin Hood and agitating at every turn. Then one day…. two police officers finally caught up to me. They were both Harlem cops… These two officers of the law took me aside… and told me I was on a one-way ticket to jail if I wasn’t careful… they also told me that the neighborhood was buzzing---not just about my antics but about my speed. It was through these police officers that I was given the opportunity to train at the New York Pioneer Club, one of the finest track and field clubs in New York…” (Pg. 46) Later, he adds, “Coaches and trainers were also surrounding me… They were jazzing on the potential I showed… The whole experience was a wake-up call to me that track and field could be my ticket to the Olympic Games.” (Pg. 55)
In college, after another tense confrontation with his coach, “the entire team sat down with me for a players-only meeting. There were some white guys on our team who fought for civil rights and knew where I was coming from, and backed my frustrations more than more of the black students on campus. They mad clear that … we would not be able to make the situation for the next generation of athletes any more just if I decided to up and quit. I had this one friend on the team, who happened to be white, Terry Barnett… Terry was pure gold. He wore his support for civil rights and his antiracism like a badge of honor. Terry taught me that the fight for social justice was a marathon and not a sprint… We could make a statement that a multiracial, civil-rights-supporting team could put all the nonsense aside and accomplish something. I had never felt more a part of something …” (Pg. 69)
But in 1968, “there were rumblings of a boyhcott by African American athletes of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. At its heart were… Tommie Smth and Lee Evans… They said that they couldn’t just run in Mexico City, like everything else was hunky-dory, when there was so much racism both in the United States Olympic Committee and US society as a whole… This to my ears was right on time.” (Pg. 72) In an interview for the college newspaper, he said, “[I] made it clear that if I was fortunate enough to be chosen for the US Olympic team, I would support the boycott.” (Pg. 73)
About Tommie Smith, he says, “When it came to Tommie, I had a chip on my shoulder. But when we started linking arms and making our case with the [Olympic Project for Human Rights], that changed. Tommie stopped looking at me like a threat and I stopped looking at him like someone I was trying to catch. From that time on, we were brothers in the struggle to build a boycott groundswell for th e1968 games.” (Pg. 85) But ultimately, the boycott plan faltered: “they were blinded by the glitter of a medal… We weren’t trying to coerce anyone to agree with us. We couldn’t make them give up their Olympic dreams… the desire for a medal had at this point become the great motivator in theirlives… They couldn’t get around those medals and face the reality of life head-on.” (Pg. 89)
He explains, “The question people always ask is… did I go to Mexico City knowing I was going to raise my fist on the medal stand? Did Tommie know?... The answer is that no one on the planet, including us, had any sense … that we were going to make any kind of political statement that would both get us in a world of trouble and stand the test of time.” (Pg. 103)
He recalls, “At this point, Tommie and I hadn’t said even one word to each other about what we were going to do if we both made it to the medal podium. That changed once we saw each other on the track… I told Tommie I was still stewing about the fact that the boycott went up in smoke and I wanted to make some sort of statement. Tommie’s head was in exactly the same place. He knew that this was our time to make our stand… I could tell that for him, the only acceptable ending was to make his political statement from the gold medal perch… As for me, I didn’t care a lick if I won the gold, silver, or bronze… I was there for the after-race… We decided that we would wear black gloves to represent strength and unity. We would have beads hanging from our neck, which would represent the history of lunching. We wouldn’t wear shoes to symbolize the poverty that still plagued so much of black America.” (Pg. 109-110)
He reveals, “Before the race started, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to test Tommie for that gold medal. I wanted Tommie to win the gold.” (Pg. 115) He adds, “Tommie set a world record that day that held almost twenty years… Peter [Norman] and I both ran 20 flat but I knew as soon as we crossed the tape that he beat me by a whisker… I was especially happy about the fact that if it had to be anyone, it was Peter.” (Pg. 116-117)
After their action on the stand, “the crowd saw us raise our fists, the stadium became eerily quiet… Then, as the national anthem played in full force… the boos started coming down… Then, when the anthem had mercifully ended, we started walking back to the tunnel. That’s when the boos started to come in earnest. The shock was gone and it was officially getting ugly… I didn’t know or appreciate at that precise moment, that the entire trajectory of our young lives had just irrevocably changed… Then just as we were assessing the situation and figuring out where we stood, we were booted from the Olympic Village by the US Olympic Committee.” (Pg. 121-123)
He states, “Our neighbors on Reed Street hung a sign outside our house that read, ‘Welcome Home John Carlos, Our Hero.’ That felt really good… But once you got even five minutes from our neighborhood… The atmosphere was just thick with resentment, anger, and an unhinged fury.” (Pg. 132) He recalls, “By 1969 and into 1970, my life was beg, beg, borrow, and steal. If I had $100, I would leave my family and hightail it to Vegas and hit the crap tables to see if I could score us up some money… Whatever jobs I had to take, I wasn’t too proud or too ashamed to do it… The low point came when I had to chop up our own furniture for our fireplace… That hurt.” (Pg. 136-137) “Then in 1977, Kim [his wife] took her own live. Even though we’d been apart for four years, I’ve never been the same since.” (Pg. 153)
When he and Tommie Smith received the Arthur Ashe Freedom Award in 2008 from ESPN, he notes, “My first reservation was that Brent Musburger was on ESPN’s payroll… The other barrier in accepting the award had to do with problems between Tommie and me. At that time Tommie and I were experiencing a great deal of friction. He had written a book saying some uncharitable things about me---and I have a lot of pride… we had stopped speaking… But when ESPN came to us, both Tommie and I realized that the whole [40th] anniversary year was bigger than us. We didn’t own this moment anymore. It belonged to everyone, and we had an obligation to go along with that.” (Pg. 171)
He concludes, “The people who have regrets are those who could have taken a stand, but chose to remain silent… There is no ‘I told you so’ escaping my lips or crossing my mind. But it is a lesson for all the young people rising up today… Seize your moment in time. The only true regrets in life come from inaction… not everyone is going to be an Olympian, but anyone can lead a life of principle.” (Pg. 186)
This is a fascinating and insightful memoir; those interested in the 1968 event and its aftermath should also read Tommie Smith’s autobiography, ‘Silent Gesture.”
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