Black Power (1964-1969)

“They will be known forever as two niggers who upset the 1968 Olympic Games.  I’d rather have been known for that than as two niggers who win two medals.”
Willie Brown , former San Francisco Mayor and Assembly Speaker from James Richardson’s Willie Brown: A Biography

Tommie Smith and John Carlos arrived at San Jose State in 1964 and ’67, respectively. But in spite of all the progress that had been made in the earlier periods by the Black athletes before them, they still found themselves living in motel rooms or sleeping in dormitory lobbies because of discrimination.

The situation in the classroom had not improved either: Black student-athletes were still being
steered away from the sciences and humanities toward physical education courses.  It was not until the return of former discus thrower Harry Edwards to teach sociology on campus in the fall of 1966 that the plight of the Black student-athletes and Black students took a more radical direction.
 
Upon his return, Edwards, who had just earned a master’s degree in sociology from Cornell
University, notes in The Revolt of the Black Athlete that it was evident that “the same social and racial injustices and discrimination that had dogged (he and Ken Noel’s) footsteps as freshmen at San Jose were still rampant on campus – racism in the fraternities and sororities, racism in housing, racism and out-and-out mistreatment in athletics, and a general lack of understanding of the problems of Afro-Americans by the college administration.”

This time, however, action was taken and the new force of “Black Power” strongly emerged.
 
Through hearings, rallies, protests and coverage in the local press, Blacks were able to force changes in school policies. Edwards, Noel, and a myriad of student supporters, fought relentlessly for equality in every aspect of campus life. These unprecedented events foreshadowed and laid groundwork for a proposed blanket boycott by Black athletes of the upcoming 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, a nationwide effort that Edwards led along with SJSC Olympians Carlos, Smith, and Lee Evans.


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For several years prior to the ’68 Olympics, Black athletes debated the merits of boycotting the Games entirely.  This threatened protest had made headlines throughout the world. Black athletes first envisioned using amateur athletics as a medium for dramatizing racial injustices in 1964 when human rights activist/comedian Dick Gregory – who competed as a distance runner for Southern Illinois University in the early 1950s, and held a fellowship at SJS during the ’60s – first suggested that Black athletes boycott the Olympic Games that were to be held in Tokyo that year.

Gregory’s idea received very little support among Olympians at that time. But that was before the emergence of Black Power, says George Wright, a retired California State University at Chico professor. “ . . . the networking, organizational effectiveness, strategizing, and the level of militancy just wasn’t quite common yet, as the Civil Rights Movement was still in the forefront,” said Wright, who also competed as a distance runner at Chico during the early 1960s. “But the Black Power Movement at that point was gradually beginning to emerge.”

Between 1965 and ’68, Wright notes, 105 inner-city riots took place. “Buildings were burned down, and people were killed . . . It was the most dramatic expression of Black Rage in United States history,” he said. “The level of militancy for Black people in 1968 was prime.”

In 1967, Tommie Smith, in Tokyo for the World University Games, told a Japanese reporter that some Black Americans were “considering” a boycott of the ’68 Olympics in protest of racial injustices in America. The next day, many American newspapers reported that Black athletes “favored” a boycott of the Games.  That fall, as a result of growing national and world-wide attention, 60 of the San Jose State campus’s 72 Black students (out of an overall enrollment of 24,000), through a wide range of protest activities, were able to force policy changes, including the hiring of more Black faculty, increasing Black student enrollment, and ensuring that campus housing would be open to all students.

As a result of athletic protests (including the threat of a boycott against the University of Texas at El Paso that eventually cost the college $100,000), and other efforts, Black athletes learned “the power to be gained from exploiting mainstream America’s economic and almost religious involvement in athletics.”

So, when Edwards led the charge for Black athletes to boycott the 1968 Olympic Games that were to be held in Mexico City, U.S. government officials panicked, for not only had Smith and Carlos made the ’68 Olympic track and field squad, but fellow Spartans Evans and Ronnie Ray Smith had, as well.  Eventually, Edwards had rallied Black athletes from other sports, most notably UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor.  Alcindor, who is now better known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, was one of the Black athletes who chose not to go to the Games.
 
Smith and Carlos, amongst other Black athletes, too, were ambivalent about going to Mexico City and had been affected by Gregory’s call in 1964, though no one had heeded it then. Edwards, King, and other prominent Black leaders, joined athletes in forming the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). Eventually, the boycott was called off, but an alternative plan was devised: The Black athletes would participate in the Games, and each athlete would determine his own method of protest.
 
Donald Spivey notes the impact the OPHR had on not only San Jose State, but also on college campuses across the country.  In The Black Athlete in Big-Time Intercollegiate Sports, he describes how Black athletes began to complain about a host of problems, from the stacking of Black athletes in certain positions, to the bias of local sports commentators in favor of white athletes.
 
In reflecting on Carlos and Smith's image on the podium following their medal winning performances in the 200 meters in the 1968 Olympics, Carlos’s biographer, C.D. Jackson, said, “That image pretty much shocked the world with the black-gloved fists, and the tall, lanky bodies of Carlos and Smith contrasted with (white Australian sprinter) Peter Norman on the stand.
 
”You can’t put that into words. It symbolizes power, and white America wasn’t ready for that . . . After 37 years, the image still has a lot of power.” Back to Top