This is the first in a series of stories chronicling the Bay Area’s rich history of sports figures fighting for equality. Coming Monday, Part II: Curt Flood, the slick-fielding Oakland native who often gets forgotten as MLB’s father of free agency, was motivated by the sting of racism.
Recent acts of athlete activism have their roots in what unfolded 52 years ago when San Jose State sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos thrust their black-gloved fists into the gray Mexico City night.
Their spontaneous demonstration at the 1968 Summer Olympics became the guiding star for professional athletes in basketball, baseball and soccer who refused to play on Aug. 26 because of a police shooting of an unarmed Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“We were like a road map,” Carlos said recently. He recalled thinking from that podium, “This isn’t a moment, this is a movement.”
It was a movement Harry Edwards initiated in the 1960s as a San Jose State professor who helped create the Olympic Project for Human Rights hoping for a Black athlete boycott of the ‘68 Games.
Edwards, 77, said he has waited for a half-century to see athletes bring attention to racism and inequality with a work stoppage.
“This is a shift in terms of substance” because “everybody has a stake in the games being played: Ownership, sponsors, networks, fans, the media,” he said.
Edwards said recent actions surpass the gestures of Smith and Carlos or former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the playing of the national anthem four years ago.
“Those are statements of outrage,” Edwards said. “They do not compel action.”
Such bold acts as walking off a court or field had never been seen on such a large scale. The stoppage last month included female and male players representing many ethnicities in multiple sports.
Carlos, who lives about a half-hour’s drive from Smith in suburban Atlanta, called these athletes his heroes. But he also reminded them that protest is a lifelong calling.
“Once you jump into this pool it is not a one-shot deal,” said Carlos, 75.
Bay Area sports figures such as the Warriors’ Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry, Oakland football star Marshawn Lynch, the Sharks’ Evander Kane and Kaepernick seemingly understand the message as they use their celebrity platform for social change.
Even Kerr’s fellow coaches, the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan and Giants manager Gabe Kapler, have made pointed public statements against racial injustice.
The uniting of diverse voices, however, does not guarantee change.
“But one thing for certain is work stoppages and boycotts have the potential of accomplishing things that mere statements and protests could never have accomplished,” said Edwards, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.
Yet Edwards never forgot where he was on Oct. 16, 1968, when one of the most controversial moments in sports history materialized during the medal ceremony for the 200-meters sprint.
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Edwards said a well-sourced friend warned him against attending the Olympics because U.S. agents were monitoring his boycott efforts. He instead watched the drama unfold from Montreal at a Black writers workshop.
Despite a slight groin muscle strain, Smith won the 200 meters and became the first runner to break the 20-second barrier. Australia’s Peter Norman edged Carlos for the silver medal.
“Smith got his gold, Norman got his silver and I got my demonstration,” Carlos said.
Smith punched the sky with a right hand raised while Carlos mimicked the gesture with his left hand.
“That is where my hand froze in time because all the joy, excitement and happiness of getting the medal instantaneously turned to anger, venom and hatred,” Carlos said.
Norman wore a white button supporting the Olympic Projects for Human Rights and became an outcast in Australia for supporting Smith and Carlos.
The podium demonstration elicited outrage in White America. U.S. Olympic officials ejected the sprinters from the Games although they had finished competing. They returned to San Jose to face death threats and few employment opportunities.
“Our life was put on a stand to be vilified,” Smith said at San Jose State two years ago. “It is very sad that two young athletes had to do what they were doing to bring attention to racism.”
Smith and Carlos are retired Southern California educators who never stopped addressing inequality.
“Mexico didn’t stop me; it prompted me on,” Smith once told this news organization.
Over the decades, their actions have been cast more favorably. In 2005, a 22-foot statue of the medal-stand demonstration was unveiled at San Jose State. Since then, ESPN has awarded Smith, 76, and Carlos the Arthur Ashe Courage Award and last year they were inducted into the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame in Colorado.
Jules M. Boykoff, author of “Activism and the Olympics,” said Smith, Carlos and a few other track stars from that era laid the groundwork for what has happened this summer. He said the key historical factors are the connections between vibrant social movements then and now.
In 1968, young people marched in city streets to protest the Vietnam War that culminated with a riot at the Democratic national convention in Chicago. It was the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as the peak of the Black Panther Party in Oakland.
In 2020, people young and old and of all ethnicities have gone to the streets to voice anger over police shootings of African Americans. The demonstrations are happening during a global health crisis and in the backdrop of what promises to be one of America’s most divisive presidential elections.
The current strategy athletes have chosen energizes Edwards, who views boycotts as the bluntest tool they have to promote the dismantling of systemic racism.
Edwards, a longtime 49ers consultant, said Black athletes understand the crosscurrent they are swimming: they are as vulnerable to being shot as African Americans George Floyd, Jacob Blake and Rayshard Brooks, among scores of others. The only difference, he said, is the athletes weren’t there at the time of the incidents.
It is why Carlos sees the stance by professional athletes of 2020 as important to push his agenda from 1968 forward.
“Boycott is a very strong pill to take,” Carlos said. “But this issue is far greater than the Olympic Games, than football or basketball.”
While applauding the one-day work stoppage, Carlos said team owners got off easy because it happened with mostly empty buildings in a period of novel coronavirus restrictions.
But, he added, the move could be a prelude to what will happen if Black people continue to be killed by police. Carlos said the sprinters had tried to wake society up with their Olympic gesture a half-century ago.
“And society didn’t want to be awakened,” he said.
Will minds change in the coming months? Edwards said it has a better chance if team owners join corporate sponsors in supporting a serious shut down until society addresses the extrajudicial killing of Black and brown people.
“If we don’t go together we’re not going anywhere at all,” Edwards said. “We will come out of it better. Because that is what we Americans do.”
