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Tommie Smith, 80, is sitting in front of a picture of himself, aged 24, giving that immortal salute during the Mexico Olympics of 1968. In the photograph, Smith, who had just won gold in the 200 metres, and his American teammate John Carlos, who won bronze, are standing on the medal podium, each raising a black-gloved fist. (Carlos had forgotten his glove, so Smith shared one of his.)
The African-American duo’s gesture was interpreted as a Black Power salute, but Smith wrote decades later that it was a “human-rights” salute. The third medal-winner on the podium, the white Australian Peter Norman, supported their protest. In 2006, Smith and Carlos carried Norman’s coffin at his funeral in Melbourne.
Today, Smith’s left foot is swathed in an orthopaedic shoe. Meeting the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris in the city’s Museum of Immigration History, the cheerful, reflective old man recalled the response he got in 1968. “People, even in the little town I lived in, left faeces in the mailbox or dirty notes. Isn’t that amazing? My brothers and sisters were taunted at school for what I did. I was afraid to move. I stood 6ft 4in. People would look at my height and recognise, ‘That was the man that did that bad thing. He ought to be shot.’”
That photograph resonates today. The Paris Olympics will generate many political statements. This generation of athletes is unusually activist, they have social media, and their causes have multiplied, from Black Lives Matter through Ukraine to Gaza. Should sportspeople stick to sport? And does their activism make any difference?
It’s surely a definition of democracy that everyone has the right to peaceful free speech. You can ignore that speech, but not silence it. And the notion that sport has nothing to do with politics is hard to defend. That might be true when athletes compete only as individuals. But Olympians represent nations, in nationalist competition, which raises the eminently political question of what those nations are.
Palestinians and Ukrainians, in particular, will want to remind viewers of wars that those viewers might be getting bored of. These athletes have colleagues who can’t be at the Games because they are dead. Russia has killed several hundred Ukrainian athletes so far, most recently cycling champion Andrii Kutsenko, 34, who died in battle on July 3. Adding to the outrage, 16 Russian athletes are expected in Paris. They will notionally compete as neutrals, but their regime will celebrate every medal as a national triumph.
Palestine’s eight Olympians are emissaries from a place of death. Watch footballer Mohammed Barakat in his final video, recorded in Gaza as he waited for Israeli missiles heard overhead to kill him. “Perhaps these are our last words,” he says, and ends: “My children, my beloved, I entrust you to God, who does not lose his deposits.” Israeli athletes have their own history of horror. Eleven were killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Games.
Palestinians, Ukrainians and young Black athletes who oppose racism have voices that have rarely been heard in the global conversation. They can testify to experiences that most of us know nothing about. The Black French footballers who warned against the far-right Rassemblement National party before the recent parliamentary elections know what racism feels like. Few other participants in the French political debate do. Those elections, said Kylian Mbappé, were “more important than tomorrow’s match”.
Smith’s own animating life experience was growing up amid small-town Black deprivation that went unseen by mainstream America. “My dad couldn’t read,” he recalled. “It would take him maybe half an hour to read one page in the Bible. He would spell out, ‘L, O, R, D. Oh, Lord.’ I used to listen to him, and I wanted to cry sometimes.”
Many people in power want these voices to stay unheard. Smith remembered Jesse Owens, Black hero of the 1936 Games, being sent to the Olympic Village in 1968 to dissuade young Black athletes from protesting. Owens’ message, said Smith, was, “‘Be thankful you got the chance to be here . . .’ When he finished, we thanked him, we applauded him and hoped he would disappear.”
The Olympic podium was Smith’s only platform. Fifty-six years later, almost everyone who cares about sport remembers his salute. That’s the soft power of an Olympic champion. He said he admired today’s activist athletes: “I can see me, in them.” Would he give that salute again? “I’d do it every day. When I’m gone, there is something left of me.”
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