8. 1968: Black Panther salute

Ah, the 60s: where else can you turn to for your politically charged, timultuous American history? Civil Rights activists, clamboring about, organizing, rallying, explaining that "It's been 100 years. This emancipation shit is moving too slow. Let's give it a swift kick in the ass." And so they did.

The silver medal winner is Australian Peter Norman. See the patch on his chest? That's an OPHR patch--Olympic Project for Human Rights--an organization of amateur black athletes boycotting the 1968 Games due to apartheid in South Africa and other things. He was in full agreement and support of Smith and Carlos' actions. I suppose he could've given the Black Panther salute too, but...come on....that would just look silly.

Things had been brewing for awhile up until Mexico City in 1968. By this time, both Malcom X and Martin Luther King were dead. Muhammed Ali was stripped of his title for refusing to fight in Vietnam (speaking of whom--ooh ooh! An aside, here's another mini-controversy! Back when he was Cassius Clay, he won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the Rome Olympics in 1960. Thinking he'd return to his native Louisville a hero, he is instead refused service at a "whites-only" restaurant, and later beaten by a gang of white supremacists. Embittered by the hypocrisy, he threw his gold medal into the Ohio River.....this was later rectified when he was given another medal by the IOC after lighting the torch in Atlanta '96). And at home, it was felt for the longest time--going back to Jesse Owens--that black athletes were exploited for their ability, yet still treated as second class citizens (see aforementioned blurb on the Champ). To quote Dr. Harvey Edwards: "Why should we run in Mexico only to crawl home?"

Enter the Black Panthers. The inspiration for the militant gang The Gramercy Riffs in the 70s cult film The Warriors, the Black Panthers moved for radical, revolutionary change for racial...umm...racial something, though I hesitate to say racial harmony. Maybe racial hegemony. Point is, they were mad and they weren't going to take it anymore, and they were prepared to use violence to achieve their aims, if necessary. Their salute to black power was a raised black fist, usually worn in a black glove, because maybe their hands weren't black enough or something? ....like people would be confused.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 1st and 3rd in the 200m respectively, showed their solidarity for the movement on the medal podium while the anthum played. In addition to the fists and the gloves, they also wore no shoes to protest black poverty, and beads around their necks to protest lynching. Within hours, they were stripped of their medals and sent home. IOC President Avery Brundage (and noted white supremacist...he's one of the dorks that awarded Berlin the '36 Games) said of the decision: "They violated one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Bwahahahahahahaha. Okay, let me repeat that, because double takes are funny:

"...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Again, for emphasis:

"...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Man, I wonder if he said that with a straight face, too. I wonder also if he knows what planet he's on, or if he has trouble buttoning himself in the mornings. Is he serious, or is this one of those joke statements, like when your older brother grabs your arm and hits you in the head with it, warning you to stop punching yourself. Controversy or not, this guy's a riot.