The Columbus Dispatch looks back to the 1968 olympics where a famous image of two men with raised fists left a legacy with important implications for the relationship between race and athletic competition. See image.

David Davis of the Columbus Dispatch writes: 

United they stood, two men with black-gloved fists thrust into the night. In solidarity, they bowed their heads as the national anthem played. Together, in harmonious synchronicity, they defied history. On Oct. 16, 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos finished first and third in the 200 meters at the Olympics. Smith set a world record with a time of 19.83 seconds, powering through the thin air of Mexico City and across the finish line, arms upraised, with a mark that endured for 11 years. But it was their demonstration on the victory podium afterward, medals dangling around their necks, that still resonates today. Their purpose was to draw attention to the plight of blacks at the height of the civil rights movement. As Smith told ABC announcer Howard Cosell, “My raised right hand stood for the power in black America. Carlos’ raised left hand stood for the unity of black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power.”

Although the two athletes had a rocky relationship with one another, their symbolic gesture still holds an important place in olympic history… and is worthy of sociological commentary…

The backlash was immediate. The International Olympic Committee pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to banish both. The Associated Press accused them of a “Nazi-like salute.” Brent Musberger, then a columnist with the Chicago American newspaper, called them “black-skinned storm-troopers.”

“It was a polarizing moment,” said University of Minnesota sociology professor Doug Hartmann, author of Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath, “because it was seen as an example of black power radicalism. Mainstream America hated what they did.”