Summer Olympics

AP Was There: Smith and Carlos protest during 1968 Olympics

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 2:39 p.m. ET

MEXICO CITY (AP) — By the time they reached Mexico City in October 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos were representing a country being torn apart.

The Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, riots outside the Democratic convention in Chicago and growing unrest over centuries of discrimination against African-Americans made 1968 one of the most turbulent years in American history.

With a worldwide TV audience tuned in, Smith and Carlos won the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic 200 meters, then took to the medals stand for a ceremony the likes of which had never seen before or since.

Wearing black gloves — Smith's on the right hand, Carlos' on the left — the sprinters raised their fists in solidarity while the Star-Spangled Banner played. They walked to the medal stand without wearing shoes to symbolize poverty. They were widely vilified for their actions, and shortly after the gesture, the U.S. Olympic Committee sent them home.

Fifty years later, protests in sports have become more commonplace, but no athletes have had quite the impact as Smith and Carlos did at the Mexico City Games.

Here is the story from The Associated Press on the night of the protest, Oct. 16, 1968, as it appeared in many newspapers the following day. Some papers used a version that incorrectly identified the race in the first paragraph as the 100-meter dash, though it's unclear how the error was made.

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