Why This Olympic Podium Moment Remains the GOAT Protest

Ironically one of the most outspoken critics of Tommie Smith and John Carlos was Jesse Owens, who strongly discouraged Black athletes from engaging in any kind of protest. To be sure it was a moment, made for this era; you could easily imagine millions of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram posts of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and their iconic Black Power fists up in the air at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. For their gesture in support of Black liberation, Smith and Carlos were stripped of their medals and sent home. That the duo remain frozen in time as inspirations for generations of athletes and activists, in some ways obscures the complexities of a moment that was much larger than their powerful symbolism. Years before I didn’t know anything about the protests of Black athletes at the 1968 Summer Olympics; the connection between sports and politics was framed for me through Cold War relations between The United States and then Soviet Union. The United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in response to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan the year before. For my then 15-year-old self, the opportunities denied American athletes, including a young sprinter and long...