John Carlos never let go of the bronze medal he won in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
While the medal rested in his right hand, Carlos’ glove-covered left fist shot toward the sky in defiance as “The Star Spangled Banner” played.
He and Tommie Smith, who won the gold medal, didn’t realize their actions on the medal stand following the 200 meters, would live forever in the famous photo that still stirs many men’s souls.
“But it’s actually one of the greatest myths about the event. They never took our medals away,” Carlos told an audience at Harris-Stowe State University last Friday.
“They knew that would make an even bigger thing of it all.”
They were suspended from the national team, though, and banned from the Olympic Village.
Carlos was in St. Louis last weekend supporting Better Family Life, Inc., and Malik Ahmed, its founder and president.
He spoke for about an hour at Harris-Stowe and before several other audiences. His audience included elementary school kids, children, high school and college students and adults – and he talked about track all of about five minutes.
Carlos wove the story of his life like a seamstress. His life and his service to the community did not – and do not – revolve around the October night in 1968.
It began as a child who wanted to represent the United States in the Olympics. But not as a sprinter. As a swimmer.
He saw hunger in his neighborhood, and he became a Robin Hood.
His father taught him the reality of racism, and he persevered.
“When I was a child, I had a vision, like God put it in me. I was in a stadium. Many people were applauding me. In a split second, they became bitter,” he told his mesmerized audience.
“They were calling me names.
“The next day my father said, ‘Son, what’s wrong?’ I told him I had a dream, like a movie. People were really happy, then mad at me.
“He said God had something special planned for me. We just have to wait and see what it is.”
Carlos didn’t wait to become a national black hero who took the message of “Black Power” and black pride to the world.
“I saw suffering in my community and I wanted to change it,” he said.
“So I became an outlaw in the community. I would do break-ins near the train yard and run back to the neighborhood as fast as I could with all these boxes. I’d give food to those who did not have any.”
His father was a shoemaker and owned his business. Some of New York’s greater entertainers and athletes visited the shop, including Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe and Harry Belafonte.
But one day, two New York police detectives came to pay the Carlos family a visit.
“They came and talked to me. They said that there had been several break ins and that they were close to catching whoever was doing it,” Carlos said.
“Then, they said I had a talent. ‘You are a runner.’”
They gave Carlos a telephone number. He called and was asked to show up at an indoor track.
Running not in track or tennis shoes, but in black leather dress shoes, Carlos outran several seasoned track stars.
“And I didn’t particularly like track,” he said.
“I was the best 200-meter freestyle swimmer in New York. I wanted to represent the U.S. in the Olympics. But one day, my father asked me, ‘Where are you going to train?’ I said I’d join a club, and he interrupted me and said, ‘No, you can’t join a swim club. They won’t have you because of the color of your skin.’ ”
Rather than give up, Carlos said, “I had to find another way.”
That he did, and it took him to the summer before the Mexico City Olympics.
Carlos and other athlete members in the Olympic Project for Human Rights were leaning toward boycotting the Olympics. But it was called off, leaving Carlos to think of another demonstration.
“If you ask Tommie, he’ll say it was his idea. It was mine, but Tommie had the gloves. Really, though, if you ask who orchestrated it, God did. God orchestrated what happened that day,” Carlos said.
Another little-known fact about the event is that silver medalist Peter Norman of Australia (who is white) took part in the protest by wearing an OPHR badge on the medal stand.
Carlos would return to America and help raise his growing family. After guiding his children, he now has four young foster daughters.
One is black, one is white and two are Hispanic.
“My wife said we should take them in, and I said, ‘Honey I don’t want no more kids, and I definitely don’t want no white kids.’
Carlos said his wife looked at him and said, “Do you know how foolish you sound? What has that child done to you?”
Carlos said, like so many other times in his life, “My wife was right.”
He said there were rough times with his white foster daughter “because she didn’t think a black family could love her.”
“But we all learned differently. They are my daughters now.”
Carlos also called on Black America “to push the pedal down and start stepping up more.”
“We can’t go back and blame what’s going on now on something that happened 300 years ago,” he said.
“What is effecting us is lack of heart, lack of mind. We have to stop thinking about who we are and start thinking about what (our black children) could be.”
