Black Power and the Mexico Olympics

One way to make effective use of one’s time during a long transpacific flight from Manila to the United States mainland is read a good book, especially one which has been set aside for long airplane trips.

 One such book is Richard Hoffer’s “Something in the Air: American passion and defiance in the 1968 Mexico Olympics” which I read, cover to cover on board the Philippine Air Lines (PAL) flight from Manila to Las Vegas on my way to Manny Pacquiao-Manuel Marquez III and the trip back to Manila, also on PAL, Sunday afternoon after the fight. With just about eight months to go before the 2012 London Olympics (officially known as the Games of the XXX Olympiad) start on July 27 reading the book could be one way of prepping up oneself for the world’s biggest sports event and fiesta.

Hoffer is a longtime Sports Illustrated (SI) writer (19 years) who is regarded as a top rated boxing analyst. In his book, Hoffer writes of various sports characters who stood for social change. As Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of “Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball”, says, “Hoffer reminds us why sports matter, deftly returning to the roiling 1968 Olympics…writes of the unexpected Dick Fosbury, the rocky origins of George Foreman, and the pride of John Carlos and Tommie Smith with equal power while foreshadowing the future: the emergence of the Kenyans as a dynasty and the nascent rise of performance-enhancing drugs as a vexing issue.”

Frank Deford, SI senior contributing writer and member of the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters says, “Hoffer has given us a wonderful cross-section of characters and a thorough portrayal of controversial events surrounding the 1968 Olympics, so that we learn to appreciate these Mexico City Games in a way we never did before. It’s sports history at its finest and most fun”.

Who are these characters? Fosbury is known as the creator of the high jump technique called “Fosbury Flop”. At the 1968 Olympics, Fosbury took the gold medal by setting a new Olympic record of 2.24 meters (7 feet 4.25 inches). HickSports.com Sports Biography says “the Flop” is the most popular technique in modern high jumping with 34 of 36 Olympic medalists in the event from 1972 through 2000 literally following in the footsteps of Fosbury. 

 Carlos, on the other hand, was a Cuban American who won the bronze medal in the 200 meters at Mexico and whose gloved Black Power-salute triggered political controversy. Smith, an African American, won the 200-meter dash finals in 19.83 seconds to break the 20-second barrier and one of the prime movers of the Olympic Project for Human Rights or OPHR.

Like Carlos, Smith gave a Black Power salute (with one arm fully extended upward and the hand balled into a fist) and stepped up the winner’s podium to receive their awards, shoe-less to portray the poverty of African Americans.

The prime leader of what was supposed to have been a Black boycott of the Mexico Olympics was Lee Edward Evans who won two gold medals in the 1968 Olympics. Evans was a product of the San Jose City College track program. San Jose, California was known as “Speed City” and hosted San Jose State which, together with the amateur track and field clubs that surrounded it had become, according to Hoffer, too vital to world athletics and too important to ignore.

Coach Lloyd “Bud” Winter had taken over the track program at San Jose State College. He knew what was brewing especially among the African American athletes and the one issue that ignited the boycott movement was housing on campus for the athletes. Hoffer said that there wasn’t much that Winter could to solve poverty or race relations (a dozen or so university athletes – the Good Brothers, virtually the only blacks on campus – were holed up in segregated housing, a lot of them scrounging around for food), but he did recognize the opportunities for all parties involved.

The African American athletes got plenty of support from white Americans, among them Phil Shinnick who, said Hoffer, had become sensitive to racial injustices at the University of Washington were he witnessed the unequal treatment of his black teammates. Schinnick stood on Seattle street corners handing out leaflets, protesting discrimination in housing.

Not at all sympathetic to the African American athletes’ cause was Avery Brundage, American president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972. Brundage was known to have been sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and the latter’s Berlin Olympics. He also opposed the inclusion of women as Olympic competitors.

Hoffer’s book narrates the drama of 1968 in a fascinating way. It’s a must read for sports and Olympics watchers.