Dave Zirin: Protesting from the Olympic pulpit

The image lasted for only as long as it took to play the national anthem -- yet it still resonates four decades later. Black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter race, bow their heads and raise their black-gloved fists to protest racism during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Unlike other 1960s iconography -- Woodstock, Abbie Hoffman, Richard Nixon -- the moment doesn't feel musty. It still packs a wallop.

In New York's Harlem, street-corner merchants sell T-shirts with the image of Smith and Carlos emblazoned on them. On HBO last month, you could watch the 2004 documentary "Fists of Freedom," which told the story of the protest. On ESPN, a running question for athletes competing in the 2008 Games in Beijing, which begin today, is whether they will "pull a Smith-and-Carlos" to protest the lack of human rights in China.

I recently appeared on a panel with Carlos to discuss the history of sports and resistance. After the session, a long line of young people born years -- even decades -- after 1968 formed patiently to wait for the former athlete to sign posters, T-shirts and pins memorializing his protest. What was it about that moment 40 years ago that attracted these young people?

There are several possible explanations. The most obvious is that people love a good redemption song. Smith and Carlos were protesting more than racism in sports and society. They wanted South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) banned from the 1968 Games for their apartheid politics. They demanded more black coaches. They sought to hold Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, accountable for what they saw as his racism. And they wanted Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title restored after it was stripped from him for his refusal to fight in Vietnam.

Smith's and Carlos' protest was part of movement called the Olympic Project for Human Rights. As sociologist Harry Edwards, who helped organize the group, wrote at the time, "With struggles being waged by black people in the areas of education, housing, employment and many others, it was only a matter of time before Afro-American athletes shed their fantasies and delusions and asserted their manhood and faced the facts of their existence."

Smith and Carlos were reviled for making "radical" demands and using the Olympic podium to do it. They received death threats and lived for years as pariahs in the sports world. But today their stand against South Africa, racism and for Ali seems more common-sense than radical. Rather than death threats, Smith and Carlos frequently attend ceremonies in their honor.

There's another reason why the image of raised, black-gloved fists has retained its power. Smith and Carlos sacrificed fame and fortune for a larger cause -- civil rights. As Carlos told me in 2003: "A lot of the [black] athletes thought that winning [Olympic] medals would supersede or protect them from racism. But even if you won a medal, it ain't going to save your momma [from the effects of racism]. It ain't going to save your sister ..."

Carlos' view resonates because we still live in a world where racism exists. If Hurricane Katrina taught us nothing else, it's that for every Barack Obama and Condoleezza Rice, there are many communities where the combination of poverty and racism weighs down black Americans.

It also resonates because Smith and Carlos used the ubiquitous platform of sports to make their stand. Today, sports is a global trillion-dollar business that, thanks to cable television, the Internet and corporate sponsorship, is vastly more influential than four decades ago. Yet the idea that today's athletes would use their hyper-exalted-brought-to-you-by-Nike platform to speak out against injustice seems almost unthinkable. Athletes Etan Thomas of the NBA and Scott Fujita of the NFL have spoken out on war, poverty and racism in the United States. Some platinum-plated stars on the U.S. Olympic basketball team -- notably Kobe Bryant and LeBron James -- have raised concerns about China's connection to the genocide in Darfur.

The question is whether any Olympic athlete will match the audacity of Smith and Carlos in the 2008 Games. Today, the possible appearance of Tibet's flag again would remind us that the world of sports isn't immune to the politics of protest.

Dave Zirin, sports correspondent for the Nation, is the author of the forthcoming "People's History of Sports in the United States." He wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.