Episode Details

Tommie Smith is a true living legend. He won a gold medal in the men’s 200 meter event at the 1968 Olympics, setting a world record in the process. When he took the medal stand in Mexico City that day, he made history again by raising a black-gloved fist during the National Anthem.

As you’ll hear, Tommie didn’t grow up in a political family and didn’t see himself as an activist when he enrolled at San Jose State University. That changed when he met Dr. Harry Edwards and became involved with Olympic Project for Human Rights, where he found his voice and used it to speak out against racial segregation in sports and elsewhere.

When Tommie and teammate John Carlos raised their fists on the podium in Mexico City, many interpreted the gesture as a symbol of the Black Power movement. However, as Tommie says, the action was not necessarily about one cause or movement. Rather, it was a symbol of a broader struggle for power and equality.

Tommie visited Penn State as part of a yearlong look at the events of 1968 organized by the College of the Liberal Arts.

For more on the relationship between athletes and protests, check out our episode with Abe Khan, who has studied this topic extensively and draws comparisons between Smith and modern-day athletes like Colin Kaepernick.

Interview Highlights

[5:10] What was your family like? Did you come form a political family? Did you talk politics at dinner or attend political rallies? 

Tommie: No, Just the opposite. My family was a sharecropper background. My father actually had no education. My parents met in Texas and we were just sharecroppers. We had no political background, but there were issues in society and the system that we knew nothing about because of where we were. We worked from grass roots up until I got to the junior or senior year of high school, and that is the time social change began. I was just in time to see it. Before I read about it, I lived it. When I read about it, I remember those times. Not in the south, but in California which shadowed the south in terms of the field work.

[6:52] Were you drawn there (San Jose State) because of Dr. Edwards? How did all of those pieces come together? 

Tommie: There were many colleges looking to recruit me. The last two colleges out of about thirty six were San Jose and USC. I visited USC. It was a little big. They shouldn’t hav taken me to Disney Land. It scared the heck out of me. I’m used to two story buildings and that was really high up. I’m from the area of cabins and not buildings. They put me on a blind date which was a no-no. San Jose State was what I wanted academically because I wanted to become a school teacher. So I made a trip to San Jose. It was simple and the buildings were short. It was also a small city.

[8:29] Tell me about meeting Dr. Edwards and making this transition into becoming an activist.

Tommie: Once I started school, he was one of the first people I met at San Jose State. He was a senior as I was coming in as a freshman. The first thing he told he was that there’s no way you can come here with me being here and not carry a book. Whenever I see you, carry a book even though you don’t read just so I think you’re reading. So I got a feel for him and his educational power when I first got there. That helped me tremendously. So I started carrying a book. Then I started carrying two books. Then I started reading the first one. Then I began to read the second one, and they would become interesting because he would start asking me questions. I was a fast learner because