Tommie Smith
Tommie Smith picked up the powered to 200m Olympic gold at the Mexico Games back in 1968 but it was the Black Power Salute he did on the podium with John Carlos that has becoming one of the most iconic sporting images.
New movie Salute looks at that moment from the perspective of Peter Norman, the Australian who was on the podium picking up a silver medal.
We caught up with Tommie Smith to talk about that moment as well as his teaching career and the London riots of twelve months ago.
- We had the riots here in London last year so I was wondering what your take on that was?
People do things and especially if they have time to do it and if you have time to do it it means that you have nothing else to do - including no job. The gap of need widened and it’s a gap that needs to be closed by society and society ruling forces.
We have a very wide gap between the class that doesn’t have work and the class that are ruling those who don’t have work.
So on side you have a class that doesn’t work and doesn’t have a chance educationally or socially and on the other side you have a class that has education and society’s power and that gap has widened and how do you close that gap?
What I do in my profession is talk about ways that you can do, and there are many ways, but the most important thing is that you understand the needs of both sides.
To go further into that is the communication of listening - people always want to make a verbal communication instead of a silent listening communication.
That widened the gap as neither one had the patience to listen and to understand the needs - you don’t have to agree with it but you just have to understand why it is being done.
- Looking back there has been there of criticism of the riots last year and why they happened - there seemed to be a lot of confusion between those who really had something to say and those who just jumped into it to loot and so on. Do you think looking back in a few years, this happened with the Brixton Riots and the LA Riots, people will look into it and try to take a different perspective?
It’s a learning process and a learning of why the L.A. Riots started. Again it was a social gap of those who didn’t have against those who did have - those who didn’t have suffered more because they destroyed more of society which was trying to grow in what they destroyed.
The learning process if the most difficult because of the madness that started it in the first place - so you have the controlling radicals vs. the none controlling radicals and then you have the space in between where they could come together but no one wants to go into that space.
You have birth and you have death what you do in the meantime, I call it the dash, this is where the destruction happens; where you and I are now and that gap is widening. Birth is imminent once it happens and death is a reality that is going to happen and people don’t realise that you are only here for a small time to do the bits that you can.
The radicism of being right and wrong is so futile that we explode ourselves to do things that are not necessary. The sociological aspect of my background is to take what you don’t have and make something of it and for some reason these days you can’t do that.
- At the time you and John Carlos did the black salute it was widely controversial and widely talked about. Forty four years you are here in London to talk about a documentary about those events and you are looked upon in high regard as a civil activist but do you feel that there was a turning point where things were being looked at differently as people tried to understand why that happened?
When I was invited here to talk to the youth and to talk to the social integration about the need to be a part of society that is growing I wanted to decline it because I was rather tired of being positive all the time about a situation that everyone feels very negative - and that is the Olympic stand in Mexico City.
Now you say salute but there are those who call that stand a salute, the victory stand in Mexico City, I don’t call it a salute I call in the victory stand.
So I suppose you are talking about the film Salute that is an Australian produced film. That film is not a depiction of the Olympic Project of Human Rights that was a white guy talking about his uncle who was in the race with John Carlos and myself and was on the victory stand.
So that movie is almost a docu-drama and not a movie because it depicted the feelings of the black athletes verbally because the athletes were the ones that they interviewed to make this movie.
The only reason that I backed this movie was because the black athletes made that movie because of the interviews that were done by black athletes for Peter Norman - so that depiction is not of Mexico City but only of Peter Norman; not Tommie Smith or John Carlos.
So that movie does not represent Tommie Smith but lots of other ideas and beliefs from the athletes that they interviewed.
When I saw it the first time and I was happy to see it and I thought that it would really depict the feelings of the black athlete and not the conjugation of an idea from a white guy from what he thought about what the black athletes are saying.
So it was kind of intertwining and I had mixed emotions about the positiveness of the movie.
- After the Olympic there were consequences for the three of you so did that bring the three of you closer together as friends?
Yes it did because we all believed in the same idea of human experience and human rights, not civil rights human rights; it was the Olympic Project of Human Rights.
I didn’t know very much about Peter Norman before 1967, I knew that Australia had a sprinter but I didn’t know the sprinter’s background in terms of human rights. Because he was on the victory stand does not mean that he backed me, I don’t need another athlete to back me, but agreeing with the ideal of human rights is very important.
He didn’t make Tommie Smith or John Carlos because he was a white guy on the victory stand believing the same thing as human rights is a right of every man regardless of race, creed, colour or opinion.
So this is where I want to get it very straight - he believed in what we believed and what I hope a lot of people believe in and not backing two black athletes because he is a white guy.
A lot of people get that mixed up because he was on the victory stand with us - he was on the victory stand because he was one of the greatest athletes in the world and won second place at the Olympic Games at that particular furlong.
- That moment pretty much destroyed your sports career but ever since you have turned into an activist and it has given you the chance to speak about your views on the subject. So do you think that it was a turn for the better as it has given you the chance to do what you are doing now?
That race in Mexico City did not educate me to the point of where I am now; I was in college and going into my senior year so I already had some educational background.
After Mexico City I went back to San Jose state and went on to get my Masters and my PHD - there are those that say when I stood on the victory stand in Mexico City I got my religious education they are absolutely wrong.
There is more to Tommie Smith that running fast and talking about the victory stand as I have taught in college for thirty three years; I was athletics director for most of those years as well as teaching sociology and health on a college level.
So Mexico City didn’t give that to me I worked on a whole different echelon of running to acquire this but there are those who don’t see Tommie Smith as anything more than running fast and the victory stand and that is it.
He got his fame from the victory stand and that could be true as that is what people see now as the victory stand stands brighter than the true content of Tommie Smith.
It sounds like I am giving you a lecture but I don’t mean to do that I just want to straighten a few things out - Tommie Smith is also an academic, Tommie Smith is a world class sprinter, Tommie Smith was an Olympic contender so there are different echelons of the one person.
Now you see me as a person who is talking to you and you probably understand 20% of what I am saying because you don’t know me as a teacher.
Running is fine and being an athlete is great, being one of the fastest men in the world is great, but there is more to a lot of athletes than running fast.
- In term of the sport side of it, you have mentioned that you do a lot of teaching, but is sport still an active side of your life?
Oh yes that is what I do - I still teach but I don’t coach. I have organisations in the U.S. in four states; the Tommie Smith Track Youth Initiative where we council kids from January to May in the classrooms on High School captaincy’s.
It’s not just about running fast but we also teach them about hypertension and obesity, health and wellbeing, because obesity is killing us all over the world. I take pride in the teaching of the academics including health and wellness.
When I was invited here it wasn’t inclusive that I just talk only about the society of blacks in England but the totality of blacks in a system that doesn’t represent them as they would like to be or those in the system that are not represented because they don’t have a job or an education.
I am only saying that the need for that gap to shrink is both sides communicate with each other to find out areas of communication to shorten this gap.
I see it continually widening because of this none negotiation. Where is it going to go from here I really can’t tell you but I sure would like to see that gap shrink and that is why I am here.
- Going back to the victory stand moment between thinking about staging that and actually doing it were there moments where you were having second thoughts?
I was totally committed because of the work we had done to get that far - including winning that race with a pulled muscle; I injured a muscle in the semi-finals.
It was time for closure from early 1967 when the Olympic Project from Human Right platform was built on the campus on San Jose state when I was a junior to all of the meetings and all of the depredated contests that I had been in to; not only running contests on the track but also in the classroom with the instructors.
A lot of things had happened from threats on my life, threats to bomb my house, threats of sexually abusing my wife through different phone calls - at the age of twenty two or twenty three that is massive when you are trying to go to school and get an education.
They either threw rocks through your apartment window or there were notes left on your car about things that were going to happen to you because you were involved in such a militant group it did take a toll before I got to Mexico City. So the Olympic victory stand was very welcomed because I had got there.
What happened in terms of having the gloves and the different visual aspects of the victory stand such as the socks and the bowed heads was the thoughts of Tommie Smith and John Carlos just hours before the victory stand - it had nothing to do with the pre-race only after the race.
So it was very welcomed and after it was over and I had to continue; I had to come back to San Jose state and enrol in my last few classes so I could finish my education - I didn’t have a job and I was married with a son.
Mexico didn’t just stop my life and I went into oblivion the hardest part of my life was after Mexico City.
- The life of a professional sportsman is different now to what it was back then with advertising and endorsements deals now being huge. How important do you think it is for athletes to take a step back from that and look more into the opportunity to use their notoriety as an athlete to send out a message?
I think it is a responsibility for the world class athletes to proactively involve themselves in society because society is the one that gave us the chance, not gave us the gold medal or gave us the basketball contract because we worked for this, but without the involvement of the people who pat us on the back when we have done this it wouldn’t have happened and we wouldn’t be where we are - especially those who have made the money unlike myself who did not.
We still made something in society and we communicated and talked about it.
Young kids look up to their heroes and I am hoping that the heroes have something positive to feed back to the kids so they can grow in a positive way and not the negativity of being a social degenerate, though rich but still socially disproving. So yes it is a responsibility of ours to give back positively to society.
Kids need the feedback so they can grow as sitting there and watching something that doesn’t move is not very exciting. Sport is exciting because there is movement and physical jubilation and the kids go home with nothing and the athletes go home with millions of dollars so yes they owe something.
They need to positively give back through financial sanctions or just simply giving a speech to a kid that otherwise not know anything about what it is like to be great.
- Finally just going back to the documentary what would you say is your fondest memory of Peter Norman?
His social intrigue as he always had something positive to say to you though from a negative experience and he could take something positive and make something negative. I have asked him ‘Peter why do you say something real nice and come back to the other end of it?’
I can’t tell you what he said because you just might print it and that would not be good (laughs) but what he meant was you take the good with the bad and you make a good smell out of it.
You take the good with the bad and you mix it and come out smelling good in stead of smelling bad. A glass half full of water or a glass half empty? And he would say ‘Tommie I would usually take a glass half empty then I would get a smaller glass and it would be full.’
He was about as indirect about things as I was and so we would talk indirectly about a lot of things and we learnt a lot from each other. He was open to ideas that he didn’t exactly agree with but he could understand.
Salute is out now on DVD
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw