Forty years later, the image is no less powerful.
But while the upcoming anniversary of the iconic moment has generated a new wave of poignant attention for Smith and Carlos on the eve of the controversial Beijing Games in China, the old sprinters themselves remain nowhere near as united as their shared moment in history might suggest embroiled in a long-simmering dispute over their roles in the historic demonstration and the way each has characterized the other over the years.
"The most important thing is the end result of what happened on the victory stand," Carlos said. "It's just a shame that we have to be in a public feud about who did what and why."
Yet, all these years later, it is just that.
Smith won in world-record time, with Carlos third however difficult it has made the rest of their lives.
Set amid the chaotic backdrop of a world in turmoil from the civil-rights movement and political assassinations in the United States to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Cultural Revolution in China and the police killing of hundreds of Mexican student protesters just days before the Olympics the gesture infuriated the International Olympic Committee and got Smith and Carlos expelled from the Games (though technically, they were already finished competing).
The men were criticized around the world, sent home, and so vilified by most of mainstream white America and the news media that they received death threats and feared for their lives even while they were still on the medal stand.
"It was viewed immediately as two athletes defying the flag, defying the pride of being who we are," Smith recalled. "And for Tommie Smith, that never was the case. I was there because I had thought it was necessary to make a stand against what we were going through in my country."
Public sentiment has shifted greatly since then, however.
Now, both Smith and Carlos are widely revered as heroic cultural icons of the civil-rights movement, in the manner of Rosa Parks or James Meredith.
Immortalized in a statue at their alma mater San Jose State three years ago, they were honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs last month, and will be inducted into the hall of fame at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society in Boston in January. The nephew of Peter Norman the white Australian who joined Smith and Carlos on the medal stand, sympathetic to their cause after winning the silver medal between them last month released a documentary film about the gesture, "Salute," that has won encouraging reviews.
The gesture "was really a culmination of what was happening in our history, as a nation, in a lot of ways," said Peter Roby, the athletic director at Northeastern University and the acting director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "Because they were giving voice to people who had no voice. . . . And they did that at their own peril."
Indeed, years passed before either man began to overcome the stigma of their controversial action.
Both tried pro football, but played only briefly. Both had trouble finding work. Smith has blamed two divorces on the strain created by his post-Olympic life, and Carlos believes the same thing helped drive his first wife to suicide.
Ultimately, Smith found his way into teaching and coaching, first at Oberlin College in Ohio and later at Santa Monica College in California though he has since retired and moved with his third wife, Delois, to suburban Atlanta. Carlos was nearby for much of that time, bouncing from job to job before becoming a counselor at Palm Springs High School, a position he still holds today.
All along, hard feelings lingered.
Now 63, Carlos evidently had been bothered by elements of Smith's version of the Mexico City gesture for some time, yet the conflict did not become demonstrably public until last year, when Smith published his autobiography, "Silent Gesture."
In it, the 64-year-old Smith expressed surprise and dismay in mocking tones that Carlos was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2003, a quarter-century after Smith.
"It's another thing he has because of being on that victory stand with me," Smith wrote.
And while Smith did praise Carlos as "one of the best" athletes who ever lived, he also noted dismissively that Carlos never graduated from San Jose State, though he did receive an honorary doctorate, like Smith. He also said Carlos was not involved in the planning for a potential black boycott of the Olympics, yet commandeered much of the media attention after the protest in Mexico City.
Furthermore, Smith characterized himself as the leader of the protest, saying he considered wearing both gloves on the medal stand, but instead told Carlos to wear one and "follow my lead."
"That's absurd," Carlos says now.
In his own biography, "Why?" published in 2000, Carlos contended and still does that he thought of the idea for the gloves and the raised fists. Even more explosively, he claimed he eased up during the race in Mexico City and allowed Smith to win. Carlos also was beaten by Norman only by making the mistake of slowing too much and looking around to urge on Smith, he said, though he was thrilled for the Australian who later wore a badge from the Olympic Project for Human Rights on the medal stand to demonstrate his solidarity with the Americans.
"I didn't really feel that Mr. Smith would do that thing on the podium had he not won that gold medal," Carlos said.
"That's the main and sole reason why I had to go" to the Olympics, Carlos added, "to do what I felt necessary to try to bring attention to people about not just black America, but the plight of this world in which we live."
Rocky relationship
For his part, Smith seems less aggrieved about the dispute which perhaps reflects the well-documented differences in their personalities and backgrounds. Carlos is a vocal and charismatic native of Harlem, in New York City, while the more reserved Smith grew up the son of a humble sharecropper in Texas.
So while Carlos described Smith's book as "trash" that "distorted the truth," Smith chuckled when asked about tales of their estrangement.
"I've heard that, too," he said.
Smith explained that he's "totally against the idea of a Smith and Carlos separation because of the need to be socially acknowledged." He said they're neither best friends nor mortal enemies, and compared himself and Carlos to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, in the sense that "we are people with difference of opinion of the same thing, which comes to the same end, which is social equity."
The men still appear together at events commemorating their gesture, and they were fellow pallbearers at Norman's funeral in Australia after Norman died unexpectedly of a heart attack two years ago.
But the occasions of their reunion are not always calm.
A column in The New York Times earlier this year described a mid-interview confrontation between the two, in which the men argued about the extent of their relationship and Carlos' claim that he "gave" Smith the Olympic victory in Mexico City.
"Gave me?" Smith said, angrily. "I can't believe this. You're sitting here and saying this. This is insulting, John. I like you too much for this stuff to happen."
Journalist Dave Zirin, the author of the forthcoming "A People's History of Sports in the United States" who has interviewed both men extensively and is planning to work with Carlos on another book, said it's hard for outsiders to understand the complexity of their relationship. Not only were both men gravely unprepared for the incendiary reception they received back home after the Olympics, but neither one has anybody else who truly understands what they endured.
"It's more like they're brothers who have had a terrible fight," Zirin said. "All of us would much prefer they were friends and political comrades who had forged a bond of love out of the shared experience. . . . But in a weird way, it's almost deeper than that."
Shared suffering
Smith and Carlos were not the only ones with a tremendous stake in what happened that night in Mexico City, though.
Norman did, too.
By agreeing with his fellow sprinters and taking an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge to wear on the medal stand, he subjected himself to much of the same kind of treatment in Australia as Smith and Carlos endured in the United States. He was reprimanded by the Australian Olympic Committee, received threats and hate mail, and was ostracized at home for later explaining that he opposed his government's "White Australia" immigration policy.
"I think a lot of Americans still don't understand that for a white guy to stand up for Black America in 1968 wasn't the coolest thing to do," Matt Norman said.
That's why the late sprinter's nephew has waded into the dispute between Smith and Carlos with his film, which he said explains "what really happened" in Mexico City.
For example, he said, neither Smith nor Carlos decided on how to use the gloves in their protest. Rather, it was Norman who suggested that they each take a glove, after Carlos had forgotten his pair at the Olympic Village - a point that none of the men contested when they gathered for interviews for the film at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field in Sacramento, Calif.
"They had every chance in the world to say that wasn't it true," Norman said. "But they didn't."
Both Smith and Carlos have steadfastly praised Norman as a courageous and principled man, and offered poignant eulogies at his funeral. Yet the filmmaker remains annoyed that his uncle frequently is treated as a disposable part of the story, after sacrificing so much.
Standing with Smith and Carlos so angered Australia's Olympic officials that they refused to send Norman to the 1972 Munich Games, yet the Australian is not depicted in the statue at San Jose State though he graciously did not object while attending its unveiling before his death. Nor was he made a part of the ESPN awards show last month, his nephew said, after so often traveling unrequited to events to honor Smith and Carlos.
"Tommie and John keep getting all these humanitarian awards, they get doctorates, they get statues," Norman said. "But what about the guy in the middle that came second? He's the one that's missing out."
Tarnished legacy
Some of those who know Smith and Carlos lament the way they seem to have risked soiling their legacy with their endless bickering, and Norman went so far as to wonder whether they have "given up on the ideal" that their gesture represented.
"I love these guys to death and I consider them family," he said. "But the fact that they're actually now fighting, I think they need to seriously take a look at their position in the world and their responsibility in the world."
But Richard Lapchick sees it differently.
The director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida said that arguments aside Smith and Carlos forged an irrevocable legacy by helping introduce a modern era of social activism within sports.
Along with contemporaries such as boxer Muhammad Ali and basketball player Bill Walton, the men helped athletes "realize they can make a serious contribution to making this a better world," Lapchick said, even if it seldom involves a gesture as controversial or dramatic as the one in Mexico City.
"We're probably at an all-time high in terms of athlete activism" that focuses on community service, he said.
Even the men themselves acknowledge that the who-did-what details of their explosive demonstration matter little next to the idea for which they ultimately stood.
But nearly 40 years later, neither can they let them go.
"People say, 'Why would you say all that?' " Carlos said, "and I said, 'I'll say it because it's the truth.' . . . I've tried to work with this guy for 39 years, and God just communicated to me, man, told me, 'Man, just let this dude go and do his thing.' But I have to speak on the truth.
"It bothers me tremendously," Carlos added. "I have a lot of pain and agony about it. I had a lot of pain and agony even before it got to this, trying to make Mr. Smith realize that, man, we're in this thing together. We're joined at the hip for life. But Mr. Smith seems to think, you know, 'I'm an individual. I don't need you. You wasn't there.' "
But they both were there, and as the author Zirin noted, "they were right."
mcl@sltrib.com
Reporters Maggie Thach and Sunnie Redhouse contributed to this story
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