After finishing first and third in the 200-meter sprint, Smith and Carlos stood shoeless in black socks and bowed their heads with fists raised as the American national anthem played. The International Olympic Committee expelled both men from the Games, but the image became one of the twentieth century's most enduring symbols of civil rights defiance.
Tommie Smith had just run a world-record 19.83 seconds in the 200 meters; John Carlos took bronze behind Australian silver medalist Peter Norman. As the anthem began, both Americans bowed their heads and raised a single black-gloved fist—Smith's right, Carlos's left, since they'd split a pair of gloves after Carlos forgot his own.
They stood on the podium in black socks, no shoes, to represent Black poverty; Carlos wore beads to protest lynching. Peter Norman, the white Australian sprinter, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the podium in solidarity, a gesture that damaged his career back home for decades.
IOC president Avery Brundage, who had notably said nothing about Nazi salutes at the 1936 Berlin Games, expelled Smith and Carlos from the Olympic Village within 48 hours, calling their gesture a domestic political statement unsuited to the apolitical Games. Both men faced death threats and years of professional hardship upon returning home. Decades later, statues of the two now stand on their old college campus, and the photograph remains a defining image of athlete activism.
Key people: Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Peter Norman