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- [Howard Cosell] Tommie, would you explain
to the people of America exactly
what you did and why you did it?
[air whooshing]
[American national anthem on bass guitar]
- [Tommie Smith] For 50 years everyone has viewed
that fist as black power.
[American national anthem on guitar]
It was from a youth who believed that
it was a stand for human rights from a black man.
[American national anthem on guitar]
- [Glenn Kaino] A single image has the power to change the
world by proving to you that something's possible.
[soft music]
I first saw the image of Tommie's salute
in a civil rights history book when I was in high school.
And it made such an impact on me
that I had a small picture of it taped
to the lower corner of my iMac in the studio.
And a friend of mine walked in and then he said,
"Coach Smith, do you wanna meet him?"
Now, I didn't know if Tommie was alive,
but coach is only a name that you call someone
who you actually know who's been your coach.
So I booked two tickets right then.
And then we flew out to go see Tommie at his home.
When we got there, Tommie shook my head at the door,
graciously, sat me on his couch,
put in a VHS tape and played the race
and narrated everything he was thinking to me
step by step all the way through the win,
and to the victory stand.
[American national anthem]
But there's nothing that you regret?
- No.
- [Glenn] I had to ask.
- Yeah, you had to ask.
- That's how you get real stories.
- [Glenn] Yeah.
Is there anything you regret about that moment?
- Yeah, well, no.
But I can give you a reason why it could have been very
fatally regretful, and it is,
is me having to do it at all.
- [Angela Davis] The real content of any kind of
revolutionary thrust lies in the principles
and the goals that you're striving for.
Not in the way you reach them.
- [MLK] I do not approve of violence,
whether it is perpetrated by racists
or whether it's perpetrated by Negros.
- [Malcolm X] We want freedom by any means necessary.
We want justice by any means necessary.
We want equality by any means necessary.
- We were dealing with equality.
We were dealing with racism.
We were dealing with being a part,
but not have having a voice.
And it needed capsulated for me, with my running.
My running became my voice.
[gun shot]
- [Announcer] [murmurs] at the second,
Tommie smith moving up.
- Being an all American in high school, in basketball,
football, and track, there were a lot of schools after me,
but I was recruited for basketball.
In fact the basketball coach came down to my home,
came inside of the house.
That didn't happen to the Smith family.
A white man coming into our house?
But I thought it was admirable
for him coming and doing this.
So I chose San Jose because of that.
[gun shot]
Speech city, 1968,
we were some bad men.
In fact, in this picture there's about six world records.
[soft music]
- [Announcer] Smith begins to pour it on,
and forges to the front.
He literally flies toward the tape.
- Coming out of high school.
I didn't know nothing.
I was just running.
I wanted to go to the Olympic games
because so many great athletes had gone before.
As far as the athletic community is concerned,
I am preparing myself for the Mexico feat.
[gun shot]
The number of races I had to run
to get on the Olympic team
was every race I ran in college.
[gun shot]
So you got hundreds of races you're running
before you make the Olympic team.
[soft music]
Thousands of people at the beginning of the year
came down to three people.
Lee Evans, John Carlos, and me.
- How do you feel the US can come out
in the 200 meters in Mexico city?
- I think the field we had two days ago
is one of the greatest fields that the world has ever known.
And I think we can duplicate it in Mexico city.
[gun shot]
[soft music]
Coming out of high school
and going to San Jose state opened my eyes
to a lot of things going on around me.
Black athletes were expected
to perform and shut up
but I wanted to do something different.
So I could serve those who didn't have a platform.
Politics is a part of everything.
And athletics is no exception.
Lee Evans approached me one day on campus and says
"Smith, Smith, you haven't been come to the meetings."
And I said, "Lee, what meetings?"
He said, "Harry Edwards having meetings on campus,
black athletes, possible boycott by the Olympic team.
- we're not talking about a few metals.
We're not talking about the Olympics.
We're not out to destroy the United States in Olympics.
We're talking about human rights.
- It was the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
[dramatic music]
It was about freedom.
The cry for freedom.
Why should we participate for a country
and 100% effort and come back to our homes,
and are denied some of the rights
that should be given us legally.
- [Interviewer] You think the boycott
will change all of this?
- I won't say the boycott will change all this.
Civil rights didn't change all this,
but I will say it's one straw in the hay
that will be pulled out and make the stack lighter.
- Tom, when will come a determination,
whether you, Lee Evans, and others
will or will not boycott the Olympics.
- I wish I could tell you [gun shot]
- In the last meeting the boycott was called off.
[soft music]
We decided that each athlete
would represent themselves according to how they felt
the country represented them.
I would say the boycott is off.
- [Interviewer] Now, what about other things
that might happen in Mexico city?
- All I can say is you can expect almost anything.
[gun shot]
[soft music]
I had a lot of thinking to do.
We carried a lot of emotion going down to Mexico.
[Announcement in Spanish]
There were so many, many people in the stadium.
I had never experienced that site before.
[soft music]
- It was an extremely volatile time.
[soft music]
- A far more violent time than people realized.
[soft music]
- [Reporter] But now the troops are coming
and you can hear what is sounds like.
- There had been some shooting incidents
involving students and police in Mexico city.
and the Olympics were simply part of it.
- There's three races: trials, the semis, and the finals.
These are the three races that I ran in Mexico City.
Trials was a good race in terms of
coming out of the blocks, getting started good.
Second race was a bit more formal.
[gun shot]
I worked harder on the turn.
[soft music]
I crossed the finish line, winning the race,
and I felt a sharp pain in the groin area, a sharp pain.
[soft music]
[gun shot]
I thought I had been shot.
[crowd cheering]
But I looked down and I saw no blood.
then I said, "Oh, it's a strained muscle."
[soft music]
So I realized that I had a chance still, I had a chance but,
I needed to ice it because that same day we ran the finals.
So we ran the semis and the finals in the same day.
- And another highlight of our shows
will be the 200 meter finals featuring Tommie Smith,
John Carlos and Larry Questad.
The first show at seven eastern time,
six central and again at eight Eastern
and seven central.
Chris Schenkel reporting from Mexico city.
- This 1968 Olympic games in Mexico city
was the first Olympic games in the history
of the Olympics that was shown live around the world.
So anything that happened in those games,
they saw it firsthand.
[soft music]
I watched the athletes',
fastest men in the world there before my eyes.
I'm the world record holder, but I'm injured.
Fear is different for different people.
My strength is my attitude of I can do this.
And I crawled into the blocks,
got my "on our marks" start.
On your marks. [intense music]
Get set!
Silence. [intense music]
My whole life kind of poured out
all these hundreds of races that I ran to get there.
And the gun sounded.
[gun shot]
[Crowd cheers]
- [Announcer] Here's Questad, it's a good start.
And Carlos, as usual has burst out of the blocks.
- First five steps I was in fifth or sixth place.
[upbeat music]
Once we straighten up, then this was the real deal.
I said, "Okay, this is it."
And I started moving.
High knees, raised shoulder, raise arms,
started working more than any other
race I had ran in my life.
- [Announcer] Right now it's Carlos and Smith.
And here comes Tommie Smith.
- Then I heard the announcer say
"And Tommie Smith has done it!"
Then my arms went up.
- [Announcer] Smith has done it, with his hands in the air.
[camera flash]
[upbeat music]
[crowd cheering]
My next move would be immortalized in history
because I knew something had to be done.
[soft music]
After the race, we marched off,
down in the dungeon where the athletes
were processed to come out and receive their awards.
[soft music]
- We want equality by any means necessary.
[soft music]
- [Tommie] It is said, stop, look and listen.
And most of all, wait, love will appear.
- I do not approve of violence.
- [Tommie] I had that in my system to rely on.
The understanding that you are here for a reason,
you've got to find out what it is yourself.
[soft music]
- We're not out to destroy
the United States in the Olympics.
We're talking about human rights.
[soft music]
- [Tommie] You gotta move to
a purpose that you can understand.
[soft music]
- We knew that at some point
there was going to be a demonstration
by the African American athletes.
We didn't know who, didn't know when.
But those of us that were covering the event,
were ready for anything at any time.
The stadium was packed.
The whole mood of the arena.
There was a tension in the air.
It was a very powerful night.
It was a very controversial night.
[soft music]
- It had to be silent because there was no time to talk.
My daddy used to do a prayer every night
before going to bed,
"Our father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."
And that's what I took to the victory stand with me.
I was not afraid because of that prayer of protection.
[crowd cheering]
John Carlos and I were together then
because we identified the need to stand together,
make a stand.
[crowd cheering]
I turned to the flag.
John turned. My fist went to the sky,
my head bowed, and John followed.
[American national anthem]
[crowd jeers]
- I was at home.
But I remember it like it was yesterday.
I saw this tall, young, African American man
standing up straight, holding his hand high.
He gave us all hope.
He helped us all come to that point,
"So I too can do something.
I too can make a contribution."
[soft music]
- Exactly an hour on the hour after Tommie started talking,
His wife, Delois cut him off and said,
"Tommie, shut up.
Glenn, why are you here?
Tommie will talk all night long if you let him.
But we need to know why you're here."
[upbeat music]
And I said, "Look, I'm a conceptual artist.
I'm not here to pitch you anything.
But I have an observation, if I may."
And I said, "It strikes me that you live
in a bit of a time bubble.
I was born after that happened.
So for me it's always been a symbol,
but for you it's very personal."
You shook my hand with that hand,
you brush your teeth with that hand,
you drive with that hand.
But the rest of us,
we just know the hand up in the air.
So what if we could collaborate on a project
that functions in the now: allowing you
to be a witness for the first time
of this rich history that you've created."
At that point they said, "What's next?"
And I said, "Why don't you come to my studio in LA,
and I'll take the arm off your body."
And they said, "Whoa! What are you talking about?"
I said, "No, I'm just going to make a cast of it.
And then we'll sit with it.
And we'll figure out what to make."
[upbeat music]
When the cast of Tommie's arm came out.
The first thing he did, was he pointed
at this area of his arm and said,
"Do you know what that is son?"
I said, "No, what is that, sir?"
He said, "That's a class muscle."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "You only get that from picking cotton."
[soft music]
- When you are picking cotton,
you pick it from a boll.
And the boll, before it's ready to pick, it opens up.
You reach down in the boll,
pick the cotton out and you proceed to the next boll.
If you can do two hands at once or two rolls at once,
that's how you got a lot of cotton.
Some days as a kid, I had a good day.
A good day is 220 pounds.
A phenomenal day is around 300 pounds,
and that's $3 a hundred, back in the day that was $9.
[soft music]
There was a science to picking cotton.
That's why some people pick 50 pounds a day
and some people pick 300 pounds a day.
- He told me that when he was on the victory stand,
he flexed it to let everyone know
that even if you pick cotton, you were up there with him.
[soft music]
[Nelson George] In order for that protest to actually work,
he had to win, right?
If he doesn't make it, what is he gonna do?
He's gonna protest in the, you know, fifth place?
So he had to win.
He had to be great.
- It speaks of so much strength and humanity.
And just the sense of empathy of,
obviously being incredible at his craft
and being so successful.
But then to take that moment,
there's such depth in that moment.
And it's just like, that's a hero.
- What other opportunities are there like this?
If you're at a political rally,
they already expect you to be militant
or expect you to be...
He snuck the entire globe with a good right hand,
and then they fell down.
- The United States leads the Olympics in medal awards
and is just about Supreme in the sprint races.
Thanks to men like Tommie Smith and John Carlos.
Yesterday they came in first and third
in the 200 meter dash.
And then stood on the victory platform with bowed heads,
wearing black socks and gloves in a racial protest.
- In 1968, there were no regularly scheduled
black TV shows on network TV,
except for news reports about riots and black militancy.
You know, Black power, kill whitey, you know, fuck the pigs
Black panthers
So all that to white America is scary as hell.
- The fact that the Olympics
where Tommie and John Carlos raised their fist
was the first that was broadcast live
means that it was the first time.
There was a chance for that to happen
in unsuspecting Americans' homes.
You're in their living room.
They didn't invite you in their living room.
They didn't know what you were gonna do.
They don't need to know you.
But there you are.
You're smack dab in front of their couch
while they're in their sweat pants, watching you.
- This was a symbol of defiance
in the middle of a event where
people are looking for blatant patriotism.
And so when he does this,
he electrifies this discussion because he says,
"What is a patriot?
What is patriotism?
Is patriotism protesting oppression?
Is patriotism blind allegiance
to a country despite everything?"
[soft music]
- People don't wanna talk about difficult issues
and stains in our past that as a country
that we don't wanna talk about.
And we don't wanna reconcile.
- What Tommie did is not environmental activism.
It's not about save the African children
in some far distant land.
It's a whole different thing
to square up with white supremacy.
[soft music]
- I see it as an even bigger act of patriotism
because you are laying bare
for the whole world to see
what you feel your country can do better.
- Disruption doesn't make everybody happy.
It doesn't make everybody feel good.
And most athletes today,
the reason they don't risk more
is because they're afraid of the disruption
of what it causes.
[soft music]
- When you see something that is not right,
not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation
to say something to and do something.
Sometime
you literally have to put your body on the line.
- [Nelson] You saw them on that stand.
And you said, "These guys for all of the bravery,
they're gonna get feedback
and it's not gonna be good.
These great young men, what happens to them now?
[crowd jeering]
- When Tommie and John came off,
I probably heard more boos
in a stadium than I've ever heard
over any incident before or since.
There was an unbelievable negative reaction.
[crowd jeering]
- [Tommie] I looked up and raised my fist again.
[crowd jeering]
I wanted them to know that it was not a mistake.
[crowd jeering]
- I went down into the basement
because I knew that the athletes,
when they left the award stand,
came off and walked through the door.
I locked the door behind me so that no one else
was coming through that door until I
had interviewed Tommie and John.
The interview went on three and a half minutes maybe.
And what I remember most of all
was how calm Tommie Smith was.
And then I heard the unmistakable voice of
"This Howard Cosell, ABC.
I demand that you open that door."
[laughs]
I knew it was coming.
- [Cosell] Tommie, would you explain
to the people of America
exactly what you did and why you did it?
- First of all, Howard,
I would like to say I'm very happy
to have won the gold medal, here in Mexico city.
The right glove that I wore on my right hand,
signified the power within black America.
The left glove, my teammate, John Carlos,
wore in his left hand made an arc my right hand,
to his left hand also signify black unity.
The scarf that was worn around my neck,
signified blackness.
John Carlos and me wore socks,
Black socks without shoes to also signify our poverty.
This is the motivation, the symbolism of what you did.
Now, do you think you represented
all black athletes in doing this?
I represented black America.
I'm very proud to be a black man,
as I said earlier,
and also to have won a gold medal.
And this, I thought that I could represent my people
by letting them know that
I'm proud to be a black man.
- Subsequent to that.
I leave looking for a pay telephone
because in those days you would put down a few thoughts,
but you transcribed it back to Chicago's American.
- [Tommie] "Smith and Carlos looked like
a couple of black-skinned stormtroopers,
holding aloft their black-gloved hands
during the playing of the National Anthem.
It's destined to go down as the most unsubtle
demonstration in the history of protests.
They should have avoided the awards ceremony all together.
- Brent Musburger was not talking about Star Wars.
Brent Musburger was talking about Hitler.
And he was making a false equivalency.
He was channeling America's hate
toward the Nazis to Tommie and John.
[soft music]
- I didn't know about this until late nineties,
early two thousands.
I was stunned, because that's not
the Brent Musburger I grew up with.
- Folks, I've had the best seat in the house.
Thanks for sharing it.
I'll show you down the road.
- If you did a Mount Rushmore of sports broadcasters,
Brent Musburger is right there.
During these moments, be careful about what you say
because they could live in history in a way
that could make you really ashamed and people never forget.
[tapping]
- You learn, especially as you grow older,
how words can be so hurtful so that you really
do have to be more careful than I was that night
in 1968, a thoughtless-
- [Glenn] Did you apologize to Tommie?
- Yeah, basically I said, yeah.
Yeah, I'm sorry for that.
I said I was young and dumb.
And I never, ever should have gone there.
But immediately, Tommie and John felt the wrath.
- I had said that if there were any demonstrations
at the Olympic games by anyone,
the participants would be sent home.
- The black power disciples,
Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
the Olympic 200 meters gold and bronze medalist
have been suspended
by the United States Olympic Committee,
and given 48 hours to leave Mexico.
- After the race,
we received a call asking us to come to the USOC
headquarters and bring our medals with us.
- [Reporter] News men tried to get comment
from Lee Evans, the sprinter.
ABC's Ray Falk, couldn't get any comment
even from the wife of sprinter John Carlos.
Carlos personally told newsmen to keep away.
- Leave me alone, okay?
I'm asking you the last time.
- We did not return our medals.
Those medals belonged to us.
We arrived in Los Angeles and there were
a huge crowd of people.
We could see that on the way in.
They took us off the plane,
took us to some backdoor
and boarded another plane headed to San Jose.
Once we landed in San Jose, it was just the opposite.
No one there to welcome us home.
[soft music]
[foot steps]
When I returned home from Mexico city,
I had a no job and I knew why,
because of the victory stand.
- Many people think that change just happens.
That people make gestures and go on with their lives.
But the reality is that change
doesn't happen in America without sacrifice, without loss.
And in some ways, Tommie bore the burden
of being the symbol of change.
[soft music]
- The only job I could get was at all American Pontiac.
There was a large sign out front,
come and see olympian, Tommie Smith.
I would have to put all my little red bow tie
and come out front, "Hi, I'm Tommie Smith.
How are you?"
As if I was a salesman.
But my job was detailing and washing cars.
I was there.
So people would come in
and identify themselves with Tommie Smith.
And I would go back out in the back
and continue washing cars.
One day I received a call from Bill Walsh,
who was a wide receiver quarterback coach
for the Cincinnati Bengals.
His question was, would I like to try out for the team?
He knew I still had my 200 meter speed.
I caught one pass that year against the Oakland Raiders.
I caught the ball and then lights out.
Separated shoulder, two squad cars showed up.
Dropped me off in front of the hospital.
Got a call, "Tommie, you've been cut."
[soft music]
A year or so after, I finally got a call
and the person who wanted to talk to me was Jack Scott,
who just got the job
as athletic director at Oberlin college.
It didn't take me long to pack up.
- [Cosell] This is Oberlin college in Oberlin, Ohio.
It was the first white institution to admit Black students.
Now it has a brand new program which is headed up by a man
who has called himself a populist radical
and has written a book called the athletic revolution.
His name is Jack Scott.
- [Tommie] He said, I need an assistant athletic director
and someone to coach track
and to start a women's basketball program.
- [Cosell] Oberlin college has as its new
assistant director of athletics, Tommie Smith.
Do you think you've changed since 68?
Have you grown less militant?
- What does militant mean?
- [Cosell] Don't spar with me.
We're not going back to 68.
- I moved to Oberlin and started the job, very happy.
One day I decided to get a haircut.
I jumped in my car and had to go across the tracks.
So I'm sitting up there with two, three other brothers
sitting up there and they was talking.
I was enjoying the conversation.
I'm sitting toward the window, looking out,
and a car pulls up next to my car.
Two men got out of the car, looked into my car.
They were wearing trench coats.
They walked over to the barbershop and opened the door.
And I said, "Oh man, Mexico was a long time ago.
Now they're bothering me again."
So they walked in, they came in.
"Is there a Tommie Smith here?"
Now, the guys in the shop didn't know who Tommie Smith was.
So I said, "Tommie, you better speak up."
I said, "I'm Tommie Smith."
And one of the guys kind of leaned up against the wall,
"Can we see you outside?"
I looked at my watch and I said,
"Well, I'm due for a haircut.
Meet me at my office in an hour."
And he said, "Where is your office?"
And I responded by saying,
"you found me in a barbershop cross the tracks.
And you don't know who I'm office is?
You know where my office is."
After my haircut, I jumped in my Belvedere
and drove back to my office.
Parked the car, went upstairs,
and they were sitting at my office door.
I didn't tell them where my office was.
They said, "Well, we wanna talk to you
about a case that we've been working on for years.
Do you know, Patty Hearst?"
And I said, "Who?"
And they asked me, "Well, who is your boss?"
And I said, "Jack Scott."
- Jack and Mickey Scott are writers
and critics of the big time sports establishment.
They were also apparently suspected
of harboring Pettie Hearst in a rented farmhouse
in Pennsylvania last summer.
Rather than co-operating-
- They later reveal that they were FBI agents.
Jack Scott got fired and I was next in line.
[soft music]
- All over the country.
There's these trials that begin happening,
of big groups of black people
who are activists being scooped up
as part of conspiracies to overthrow the government,
shoot police, blow up buildings,
and almost every case,
their association was tangential at best.
So Tommie was a victim of a fear of radical thought.
[upbeat music]
- So many of Tommie's dreams
had to be altered because of that gesture.
Obviously it was hard for him economically.
His athletic career was in essence over,
but you never saw Tommie say, let me take that back.
- We have seen somebody who wanted to be a professional
athlete for a long time.
We saw their career taken from them in real time.
And we're still arguing about whether or not it was taken.
- It is my contention and I could be wrong
that Colin Kaepernick does not understand
the big picture of his country.
- It takes a lot for a guy who was making a lot of money,
which is what everybody seems to judge somebody by,
to put it on the line for people who he does not know,
who he owes nothing to,
but for him to say somethings not right
and I'm gonna do something about it,
and to do something where at the end of the day
people will remember him for that more than sports.
Which is the most important thing in the world.
- Is he taking any of the finances that he's made,
the $19 million he's making per year.
Is he using any of that to leverage that celebrity
and that monetary gain that he's making
in America to help those communities,
to help those families?
I don't see it happening Gretta.
And that's why this entire thing
has rubbed me the wrong way.
- Listen, you had a president of the United States
who'd used basically the authority,
and the majesty of the state
to threaten the NFL into keeping
this guy out of earning a living
that he had been training for since he was a kid.
[soft music]
- I think just me and Colin is really interesting.
Juxtaposed next to each other.
And he's still out of a job and still kind of
a pariah in that way.
Whereas I've kind of come out on the other end
and now it's seen as a really positive thing,
but I also think it's really glaring from society
of just how much we sort of prop up white privilege.
And yet I'm talking about the exact same things
in a lot of ways that Colin is,
but we look very different
and we sort of speak about it
in a little bit different way.
So why all of a sudden am I,
why am I okay?
And [laughs] why is everything okay for me?
And people are really on board with it now
and yet we still can't wrap our heads around
what Colin is doing and the impact that he has.
- They want to erase
Colin Kaepernick's presence from the NFL.
That's a key part of Tommie Smith's story
that people don't really understand
is that after that Olympics,
it didn't just end with, "Oh, they got sent home."
He was ostracized from society.
[soft music]
- A lot of families have been hurt because they did less.
Mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers
have been beaten, lynched, or even worse
because they were the color they are, not what they said.
So yes, I regret that my family had to go through that,
but there was no other way it could have been done.
[soft music]
Several times, my mother received feces in the mail,
or dead animals in the mail, or very,
very disrespectful notes in the mail because of me.
[soft music]
I know that the stress my mother felt
because of what I represented in Mexico city,
caused her heart attack.
I know that that's a fact.
I know that's a fact.
[soft music]
My mother's death was my fault.
[soft music]
All the stress she went through,
knowing that one of her kids was in trouble.
[soft music]
There were times when I would feel myself dropping.
[soft music]
I would try to get out of myself and wonder,
how lonely am I?
[soft music]
People are individuals, and everyone
is alone in their own head.
Talking about lonely?
I was lonely inside and outside then
because there was nothing.
Me and my wife sat in this sparsely furnished house.
I met Denise at San Jose state.
Well, we got married two years after I met her.
Kevin came along.
He was six months old when I was in Mexico.
I wanted to be just a regular old dad.
And that's where I failed.
[soft music]
Got a divorce later on.
I became a single dad.
I had Kevin with me at Oberlin.
[soft music]
I met Denise Kyle while I was at Oberlin.
We got married and we came back to California.
We had one girl and three boys.
The first one is Danielle.
The boy is Anthony. We called him Tony.
The other one is Timothy.
We called him Timmy.
Then there's Joseph.
We called him Joey.
I tried very hard to be a dad,
but there was one person that I forgot.
Denise Smith.
She didn't get the attention that she should have gotten.
I was moved out of the house, down the street,
I had no money to buy furniture.
So the holder of 11 world records slept on the floor.
Ooh.
[claps hands]
But sometime, I didn't cry for myself,
but it's the pain.
Not so much the sadness, it's just pain of sadness
which I worked so hard for,
and it blew up in my face.
And it was so hard that it destroyed what I loved.
I had roaches for roommates.
And sometimes I ran inside
and met my buddy which was my little wine bottle
sitting in the refrigerator.
- [Announcer] Smith has done it.
With his hands in the air.
- Sometimes we would get mixed up in being on film,
with something in reality, which you really wanna be,
you can't.
It was around that time I met my wife, the Delois.
- [Delois] We were home having some dinner
and we had some wine
and we were talking, and he got very emotional.
[soft music]
He got very, very angry.
And he started to yell and he broke a few chairs.
He climbed aboard the glass table,
and he fell through the table.
He cut his finger, he cut his arm.
[soft music]
He's so worked up.
He's so out of it.
He's just so not him.
It was not Tommie.
- [Tommie] I told Delois to get out of the house,
go to your mother's house, get out.
- [Delois] That's when he smeared the blood
all over the floor,
and he wrote information on the walls,
in the family room that was unreadable.
[soft music]
[crowd cheering]
- [Tommie] In the back of my mind,
I was writing a letter.
That's my memory now.
[soft music]
I was writing a letter,
and I wanted it on the outside
all started writing on the outside wall.
I had blood everywhere.
Next thing I heard was bam, bam, bam,
on the door, "Police, police."
I thought it was a dream.
I hit rock bottom.
- [Delois] I did not recognize him.
His eyes had turned gold.
He was just extremely quiet.
Just quiet for like a day or two.
And I would get food and I'd feed him.
He'd sit in the garage in a chair,
had a big chair inside the garage.
He'd just sit there and he would rock.
He wouldn't say much.
I got him, we got in the car.
I drove all the way to Lemoore, California
to take him back home, back to his roots.
[soft music]
He was sitting in the passenger seat
and he was looking around like he had never seen Lemoore.
[soft music]
- [Tommie] It was the coolest ride ever had.
I mean, it was really a cool.
All trees looked new, the to road looked new.
Everything was new.
- At that point, he seemed to kind of perk up.
- I was born in Texas in 1944.
We moved to California in 1951.
[soft music]
I remember the bus pulling up and I saw little huts.
That was the labor camp.
Came to California on that labor bus on credit.
So we had to pick cotton to pay for our passage.
Then we were allowed to move off of the camp.
[soft music]
We moved to Lemoore a year or so
after we came to California.
We moved to a little house on stilts.
No running water, no bathroom, nothing, just a house.
My dad was a very strong man
in terms of his intuitiveness to survive.
Daddy would work 12 hours a day on the night shift
in the irrigation fields
and work eight hours a day at school
because he was a janitor.
Mother was a very quiet woman.
Ma would go out and sit on front porch,
opened the screen doors.
[opening screed doors impression]
Bam.
And I sit there.
"Hey boy."
"Hey Ma"
Sit on the front porch.
And I was swinging my feet.
Oh, for five minutes.
And she would be rocking.
[soft music]
And I had 11 brothers and sisters.
Willy Jewel, Jame Richard,
George, Lucille, Sally, Hattie,
Tommie, and that's me y'all.
Ernie, Mary, Gladys, Liz, and Eugene.
[soft music]
- The love and what he knew then brought him back.
- [Tommie] Now reborn like, you know?
She had to take me back to my beginnings
or something I could latch on to.
'Cause I had lost it here.
- [Glenn] Did you think you were done?
- Yeah.
- [Glenn] Did you think you were gonna die?
- I thought that. But worse than that,
I thought I'd go missing and found dead.
- So after we got back I said, "There has to be a change."
God knows if he had stayed any longer,
he would not be here today.
And I know that.
[soft music]
- [Tommie] I retired and I wanted me a place
of solace, quietness, no contact.
I relocated to Stone Mountain, Georgia.
- So let freedom ring.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that, let freedom ring
from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
- When Dr. King gave that unbelievable speech
at the March on Washington,
he spoke about Stone Mountain.
Yes, the clan live on stone mountain.
They marched on stone mountain carrying the cross,
dressed in white singing, "Onward Christian Soldiers."
[soft music]
- We're both the cradle of the civil rights movement
and the cradle of the Confederacy.
And we've had to live within that tension.
So for Tommie Smith to decide
that he would buy a home right there,
he was defying the old ghosts of Jim Crow segregation.
He was in a real sense, bringing things full circle.
[soft music]
- Stone Mountain had the KKK. Stone Mountain,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Atlanta,
and I moved right between the both of them
and looked at each other and said,
"This is where I wanna live."
And this home, this house, these trees,
the things that needed doing to this house
reminding me of starting over again and rebuilding something
in a place only a few years
before I moved here, was turmoil.
[soft music]
- [Glenn] But what about when you guys
actually first met?
- Yes.
I went on a date with him
before I even knew who he was.
[soft music]
I was working at Santa Monica college
with the person of records and admission.
And there's this tall guy, white shirt,
blue pants, and a gob of keys.
A whole bunch of keys.
- [Glenn] Look, you guys have both said a lot of keys.
Are we talking about five?
Are we talking about-
- Oh no, it's more like 40.
Yeah.
In my track and field bin,
there were six keys just to get into my shoes.
These were my keys.
So I was sitting down, I turned
and I looked to where I thought her height was,
or height might be.
But I was looking around her belt buckle.
[laughs]
So I just kept looking up.
I said, "Hi, how are you?"
- He just kind of impressed me from the beginning
because he made one statement
that will always stick with me.
He would like to take me out
and have someone to pour us a cup of coffee.
What do you mean pour me a cup of coffee?
I make my own coffee and pour it.
But I thought, "Okay, this is getting good here."
There wasn't much dating.
It was more or less a friendship.
We became friends, very close friends.
[soft music]
I feel a responsibility to maintain a legacy
that will be in perpetuity for Tommie.
- Goodness gracious.
[soft music]
- Somehow a fourth generation,
Japanese American artist
became one of the captains of Tommie Smith's legacy team.
I had Tommie on the top of my vision board.
And as it turns out,
Tom and Dolores had a vision board of their own.
And they had a list of things
that they wanted to try to accomplish
in order to preserve Tommie's legacy.
And so without even knowing what those things were
I signed up to help.
And then she told me what they were.
One, they wanted to meet Oprah.
Two, they wanted to be in the Smithsonian.
And three, they wanted to meet the president.
[soft music]
As it turns out, I've actually
done some work with Oprah in the past.
So I saw her shortly after and I said,
"Oprah, I'm working with Tommie Smith."
And she said, "Tommie Smith, Tommie Smith."
She knew exactly who he was.
And I said, he would really, really like to meet you.
And generously, She said,
"Yeah, sure.
I'll meet him tomorrow."
[camera flash effect]
So I called Tommie and said,
"Tommie, I got you meeting with Oprah in the morning.
I got you tickets, head to the airport right now."
And he said to me,
"Son, I'm too old to get on a plane right now.
I can't meet her tomorrow."
And he passed.
[camera flash effect]
Now, I don't know about you.
But if someone asks me to do three impossible things
and you pass on the first one,
I think I'm off the hook for all three.
Not so much, shortly after
Delois called and said,
"Hey, I wanna remind you you're on the clock."
And I said, "What does that mean?"
And she said,
"We wanna meet the president, not the ex-president."
[soft music]
I called every day for weeks.
Got every answer from no to hell no.
Finally they got tired of hearing my voice and said,
"Hey, if you can get to DC on official business,
we'll tell the president you're in town.
And if he wants to see you, maybe he'll invite you in."
They didn't know I'd just met Dr. Lonnie Bunch.
So I reached out to Dr. Lonnie Bunch,
who at that time was still building the national museum
of African American History and Culture.
And most notably didn't have anything yet from Tommie Smith.
- There is no way that we would do a National Museum
of African American History and Culture
without utilizing that image.
- So we flew to DC with a bag full of free stuff
for the Smithsonian and no invitation to the White House.
[soft music]
- When you walk into our exhibition
on history of African American sport,
you realize that this is a way to understand
the meaning of sport,
both in terms of athletic achievement,
but in terms of what it can mean to the broader society.
[soft music]
How do you make sure that America,
that the world understands what's going on?
And how do you light a match to make change?
[soft music]
What these materials that Tommie has given us does,
is allows us to humanize the moment.
These artifacts really make this story
one that people can relate to,
can understand, and can be motivated by.
[soft music]
It became both a personal moment
and a moment that inspired me to recognize
that while I couldn't use sport
as a way to change America,
I ultimately could use history as my tool,
my weapon to change America.
[soft music]
- The Smithsonian was the official business
that got us to DC that allowed them
to let President Obama know that we were in town.
Tommie had never been to the white house
or I invited to the White house, ever.
- [Glenn] A few hours later, the White House called
and invited us over the next day.
When we were walking up,
I asked Tommie if he ever imagined
walking up to the White House.
[Tommie laughs]
- I wasn't that nervous.
I was beyond that point.
But soon as I walked through the other side,
it was a new world.
When I saw him, I saw my family.
A black man, very relaxed.
Kind of looked like me.
He's six feet, two.
"Hey Tommie, How are you doing?"
[laughs]
And I said, "Mr president, I'm doing good.
And yourself?"
And he kind of looked at me and looked at Delois.
- President Obama looked at me and he said,
"But the rose look pretty good."
[laughs]
- We walked back into his office
and he leaned and sit on his desk,
folded alarms and said, "Everything is good."
- In preparation to meet President Obama,
I had made a drawing of a relay race
with Tommie as the third runner,
handing the Baton to a fourth runner.
- I wrote an inscription on the back of the picture.
I wrote,"I can only imagine the length of passage,
but most importantly, the Baton was not dropped.
Congrats on a successful number eight."
- Maybe a week after we had visited with him,
he spoke the same words about the journey
that Tommie had written on the back of that painting.
[soft music]
[crowd cheering]
- Hope in the face of difficulty,
hope in the face of uncertainty,
the audacity of hope.
America, You've vindicated that hope
these past eight years.
[crowd cheering]
And I'm ready to pass the baton
and do my part as a private citizen.
So this year, in this election-
- [Delois] Just hearing him say it,
it was just so emotional.
I just remember tearing up.
[soft music]
- Now, I'm not claiming that
there's any correlation between Tommie Smith
writing to President Obama,
that the baton has not been dropped.
And president Obama later talking
about passing the baton, but it did happen.
[soft music]
I don't know if Tommie realized it,
but he created a masterful work of performance art.
The thought that went into his salute
is very similar to how artists try
to make meaningful symbols.
Rarely are they as successful as Tommie was.
[joyful music]
I approach the world with the lens
that everyone can be an artist.
And so for me, Tommie was always an artist
who is in the form of an athlete.
And that's why his gestures of expression
and that salute what was a performance piece.
[joyful music]
Yeah, this is part of the series
where I took out the word angry
[murmurs] the black athlete, all sequentially.
And the interesting thing about removing a text,
because if you read this and it says
the black athlete, that's one thing.
If you read it and it says, The angry athlete,
that's a whole other thing.
If you're the angry black, that's an even third thing.
And if you read it and all the texts was gone,
and it just tells you that's a whole thing.
That salute created an image so powerful
that it flattened the man that made it.
My project with Tommie now
has been to re-dimensionalize the man
from the flattened image into a complex character
that we can all know and learn from.
[soft music]
19.83 is a full scale recreation of the Olympic podium
that Tommie Smith, Peter Norman,
and John Carlos once stood, but plated in gold.
When it's in a museum and it's lit properly,
it actually casts reflections on the wall behind it,
framing the space where the three men once stood.
It really creates an aura of presence
in a space that's empty,
encouraging viewers to stand up and fill their shoes.
[soft music]
The invisible man is a sculpture
inspired by how Tommie story was erased from history.
When you look at the sculpture from behind,
it appears to be a typical monument to Tommie Smith,
fist up in the air.
But when you walk around it,
since the front face is a mirrored surface,
it brings in and reflects the world around it
causing the whole sculpture to vanish in plain sight.
[soft music]
- When I returned home from Mexico city,
I personally needed someone on the other side of the bridge
to hold a hand out.
[soft music]
- You can stop.
Open your eyes.
[soft music]
- Bridge over troubled waters.
That's what I envisioned when I saw it
because of those hundreds of arms, my arm.
A wave like a bridge, like water.
The arm that caused so much change.
[soft music]
Bridge was the centerpiece of our exhibition.
But I had an idea for one last sculpture
that I wanted to make.
Something that had never been done before,
but I needed some outside help to make it.
Well, thank you so much for taking this call.
- [Taylor] Yeah, of course.
- My name is Glenn Kaino,
and I've been working in collaboration
with the Olympic champion, Tommie Smith
for several years now on a bunch of different art projects.
And on more than one occasion in the studio,
Tommie has mentioned that he's never been on the cover
of a Wheaties box.
So we had a crazy idea that we would call you guys.
- [Taylor] For sure.
- And see if we could try to get him
on the cover of a Wheaties box, really as a surprise.
- [Taylor] Aww, you gave me goosebumps.
- All of us got goosebumps when he said it.
- With certain things at sports culture
that meant something.
It was like Wheaties box, cover of Sports Illustrated.
If you look through the history of the Wheaties box,
the biggest, most talented, most famous athletes
have been on this box.
Wheaties was considered to be really
a symbol of Americana.
If you made the cover of this box,
that means everybody in this country loved you.
[soft music]
- How are you doing?
- Hi.
- James Momon from General Mills.
Nice to meet you.
[murmurs]
General Mills. - Yeah, General Mills.
- The makers of Wheaties.
- Okay.
- I got something for you here.
- Me?
- Yes, you, Mr. Tommie Smith.
I want to present you with your own Wheaties box today.
[James laughs]
We heard that you have always had a dream
of being on this box.
We wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity
to see your face and likeness on this box.
Wheaties is the brand of champions,
and you represent that both on the track as well as off.
Hopefully this is a small token
of the legacy that you've led.
Take a look.
There you go.
Congratulations.
[soft music]
You can turn the back.
Look at the back.
Yeah, we've got some copy on the back too.
- Wow.
- Thank you, it's an honor, it's an honor.
- Ah boy, I tell you.
"He's a track and field athlete
that held the world record in nine different events
simultaneously and broke 13 world records in those events."
This is my box.
- I just wanna get close-
- You wanna [murmurs]-
- [Glenn] Tommie raised his arm during the national Anthem
in a courageous moment of prayer
that he intended to be a symbol of power for all people
to rally around in the struggle for human rights.
The image of his salute sparked
great controversy at the time,
but has since been regarded as one
of the most iconic and important images
of the past 100 years.
Tommie's intention was to unite the world
to fight together in the struggle for equality
and his work continues today with his foundation
that helps young people ensuring
they have the opportunity to get the education.
If they want to compete like him
at the highest levels in sports.
- Very well put.
Very wall put.
[soft music]
- Art can be a sort of portal
for accessing the stories of others
and bring to light the voices that are often unheard.
Or the voices that are often sort of marginalized.
And something like Tommie's legacy is a legacy
that is something that's universal.
It is not something that's just American, right?
It's something that has so much more
inspiration for people globally.
And so the work itself opens up
that sort of opportunity
or that possibility to explore that story.
- [Glenn] For us to open up the exhibition,
documenting all of our work together
in Tommie's hometown of Atlanta was very special.
- Welcome everybody, honored guests, colleagues.
Let me have the great honor of introducing to you,
Tommie Smith and Glenn Kaino.
[applause]
- One of the things that's
so great about the project
is it does make that history dimensional in the present.
It's what's happening right now.
We are seeing a whole new cadre of athletes protesting.
That all goes back to Tommie.
[soft music]
- When I first saw Colin Kaepernick,
what he was doing, bowing to his knees,
that he used that as a platform of peace.
[soft music]
[both laughing]
And when I met the man face to face,
we talked about what's the idea of sacrifice.
- There's a lot of consequences that come along with this,
but this stand wasn't for me.
This is because I'm seeing things happen
to people that don't have a voice.
I can't look in the mirror and see other people
dying on the street that should have
the same opportunities that I've had
and say, "You know what?
I can live with myself."
Because I can't, if I just watch.
[soft music]
- When I decided to kneel alongside Colin Kaepernick,
it was in support of Colin Kaepernick
and what he was talking about.
As an athlete, as someone who has platform
and has sort of a public image,
I just feel like this is a way that I can help.
Maybe I can bring it to people
who are just never gonna look at Colin Kaepernick,
are never gonna listen to what he says.
Or get people to understand and realize
that it's not just a black and white issue,
or it's not just, only this community is affected by it
or not affected by it.
I think on the whole,
our society would be much better
if we actually took the time to reconcile
what has happened in the past.
[soft music]
[crows cheering]
- What we've been doing is looking at the data
and we know that police somehow
managed to deescalate, disarm, and not kill
white people every day.
So what's gonna happen is we are gonna have
equal rights and justice in our own country,
or we will restructure their function and ours.
[crowd cheers]
Me doing it as I walked off to [indistinct]
expect or plan to do that,
but I'm communicating.
I'm no longer on the mic so I can't communicate verbally.
I communicate another way,
which is I love you.
But to somebody else that might mean
kill cops or something, cartoonish,
and ridiculous, and entirely a work of fantasy.
But both people who experienced that
believed that to be true.
So they're seeing an act of aggression
when it's an act of love.
They're seeing an act of traitorism
when he actually means it
as an act of patriotism.
Same gesture, two completely different meanings.
And a gesture was also a real act of faith.
I think a real faith in the community at large
is that, "I'm going to jump.
Really gonna help you catch me."
What's most important is jumping.
"I'm going to jump."
And the failure as a society is when we don't catch them.
How can we take the best from Tommie Smith
and not let ourselves neglect the next Tommie smith.
[crowd chanting]
- [indistinct] Perfect, beautiful.
Okay so now-
- I think so often that you have to be creative.
You have to paint a picture, you have to dramatize it.
You have to make it real.
So when you're raising your fist,
or when you're kneeing, you're protesting.
You're creating a work of art and people can see it.
They can feel it.
We inspire others to follow the drummer.
[soft music]
- The work that Glenn and Tommie have done
in taking his fist and turning it into art
It's bringing us back to a very, very, maybe naive idea.
Of brotherhood, that we're all in this together.
Whether you're a Japanese, Black,
whatever you are, that
that it doesn't matter who you are,
it's what you believe and what your values are.
And the only way to change things
is to be United through community and brotherhood.
[soft music]
- A fist can mean so much.
It can mean power.
It can mean unity.
And there are a lot of marginalized groups
who look at that fist as a beacon of hope.
[soft music]
- He was speaking for all of us, for all humankind,
for all people who suffer.
It's the only way to see what he was doing.
He was standing up, raising his fist,
raising his arm to humankind, not just in America,
but all around the world.
[soft music]
- Folks always say, "Gosh, I wonder what I would have been
in the civil rights movement.
I would have been with Martin Luther King.
I would have been in that March on Washington."
Yeah, that looked cool.
Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell sitting there.
"Fuck, yeah.
If I was a ballplayer back then
I would have been with them."
Then is now.
[soft orchestral music]
- I think everybody has a responsibility
to try to make the world a better place
in whatever way they can.
[soft orchestral music]
I see the salute as an open door
for so many people to step outside themselves.
It's something that I think is living and breathing,
and hopefully people see it that way
and take it into their own lives.
[soft orchestral music]
- Tommie has passed the Baton to all of us,
and now we need to honor that
and push his message of unity forward.
He's not only giving us permission
to stand in salute with him, he's encouraging it.
It's our time to make that sacrifice.
It's our time to stand together.
[soft orchestral music]
The invisible man is not so invisible anymore.
Now our images has filled his frame.
[soft orchestral music]
- For 50 years, people have been putting
words in my mouth about what that fist meant.
When I see a group of people, old, young, Black,
white, different religions,
putting a fist in the air
for a positive reasoning forward,
it makes me proud. Why?
I know why I did it.
[soft orchestral music]
It meant pride.
It meant power.
It means strength.
It means togetherness or likeness, one as a nation.
[soft orchestral music]
[woman yells] [soft piano music]
♪ When you're weary ♪
♪ And feeling small ♪
♪ When tears are in your eyes, ♪
♪ I will dry them all ♪
♪ I'm on your side ♪
♪ Oh, when times get rough ♪
♪ And friends just can't ♪
♪ Can't be found ♪
♪ Like a bridge ♪
♪ over troubled water ♪
♪ I will lay me down ♪
♪ Like a bridge over ♪
♪ troubled water ♪
♪ I will lay me down ♪
- [Nelson George] The first time I saw Tommie's salute
was the week it happened.
- [Jesse Williams] I had my father kind of
narrating and making me understand
why we're watching it.
That was now 20 years after it happened, essentially.
- [Jemele Hill] The first time I saw the image of Tommie,
I believe I was in high school.
- [Dr. Lonnie Bunch] I remember my father saying
it's about time somebody stood up.
- [Megan Rapinoe] I feel like it's always been in my memory.
♪ When you're down and out ♪
♪ When you're on the street ♪
♪ When evening falls so hard ♪
♪ I will comfort you ♪
♪ I will take your part ♪
♪ Oh, when darkness comes ♪
♪ And pain is all ♪
♪ All around ♪
♪ Like a bridge ♪
♪ Over troubled water ♪