February 16, 2010 Features

Race for rights

Olympic flashpoints of civil protest

by Terrine Friday

This Olympic season is a time to pay tribute to not only black history but also to the civil liberties that surround the Games. Forty-two years later, the Vancouver Olympics’ mandate is to promote “integrity, honesty, respect, fairness and compassion.”

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for protesting against segregation in Birmingham, Ala. Four months later, King led the March on Washington where over 200,000 people heard him deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Less than two years later, black nationalist Malcolm X was assassinated during a speech in New York City (his original last name “Little” was changed to “X” as a sign of solidarity with illiterate slaves who commonly signed their names as “X”).

Stokely Carmichael, a black nationalist, coined the term “Black Power” before visiting Sir George Williams University (one of Concordia University’s predecessors) in 1967.
The American Black Panther Party, whose original mandate was to promote black unity and protection, was founded in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The organization, which attracted a handful of radical activists, was labelled a terrorist organization by the American government.

In April 1968, American president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of housing. This updated the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination based on race, colour and/or religion, the 1965 Executive Order 11246—the first enforcement of employment equity—and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It also followed King’s assassination by a week. It’s still unclear whether King was killed due to his involvement in the civil rights movement or his strong, vocal dissent of the Vietnam War. He was assassinated exactly one year after a public speech denouncing the U.S. presence in Vietnam.

Part of this history was also the lead-up to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, where American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists—known as a symbol of black solidarity and then linked to the Black Panther Party—on the podium while the American national anthem blared. The International Olympic Committee banned both athletes from the Olympic Village, as well as any subsequent Olympic games.

Carlos and Smith put the demand for equal rights on the global stage with their display of black pride. Neither were active members in the American civil rights movement; they were ordinary Americans—though extraordinary athletes—who wanted to live ordinary lives.
The 1968 Olympics also coincided with the aftermath of the Mexico City Massacre, where hundreds of student activists were killed (ironically) for denouncing the Mexican government’s human rights abuses.

This Olympic season is a time to pay tribute to not only black history but also to the civil liberties that surround the Games. Forty-two years later, the Vancouver Olympics’ mandate is to promote “integrity, honesty, respect, fairness and compassion.”

Until we acknowledge the history of the human rights movements on the international stage, we cannot understand its value.

For more info about the American black civil rights movement, read Steven Lawson’s Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941.