As is customary, the Afrikan Healing Circle, a percussion choir, opened the ceremony at a recent commemoration of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) at the Shabazz Center in Washington Heights. When the drumming stopped, Dr. R.A. Ptahsen-Shabazz handed me his book, “Power from the Podium — the Story of Black Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos.” I had no idea that Ptahsen-Shabazz was a percussionist, doctor, and also an author. On the occasions I’ve been in his company, he has always been so self-effacing, and seemed reluctant to share his book with me.
It’s a book he needs to share with the world, and at just over 100 pages, it’s a quick read, almost equivalent to the speed of the sprinters he so vividly highlights. The good doctor reveals so much about the historic moment in Mexico City during the 1968 Olympics when Smith and Carlos stood on the victory podium with no shoes, and each cast a gloved fist to the air while the Star Spangled Banner boomed across the stadium. Millions have seen that iconic gesture that artist Kephera Ife captures on the cover of the book. While that moment has been captured throughout the media since it happened, very few are aware of the details and fallout of the event that Ptahsen-Shabazz depicts unerringly, particularly the hardship, harassment and death threats Smith and Carlos endured.
The author carefully builds his story, giving readers a little biographical material on each sprinter, one primarily out west and the other on the east coast, born about a year and day apart during World War II. Most of the book’s drama centers on the buildup to the Olympic trials and the actual events. To this end, Dr. Harry Edwards, a former athlete at San Jose State College and activist, is a key figure, along with 400-meter sprinter Lee Evans. Together, they developed the seeds of protest stemming from the inadequate housing complaints of San Jose State athletes, forging the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR).
Interestingly, rather than calling their protest a boycott, Ptahsen-Shabazz introduces the term “mancott” to avoid the historically racist-applied ‘boy’ moniker for African American men. The group nationally received a dozen athlete supporters, most notably Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Russell and Jackie Robinson.
With Smith and Carlos — and later Lee Evans — having demonstrated their actions against America’s unrelieved racism and discrimination, the next shoe to fall, so to speak, was the punishment meted out, especially for Smith and Carlos, both evicted from Olympic Village with no welcoming committee when they arrived back in the states.
That lack of recognition for their victories was just the beginning of the problems that would befall the acclaimed track stars. Ptahsen-Shabazz explains some of the turmoil the men encountered. “The pressures on Smith and Carlos’ families from American society were more than just financial,” he writes. “The psychological taunting became haunting. Tommie, John and their family members would be harassed by a barrage of threatening hate mail and more. The pressure would even bring the loss of life.” Smith’s mother was the first to succumb to the relentless attacks; and later, quite tragically, John’s wife, Kim, worn and unstable, took her life.
What Ptahsen-Shabazz demonstrates so convincingly is that despite the subsequent events and ceremonies as retribution for the denunciation the track stars faced — a statue in their honor, a salute from President Obama, and even some semblance of employment, the flood of resentment, and demeaning insults made life unbearable. Even so, Smith and Carlos soldiered on, and as Ptahsen-Shabazz observed: “ … Any modern-day athlete who seeks to express their cultural-political voice on behalf of the people, in the midst of this world of calamity, will be in some way connected to the spirit of justice elevated to the heavens in the black-gloved fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and their triumphant expression of Power from the Podium.”