Sidelined (7 page)

Boston was also one of those athletes who chose to boycott a New York Athletic Club (NYAC) track and field event in early 1968. Black athletes had long complained about the Jim Crow policies of the club. Boston argued that while even Soviet athletes were accommodated when visiting the venue, black athletes were treated differently. “I never once set foot inside the New York Athletic Club,” said Boston.
⁴
He joined many black athletes in boycotting the club's meet in February 1968. This protest was organized by OPHR leader Harry Edwards. Boston was one of many black athletes who heard the rhetoric of Edwards and his supporters and had to make some life-changing decisions about how far to engage in the black freedom struggle.

For some, though, the choices were clear. In fact there were really no choices. When asked to explain what he envisaged when he stated in 1968 that the United States needed to change radically, Edwards responded, “For openers, the Federal Government, the honkies, the pigs in blue must go down South and take those crackers out of bed, the crackers who blew
up those four little girls in that Birmingham church, those crackers who murdered Medgar Evers and killed the three civil-rights workers—they must pull them out of bed and kill them with axes in the middle of the street. Chop them up with dull axes. Slowly. At high noon. With everybody watching on television. Just as a gesture of good faith.”
⁵
There was an anger and disillusionment in his words that showed he was “mad as hell at white America.”
⁶
His was a clear expression of the Black Power ideology that loomed large over the year 1968.
⁷
Given the strength of feeling held by Edwards and his supporters and the racial turmoil that was tearing many American cities apart in the late 1960s, it was no surprise that the world of sport would be affected. Richard Hoffer has argued that “it was ridiculous to think” that the “single most aggrieved part of this society—young black men—would join in a bit of athletic pageantry without complaint or worse.”
⁸
Nevertheless, so strong was the belief that it was in sports above all other areas of society that African Americans could excel that any challenge to this ideal was greeted with indignation and anger by the sporting establishment.

A boycott of the Olympics as part of a political protest was not an entirely new idea. Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq had refused to send teams to the 1956 Melbourne Games as a protest against the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt to protect the Suez Canal. Furthermore, Mel Whitfield, the African American three-time Olympic medalist, advocated that black athletes boycott the 1964 Tokyo Games because of the failure of the United States to guarantee civil rights for all of its citizens.
⁹
Nevertheless, the proposed black boycott of the 1968 Olympics departed from these precedents in important ways. First, the proposal in 1968 was for one part of a national team to refuse to compete; it was certainly not sponsored by the U.S. Olympic Committee. The 1956 boycott was undertaken by whole national delegations in much the same way as the Olympics would be boycotted in the early 1980s because of Cold War politics. Second, unlike the Whitfield proposal, the 1968 Olympic boycott movement was the brainchild of a serious organization with, initially, a significant number of world-class athletes making sympathetic noises in support. Certainly the aims and motivations of the OPHR were regarded by the sporting establishment as extremely alarming.

The idea of a black boycott of the Olympics had previously been considered by those sympathetic to the civil rights struggle in America but was regarded as both unlikely and problematic by Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP. Replying to a correspondent in April 1964, Wilkins expressed doubt about the possible success of a boycott when he stated, “With opinion so divided it would be next to impossible to develop a successful campaign.” More importantly, Wilkins suggested that taking part in the games and highlighting black athletic prowess would be beneficial for the civil rights cause in itself. He argued that most of the athletes themselves “feel that they achieve some positive good by participating and there is much to be said for this opinion.”
¹⁰
The NAACP represented a moderate voice in the black freedom struggle and Wilkins was writing in 1964. A serious proposal to boycott the Olympics was made as part of the proceedings of a Black Power conference three years later.

There was concern among the sporting establishment about the disruption that could be caused by a boycott. In the summer of 1967 Tommie Smith, a sprinter from San Jose State College, responding to a Japanese reporter during the student games in Tokyo, stated that a black boycott of the 1968 Olympics was possible.
¹¹
In Newark, New Jersey, in July 1967 the first National Conference of Black Power called for a boycott of the Olympics by all black athletes. It was in this way that the boycott ideal was expressed publicly. What is interesting given the wider social and political tensions of this time—indeed, Newark had experienced significant racial riots in the preceding days—was the importance attached to the sporting boycott. Attendees at the Black Power conference also responded enthusiastically to a resolution proposing the separation of the United States into white and black republics, demanded refusal of birth control policies on the basis that they sought to exterminate the black population, and called for paramilitary training for all African American youths. The headline reporting the conference in the
New York Times,
however, read “Boycott of Sports by Negroes Asked.”
¹²
Sport provided the most visible arena in which African Americans could succeed and gain fame in the United States, and as such an attack on the institution of sport was greeted by many as extremely portentous. Amid the growing radicalism of the civil rights struggle of the late 1960s it is significant that the prospect of this radicalism having an impact on sport was given such close attention.

Edwards had shown the growing black militancy in the sporting sphere during events at San Jose State. He had support from the “Speed City” world-class sprinters at the university, Tommie Smith, John Carlos,
and Lee Evans chief among them. Fresh from the victory of forcing concessions from the San Jose State administrators, Edwards and Smith contacted a number of America's top black athletes to discuss the possibility of a boycott of the Mexico City Olympics. At a meeting in October 1967 the Olympic Committee for Human Rights (OCHR) was formed and mobilization toward a black boycott of the games, termed the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), was begun. A meeting was called for November 1967 and at that meeting there was a unanimous vote to support a boycott of the Olympics.
¹³

In December Edwards and Kenneth Noel met with Martin Luther King Jr., Floyd McKissick, and Louis Lomax, and at a press conference each of the civil rights leaders gave a message of support for the OCHR. After the press conference an information booklet was released that spelled out in detail the demands of the OCHR. As well as the proposed Olympic boycott, the committee called for the restoration of Muhammad Ali's world title, the removal of Avery Brundage from his position as head of the IOC (it was alleged that Brundage was antiblack and anti-Semitic), the appointment of an African American Olympic coach and Olympic committee member, and the desegregation of the NYAC. There followed a detailed explanation of the motivations and aims behind each of the stated demands.
¹⁴

The dissemination of the OCHR's ideals prompted a great deal of attention. There was an in-depth analysis of the boycott plans in the media as various athletes and commentators aired their views. What is interesting is that the broad spectrum of response spread across racial lines. There were white athletes and administrators who were supportive of a boycott, some who were supportive of the aims but not the means of a boycott, some who were ambivalent, and some determinedly against it. Similarly, there were a number of black athletes and administrators who held contrary opinions on the matter; however, the spectrum of opinion among these African Americans was not as nuanced as that of their white counterparts.

During the black youth conference at which a boycott was discussed, former L.A. Rams player Dan Towler argued that sports had done much to help African Americans advance and that competing for one's country was a great honor.
¹⁵
This view was certainly supported later by an assistant Olympic coach, Stan Wright, and the baseball star Willie Mays, both of whom subscribed to the ideal of sport as a positive racial force that had been beneficial for African Americans.
¹⁶
High jumper Gene Johnson argued that if it were not for the opportunity to excel that sport offered,
top-class African American athletes would just be anonymous black men trapped in the system of racial discrimination suffered by the rest of the black population.
¹⁷
Undoubtedly the most outspoken supporter of this view was former Olympic medalist Jesse Owens. Owens argued strongly against the boycott proposal and was later sent to counsel the black athletes against participating in such an act. He asserted that when it came to racial prejudice, the gap of misunderstanding had been bridged “more in athletics than anywhere else” and that an Olympic boycott was not the way to deal with the racial problems in the United States.
¹⁸
As Kenny Moore has argued, “Owens seemed to glory in overcoming obstacles. He preached that if a man worked hard enough, if he endured racial taunts the way Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis had, he would succeed, he would win the white man's respect and things would change.”
¹⁹

For many of the black athletes involved in the boycott plan, however, Owens represented a different generation and was dismissed as a man who was out of step with the changing contemporary racial climate. Lee Evans, who would go on to win two gold medals at the Olympics but was at the vanguard of the OPHR in its early days, argued that Owens was connected to the IOC and was “only doing Avery Brundage's bidding.”
²⁰
Tommie Smith, Evans's training partner, remarked, “Winning gold medals for a country where I don't have any freedom is irrelevant.”
²¹
NBA star Bill Russell argued that Owens was wrong and that the boycott would not harm the black struggle for equality. Nevertheless, Russell was one of a number of black athletes who were said to be sympathetic toward the boycott but stopped short of categorically throwing their support behind it.
²²

Despite being sensitive to the racial problems that motivated the OPHR, many black athletes spoke out against the boycott. Some did this for genuine ideological reasons. Clarence Ray argued, “The U.S. should be represented by the best athletes regardless of race, creed, color or religion. I am an American first, last and always.”
²³
A similar note of patriotism was sounded by sprinter Charlie Greene: “It comes down to the matter if you are an American or not. I am an American and I am going to run.”
²⁴
Edwards later suggested that athletes who were enrolled in the military, like Greene, were under certain constraints and would have found it almost impossible to support the boycott for fear of retaliation by their superiors—the ultimate of which was an assignment in Vietnam.
²⁵
Others, like Ralph Boston, were motivated by simple individual ambition for athletic success.

As publicity surrounding the potential boycott grew, the press weighed
in with its own views on the subject. The majority were, predictably, highly critical of the boycott proposal. The belief that sport provided a potent force for social progress remained extremely powerful. Veteran sportswriter A. S. Young argued, “There actually is no way of telling just how important Negro athletic heroes have been to the cause of racial equality in this country. Whenever a bigot cheers for an integrated team in this country, he loses a bit … of his bigotry.”
²⁶
An editorial in the
New York Times
in July 1967 was more pointedly critical of the wider ramifications of the rise of black militancy, arguing that boycott calls were the acts of “black racists.”
²⁷

Many writers felt that this was just another example of the attack on the mainstream that was gathering pace in the late 1960s. Men like Edwards and Noel were seen as angry individuals swimming against the tide and launching an assault on tentative yet significant racial progress. Many more, however, argued that the wider crime was an attack on the institution of sport itself, which had always been a positive racial force. Indeed, the Olympic Games were the very pinnacle of the ideal of equality for all.
²⁸
Not everyone went along with this argument, however. Robert Lipsyte produced a typically intelligent and probing piece for the
New York Times
. Answering the question of what the boycott would achieve he stated, “It would, at least, give many young Negro athletes pause to reevaluate their own goals, their own identities, whether or not they finally, and painfully, decide to try to make the team. It would, at best, embarrass the country into taking more positive steps toward improving housing, education, job opportunities for black Americans.”
²⁹

Voices in the black press also showed support and sympathy for the idea of an Olympic boycott. One example was
Chicago Defender
staff writer Lawrence Casey. He argued that simply winning gold medals did not bring racial equality. Casey wrote that many black athletes did not want to “represent a country that continues to consider them second class citizens.” He went on to echo the arguments of Edwards and his supporters that athletes had to expand their role and become more involved in the wider black freedom struggle. “The struggle for decency in America is not limited to pickets outside a capitol building, campaigning for open occupancy or a sit-in at a restaurant. It may well be a refusal by young black Americans to compete in international athletic events.”
³⁰