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How the Black Power Protest at the 1968 Olympics Killed Careers
1968 Olympics Killed Careers
When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest at the 1968 Summer Games, Australian runner
Peter Norman stood by them. It lost him his career.
Published: February 22, 2018Last Updated: August 11, 2026
It’s an iconic image: Two athletes raise their fists on the Olympic podium. The photograph, taken after the 200 meter race at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, turned African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos from track-and-field stars into the center of a roiling controversy over their raised-fist salute, a symbol of Black power and the human rights movement at large.
But look in the photo and you’ll see another man as well: silver medalist Peter Norman, a white Australian runner. Norman didn’t raise his fist that day, but he stood with Smith and Carlos. Though his show of solidarity ended up destroying Norman’s career, the three athletes’ actions that day would be just one in a line of protests on the athletic stage.
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Smith and Carlos, who had won gold and bronze, respectively, agreed to use their medal wins as an opportunity to highlight the social issues roiling the United States at the time. Racial tensions were at a height, and the Civil Rights movement had given way to the Black Power movement. African-Americans like Smith and Carlos were frustrated by what they saw as the passive nature of the Civil Rights movement. They sought out active forms of protests and advocated for racial pride, Black nationalism and dramatic action rather than incremental change.
It was only months after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and protests against the Vietnam War were gaining steam as well. In the lead-up to the Olympics, Smith and Carlos helped organize the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a group that reflected their Black pride and social consciousness. The group saw the Olympic Games as an opportunity to agitate for better treatment of Black athletes and Black people around the world. Its demands included hiring more Black coaches and rescinding Olympic invitations to Rhodesia and South Africa, both of which practiced apartheid. Though the project initially proposed a boycott of the Olympics altogether, Smith and Carlos decided to compete in the hopes they could use their achievements as a platform for broader change.
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Then, just 10 days before the opening of the Summer Games, an unarmed group of protesters assembled in Mexico City’s Three Cultures Square to plan the next move of the growing Mexican students’ movement. The Mexican government sent in bulldozers to disperse the thousands gathered, and troops fired into the crowd, massacring between four (the government’s official count) and 3,000 students.
Carlos and Smith were deeply affected by these events and the plight of marginalized people around the world. “It was a cry for freedom and for human rights,” Smith told Smithsonian magazine in 2008. “We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”
The third man on the podium became part of the protest, too, albeit in a less direct way. Before winning silver, Norman was a working-class boy from Melbourne, Australia, born in 1942. His family members were devout members of the Salvation Army, an evangelical group connected with the charitable group better known to Americans. Part of that faith was the belief that all men were equal.
Though he was poor growing up, Norman was an extraordinarily fast runner, and learned to race on spikes that his father, a butcher, borrowed due to lack of funds. In 1960, the teenager burst onto the national running scene as a junior, winning his first major title in Victoria. From then on, he became a major contender in Australian track and field. A powerful sprinter, his specialty was his finishes—an area in which some short-course runners falter.
The final of the Men’s 200 meter event at the 1968 Summer Games. From left to right: Peter Norman of Australia, and Larry Questad, John Carlos and Tommie Smith of the United States. (Credit: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
At the time, Australia was experiencing racial tensions of its own. For years, it had been governed by its “White Australia Policy,” which dramatically limited immigration to the country by non-white people. While the Australian government welcomed new residents from predominantly white areas like the Baltics, it regularly turned down non-European migrants. In 1966, the government made the first steps toward abolishing the policy, but its effects reverberated throughout Australia. Non-Australians weren’t the only people discriminated against: Aboriginal Australians, too, were historically oppressed in the country, which forced Aboriginal children into boarding schools, while removing others from their families and placing them with white households.
Norman supported his fellow Olympians’ protest, in part because of the intolerance he had witnessed in Australia. “Australia was not a crucible of tolerance,” notes Steve Georgakis, a sports studies specialist from Australia. “Norman, a teacher and guided by his Salvation Army faith, took part in the Black Power salute because of this opposition to racism and the White Australia Policy.”
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As the athletes waited to go to the podium, Carlos and Smith told Norman that they planned to use their win as an opportunity to protest. Smith and Carlos decided to appear on the podium bearing symbols of protest and strength: black-socked feet without shoes to bring attention to Black poverty, beads to protest lynchings, and raised, black-gloved fists to represent their solidarity and support with Black people and oppressed people around the world.
“I looked at my feet in my high socks and thought about all the Black poverty I’d seen from Harlem to East Texas. I fingered my beads and thought about the pictures I’d seen of the ‘strange fruit’ swinging from the poplar trees of the South,” Carlos later wrote.
Peter Norman, Tommie Smith and John Carlos after receiving their medals. (Credit: Patrice Habans/Paris Match/Getty Images)
Carlos realized he had forgotten his gloves, and Norman suggested the American athletes share a pair. The Australian also asked how he could support his fellow medalists. They suggested he wear a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Norman didn’t raise his fist, but by wearing the badge he made his stance clear.
As the American athletes raised their fists, the stadium hushed, then burst into racist sneers and angry insults. Smith and Carlos were rushed from the stadium, suspended by the U.S. team, and kicked out of the Olympic Village for turning their medal ceremony into a political statement. They went home to the United States, only to face serious backlash, including death threats.
However, Carlos and Smith were both gradually re-accepted into the Olympic fold, and went on to careers in professional football before retiring. Norman, meanwhile, was punished severely by the Australian sports establishment. Though he qualified for the Olympic team over and over again, posting the fastest times by far in Australia, he was snubbed by the team in 1972. Rather than allow Norman to compete, the Australians did not send a sprinter at all.
Peter Norman at Williamstown Beach, Australia, 2000. (Credit: Fairfax Media/Fairfax Media/Getty Images)
Norman immediately retired from the sport and began to suffer from depression, alcoholism and a painkiller addiction. “During that time,” writes Caroline Frost for the BBC, “he used his silver medal as a doorstop.”
Norman died without being acknowledged for his contributions to the sport. Though he kept his silver medal, he was regularly excluded from events related to the sport. Even when the Olympics came to Sydney in 2000, he was not recognized. When Norman died in 2006, Carlos and Smith, who had kept in touch with Norman for years, were pallbearers at the Australian’s funeral.
It took until 2012 for the Australian government to apologize for the treatment Norman received in his home country. But even though it cost him his career and much of his happiness, Norman would have done it over again. “I won a silver medal,” he told the New York Times in 2000. “But really, I ended up running the fastest race of my life to become part of something that transcended the Games.”
Trump Administration Lets Key Gun Law Lapse Following Court Ruling
Trump Administration Lets Key Gun Law Lapse Following Court Ruling
“The Justice Department declined to appeal Judge Hendrix’s ruling that struck down National Firearms Act permitting for short-barreled guns and suppressors. Following a tax removal in Trump’s spending bill, the administration allowed the 1934 law to lapse.
The retreat by the Justice Department effectively allowed a pillar of the Prohibition-era National Firearms Act to lapse.
The Justice Department declined to appeal a court ruling that effectively dismantled longstanding restrictions on owning short-barreled guns and suppressors, bowing to pressure from Republicans and gun advocates.
Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas had said that his order striking down the mandated permitting process under the National Firearms Act as unconstitutional would go into effect Thursday unless the Justice Department appealed it. Trump administration officials didn’t file an appeal to the court before 12:01 a.m. Thursday, according to publicly available court records.
In effect, the Trump administration stepped aside, for now, and allowed the Prohibition-era gun control measure to lapse under judicial scrutiny after President Trump signed a law last year that weakened the restrictions by removing a $200 tax for the permit. The administration has another 52 days to file an appeal in the case.
Gun rights groups and gun businesses, many of which had filed and supported the lawsuit, celebrated the overturning of the law. Groups supporting gun restrictions criticized the government’s inaction, arguing that the ruling had deregulated dangerous, easily concealable firearms and accessories that had been restricted since 1934.
The Justice Department did not explain why it did not immediately appeal the ruling. In an unsigned statement to The New York Times hours before the midnight deadline, the Justice Department said that it “respects Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court’s ruling.”
It was a retreat by the Trump administration, which had argued after Mr. Trump’s law was passed last year that Congress still had the authority to restrict particularly dangerous and easily concealable weapons. The government’s move to forgo a stay of the ruling — or issue any public statement on the issue — came after gun rights groups and dozens of Republican lawmakers publicly pressured Todd Blanche, the attorney general, to allow the ruling to stand.
“The Department of Justice had the opportunity to act to protect our safety, but it failed to do so,” Kris Brown, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement, noting the campaign from Republican lawmakers. “Our elected officials are supposed to serve the American people, not the gun industry’s bottom line. Today, the gun industry and silencer dealers are celebrating, while Americans are left less safe.”
Seeking clarification from the government on where it stood on the ruling, the lobbying group Gun Owners of America issued a public letter Wednesday to Trump administration officials. It said that gun stores planned to start selling suppressors, which are devices fitted onto the barrel of a gun to reduce the deafening sound of gunfire, without following the permitting process after midnight Thursday.
Gun buyers will still need to complete a standard background check to purchase the weapons, and restrictions under state laws will still apply. California, New York and Washington, D.C., for example, have banned the sale and ownership of short-barreled rifles and suppressors.
The National Firearms Act was the primary law that regulated and restricted the sale and possession of suppressors. Once a niche accessory for civilian gun owners, the popularity of suppressors has skyrocketed in recent years, as more gun owners use them to prevent hearing damage and brain injuries.
The effect of Judge Hendrix’s ruling is wide, but not universal. The Supreme Court limited the ability of lower-court judges to completely block executive branch policies nationwide, but the ruling still applies to a wide class of millions of gun owners, as well as retailers and manufacturers. Many states also joined the lawsuit. Crucially, the ruling also applies to customers of the businesses who were part of the case. One of the retailers, Palmetto State Armory, is one of the largest online gun stores in the country.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 had instituted a tax-and-registration requirement for rifles and shotguns with short barrels, as well as for suppressors — weapons that Congress sought to curb because they were deemed particularly suited for violent crime. The law was written as lawmakers warned of a “serious national emergency” driven by gun crime as the country reeled from Prohibition-era gang shootings and an attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The law also regulated the sale and ownership of machine guns through the permitting process, but that part of the law remains intact.
Millions of N.F.A. restricted guns and suppressors were sold every year under the registration process, which is managed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The $200 tax was designed to be prohibitively expensive in 1934 dollars, but by 2026 amounted to a fraction of the cost of a modern firearm or suppressor.
House Republicans added a provision eliminating the $200 tax on suppressors and short-barreled rifles when they passed Mr. Trump’s major spending bill last year.
That change triggered the downfall of the law, which had for 92 years required buyers of restricted arms to submit their fingerprints and seek A.T.F. approval. Gun advocacy groups quickly filed several lawsuits seeking to further weaken the law, arguing that the registration process was unconstitutional without the tax component.
Judge Hendrix agreed with that argument, ruling in a 66-page order that because the law no longer generated revenue, “its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power” given to Congress in Article 1 of the Constitution.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.“
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