What if your dream of meeting with your idol came true? Not just any idol, such as an entertainer or a sportsperson whom you meet one day and forget about the next. No. A spiritual icon who has a story to tell, who has a charisma that goes beyond their mere presence in a room, a living legend who has a legacy for the youth and who is an endless source of inspiration for every generation.
Our hopes and dream of meeting with such a person were answered when Tommie Smith confirmed that he and his wife would be travelling from Atlanta to Boston to give a master class at Boston Arts Academy and get to meet with “his” students in person.
This meeting came as the culmination of our whole project, ever since last year, when we started to study the way African American people organized the Civil Rights movement to fight against the discrimination and abuse they were subjected to.
How do you learn to stand up for what you believe in? How do you turn from being a bystander into becoming an upstander? How do you manage to overcome the worst predicaments and injustices and still stand upright?
Tommie Smith was only 23 years old in 1968 when he decided he had a mission of letting the world know that the time to end all kinds of discriminations all across the globe had come. At the time, he was the only track runner in the world history to own 11 world records at the same time. Nobody had ever achieved this before and nobody has as of today. He was promised to an outstanding career and his days of hard toil seemed about to belong to the past.
Instead, he and his team mate John Carlos chose to risk their newly acquired fame and used the tribune of the Olympics to stir up consciences and denounce ignorance and injustice. Their silent gesture, a black-gloved fist raised up in the air, was a peaceful, yet firm protest against the obnoxious treatment of black people across the United States, and also against any forms of injustice across the globe, such as the way Mexican students had been severely repressed during a demonstration for human rights just a few days before the Olympics took place.
The absence of shoes on their feet was a way to denounce the poverty which affected millions of people around the world. The white button on their chests bore the words: “Olympic Project for Human Rights”. This project had been set up with the idea of using the Olympics as a tribune to support human rights all over the world.
The only other time the Olympics had been used as a political tribune was in 1936 when Hitler had hoped to show the superiority of the Aryan race, and African American athlete Jesse Owens had won the gold medal, causing Hitler to storm out of the Olympic stadium.
Peter Norman, the Australian athlete who received the silver medal in 1968, also chose to wear the badge of the Human Rights Project to denounce the policies of white Australia.
Around his neck, Tommie Smith wore a black scarf to symbolize and denounce the practice of lynching which was plaguing the nation. In his left hand, he was holding a box with an olive branch, symbol of peace.
This stand was not understood by the American nation which mostly saw it as a violent insult to the flag. Tommie Smith and John Carlos's "stand for victory", as Tommie calls it, not only caused them to be banned from the Olympic village, but also to be terribly ostracized when they returned to their homeland, as did Peter Norman for wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights button.
Today, Dr. Tommie Smith is involved with the "Tommie Smith Youth Athletics" and coaches youth from underserved areas.
Day 4 of the field trip to Boston, you had the great honor of meeting with him and ask him about his stand and perseverance.
You displayed the posters that you had created against discrimination...
... and patiently waited for Dr. Tommie Smith's arrival at the Boston Arts Academy
And there he was:
A living legend true to himself and his stand, a generous, charismatic man full of love and empathy for the younger generations
... with Patric
... with Nephtalie
Dr. Smith told us that he had always refused to return to Mexico city ever since he was banned from the Olympic village in 1968, and that he always thought he would never set a foot there again. But he showed us a brilliant documentary about his and John Carlos's return to Mexico in 2008 for the first time since their silent gesture.
We learned about the dismal years that followed the victory stand: back home, both Tommie and John Carlos received death threats, and could not find any job to pursue their running careers. The ugly strain on their respective married lives caused Tommie's wife to divorce him, and John Carlos's to commit suicide...
After the documentary, we started the Q&A (=questions and answers). When asked what his emotions were on the podium, Tommie Smith explained that they were completely off the chart (= extremely intense) because the Olympic Project for Human Rights had started off two years earlier when Tommie was only 21, and now the culmination of the project was the victory stand. He went on to explain that it was the first time in the history of the Olympics that men, African American men, chose to stand for a cause, and this cause was equality. (See bonus video 1 below)
What is most remarkable about hearing Dr. Tommie Smith speak is that he loves young people deeply and has a legacy for them. On being asked whether he would do the silent gesture again, he replies by stressing that he has only changed because of his gray hair, but that his "thoughts have turned only much stronger, that small gesture turned so much history into vision"; at the time, he was "a 23 year-old man with a vision, like Dr. Martin Luther King".
"Faith without work is dead", he continues, "Work on your faith to make it reality. Young folks understand that". (See bonus video 2 below)
And indeed, this is something Tommie Smith insists on whenever he addresses young people: education. He was always very industrious at school, and understood the importance of keeping on studying.
And he made it very clear:
"You have to work, you have to get your education. If you don't, you're going to not only hurt yourself, but hurt a legacy."
Bonus 1
Bonus 2
Bonus 3
Last but not least: Mamadou is taller than Tommie!! Even Tommie Smith couldn't believe it and asked to be photographed with Mamadou:
