{"id":250,"date":"2025-04-07T03:11:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T03:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/?p=250"},"modified":"2025-04-20T15:44:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:44:53","slug":"olympic-rebels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/2025\/04\/07\/olympic-rebels\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Rebels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Picture this: it\u2019s October 1968, and the world is watching the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.\u00a0\u00a0The camera moves to the men’s 200-meter sprint medal podium. With their medals around their necks, their heads bent, their shoes off but their socks on, and their fists up, gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos advance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is silence. The silence, however, was deafening.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith and Carlos weren’t merely celebrating in their triumph. They were demonstrating against poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. It was audacious, intimate, and profoundly meaningful. However, the backlash was immediate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most media sources didn’t get the message. News outlets referred to them as unpatriotic. They were even criticized by many, such as Time magazine. Both men experienced career setbacks after being dismissed by the Olympic Committee. Few reporters followed up on their true message, which had nothing to do with rudeness and everything to do with human rights. Because there was no social media, Smith and Carlos had little control over how people saw their protest. Their message was lost for years because their interviews were frequently hidden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if they’d had Twitter or Instagram instead? They might have created a movement, communicated the significance and meaning behind their gesture, and described it in their own words. Like many of today’s athlete-activists, they may have also encountered hate speech online. But now, decades later, the story is different. Today, that moment on the stage is remembered as a courageous act of defiance. Even without a single word, a gesture always can convey more meaning than words ever could. Their pose wasn\u2019t just a protest, it was their truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture this: it\u2019s October 1968, and the world is watching the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.\u00a0\u00a0The camera moves to the men’s 200-meter sprint medal podium. With their medals around their necks, their heads bent, their shoes off but their socks… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30516,"featured_media":251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sportssss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}