What media coverage of the 1968 Olympic protests reveals about the deep structure of attitudes about athletic activism in the United States

ABSTRACT

How do cultural norms, ideologies, and beliefs shape public opinion and media framing of race-based athletic activism? This paper uses media coverage of and commentary on the 1968 American ‘revolt of the Black athlete’ to explicate the deep cultural structures that help explain both support and opposition. The paper begins with a brief, schematic overview of the proposal for a Black Olympic boycott that was the centrepiece of 1968 organising and how it was reported by sports journalists and in the mainstream media. The second section identifies the reasons American reporters were, on the whole, so opposed to the proposed boycott: the inherent lack of support for the athletes’ racial change agenda and the far-more-familiar arguments that sports were not the proper venue for activism. The third section argues that a whole constellation of cultural norms and beliefs—about sport culture, colour-blind visions of racial justice, and liberal democratic ideals about politics and social change—coalesced to make race-based sport protest appear both unnecessary and inappropriate. The conclusion summarises the implications for understanding both public reception of and media responses to contemporary, race-based athletic activism as well as for tracking institutional changes and cultural shifts unfolding in the Black Lives Matter era.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Joseph N. Cooper, A Legacy of African American Resistance and Activism Through Sport (Peter Lang, 2021); Howard Bryant, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism (Beacon Press, 2019); J. Nauright and D. K. Wiggins, eds., Sport and Revolutionaries: Reclaiming the Historical Role of Sport in Social and Political Activism (Routledge, 2017); Jules Boykoff, ‘Protest, Activism, and the Olympic Games: An Overview of Key Issues and Iconic Moments’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 34, no. 3–4 (2017): 162–83. See also: Douglas Booth, The Race Game: Sport and Politics in South Africa (Routledge), and David K. Wiggins, ‘“The year of awakening”: black athletes, racial unrest and the civil rights movement of 1968’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 9, no. 2 (1992): 188–208; Cathal Kilcline, ‘Sport and Protest: Global Perspectives’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 34, no. 3–4 (2017): 157–61.

2 For a summary/overview, see: Douglas Hartmann, ‘Sport, Social Movements, and Athlete Activism’, in Oxford Handbook of Sport & Society, ed. Lawrence Wenner (Forthcoming). See also: Joseph N. Cooper, Charles Macaulay, and Saturnino H. Rodriguez, ‘Race and Resistance: A Typology of African American Sport Activism’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 54, no. 2 (March 2019): 151–81.

3 Griswold, Wendy, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World (Sage, 2012); David A. Snow, Rens Vliegenthart, and Pauline Ketelaars, ‘The framing perspective on social movements: Its conceptual roots and architecture’, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell (2018): 392–410.

4 Harry Edwards, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York: Free Press, 1969). Douglas Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Amy Bass, Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Harry Blutstein, Games of Discontent: Protest, Boycotts, and Politics at the 1968 Mexico Olympics (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2021).

5 David K. Wiggins, ‘The Future of College Athletics Is at Stake: Black Athletes and Racial Turmoil on Three Predominantly White University Campuses, 1968–1972’, Journal of Sport History 15, no. 3 (1988): 304–33; David K. Wiggins, ‘Prized Performers, but Frequently Overlooked Students: The Involvement of Black Athletes in Intercollegiate Sports on Predominantly White University Campuses, 1890–1972’, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 62 (June, 1991): 164–77. Dana D. Brooks and Ronald Althouse, ‘Revolt of the Black Athlete: From Global Arena to the College Campus’, Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education 3, no. 2 (2009): 195–214; A.H. Grundman, ‘Image of Collegiate Protest and the Civil Rights Movement: A Historian’s View’, Arena Review (October 1979): 17–24. Herbert G. Ruffin II, ‘“Doing the Right Thing for the Sake of Doing the Right Thing”: The Revolt of the Black Athlete and the Modern Student-Athletic Movement, 1956–2014’, The Western Journal of Black Studies 38, no. 4 (2014): 260–78.

6 Bass, Not the Triumph but the Struggle; Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete; see also: Dexter L. Blackman, ‘Stand Up and Be Counted: The Black Athlete, Black Power and The 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights’, (2009), and Donald Spivey, ‘Black Consciousness and Olympic Protest Movement’, in Sport in America: New Historical perspectives, ed. Donald Spivey (Westpoint, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 239–62.

7 Dexter L. Blackman, ‘“RUN, JUMP, OR SHUFFLE ARE ALL THE SAME WHEN YOU DO IT FOR THE MAN!”: The OPHR, Black Power, and the Boycott of the 1968 NYAC Meet’, Souls 21, no. 1 (2019): 52–76.

8 In addition to the works cited earlier, see: Fritz G. Polite and Billy Hawkins, Sport, Race, Activism, and Social Change: The Impact of Dr. Harry Edwards’ Scholarship and Service (San Diego: Cognella, 2012); David J. Leonard and C. Richard King, ‘The Legacies of Harry Edwards for Sport Sociology’, Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education 3, no. 2 (2009): 133–252; Othello Harris, ‘Muhammad Ali and the Revolt of the Black Athlete’, in Muhammad Ali: The People’s Champ, ed. Elliot J. Gorn (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 54–69; See also: Tommie Smith, Delois Smith, and David Steele, Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008) and John Carlos with Dave Zirin, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Story that Changed the World (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011); Richard Hoffer, Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Games (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009).

9 Blutstein, Games of Discontent; see also, A. Davis, “No More Games”: Understanding the Latest Wave of Athletic Activism (The American Historian, 2020); Wyomia Tyus and E. Terzakis, Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story (Akashic Books, 2018); Maureen Smith, ‘Frozen Fists in Speed City: The Statue as Twenty-first Century Reparations’, Journal of Sport History 36, no. 3 (2009): 393–414. See also, Douglas Booth, ‘Sport, Activism, and Ethics: Historiographical Perspectives’, Kinesiology Review (2022) preprint https://doi.org/10.1123/kr.2021-0035; Davis, Amira Rose, ‘New Directions in African American Sports History: A Field of One’s Own’, The Journal of African American History 106, no. 2 (2021): 182–95.

10 See, for examples: Dave Zirin, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World (The New Press, 2021). See also: Douglas Hartmann, ‘The Olympic “Revolt” of 1968 and its Lessons for Contemporary African American Athletic Activism’, European Journal of American Studies 14, no. 14–1 (2019); Rita Liberti, and Mary G. McDonald, ‘Back on Track: Wyomia Tyus, Breaking Historical Silences, and the Sporting Activist Legacies of 1968’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 36, no. 9–10 (2019): 796–811.

11 Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete; see also: Jason Peterson, ‘A “Race” for Equality: Print Media Coverage of the 1968 Olympic Protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos’, American Journalism 26, no. 2 (2009): 99–121.

12 Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 33–4.

13 Ibid, 56–66.

14 Ibid, 62.

15 Ibid, 65.

16 Track and Field News, December 1967, 15–16 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 65.

17 Dexter L. Blackman, ‘“When I Couldn’t Bedazzle Them With Brilliance, I Bamboozled Them With Bullshit”: Harry Edwards, Black Power, and Countering Media Repression of the Black Athlete’s Revolt’, American Journalism 38, no. 2 (2021): 150–76; Douglas Hartmann, ‘Activism, Organizing, and the Symbolic Power of Sport: Reassessing Harry Edwards’s Contributions to the 1968 Olympic Protest Movement’, Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletics in Education 3, no. 2 (2009): 181–95.

18 On the role of Black athletes in the Cold War era, see: Damion L. Thomas, Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2012).

19 Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1967 and Human Events, December 19, 1967, as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 67–8.

20 Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 71–6.

21 Chicago Tribune, December 25, 1967.

22 As a reviewer pointed out, Dave Zirin opens his well-known critical history of US sport with a narrative about Howard Cosell and the ‘jockocracy’ whose number one rule at the time was that ‘sport and politics don’t mix’. David Zirin, A People’s History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play (The New Press, 2008). See also: Michael Serazio, The Power of Sports (New York University Press, 2019).

23 New York Times, November 28, 1967 and Track and Field News, December 1967 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 63, 64.

24 Michael Butterworth, ‘Sport and Politics in the United States’, in Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics (Routledge, 2016), 178–89. On serious-play, see: Douglas Hartmann, Midnight Basketball (University of Chicago Press, 2016), 117–22; see also Douglas Hartmann, ‘What Can We Learn from Sport if We Take Sport Seriously as a Racial Force? Lessons from CLR James’s Beyond a Boundary’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 26, no. 3 (2003): 451–83; Kyle Green and Douglas Hartmann, ‘Politics and sports: Strange, secret bedfellows’, The Society Pages (2012). For related treatments, see: Michael L. Butterworth, ‘Sport and the Question for Unity: How the Logic of Consensus Undermines Democratic Culture’, Sport, Communication, and Social Justice 8, no. 4–5 (2020): 452–72; Michael Serazio, and Emily Thorson, ‘Weaponized Patriotism and Racial Subtext in Kaepernick’s Aftermath: The Anti-politics of American Sports Fandom’, Television & New Media 21, no. 2 (2020): 151–68.

25 Life, December 8, 1967 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 72.

26 Santa Barbara News-Press, November 25, 1967 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 63.

27 This belief also had some merit in the first half of the 20th century, when opportunities in other social settings were far more limited by Jim Crow segregation than in sport; however, it is also the case that as the Civil Rights movement began to open up opportunities in other domains, access and excellence in sport was no longer as automatically progressive as it had been. An awareness of this new situation in the late 1960s, combined with their desire to not be used to justify and rationalize the racial status quo, was what propelled athletes like Smith and Evans to be more proactive and insistent about what their athletic success represented with respect to racial progress and change, and how they needed to embrace and use their platform as athletes accordingly.

28 Chicago Tribune, November 27, 1967 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 64.

29 Sport, March 1968, 42 as cited in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 41.

30 Edwards, The Revolt of the Black Athlete, 53.

31 Douglas Hartmann, ‘Social Theory and Sport Scholarship: Some Basic Conceptual Resources and Orienting Analytical Frames’, in The Oxford Handbook of Sport History, ed. Robert Edelman and Wayne Wilson (Oxford University Press, 2017), 15–27.

32 For an example of work in the ‘cultural politics of sport’ tradition, see: Joshua Newman and Michael Giardina, Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism (Springer, 2011); on state legitimacy, see: Trygve B. Broch and Eivind A. Skille, ‘Performing Sport Political Legitimacy: A Cultural Sociology Perspective on Sport Politics’, Sociology of Sport Journal 26 (2019): 171–78.

33 For fuller documentation and development, see: Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 76–82.

34 For a work that uses media coverage and commentary surrounding the struggle for free agency in baseball to speak to broader public discourse and cultural norms such as is suggested here, see: Abraham Iqbal Khan, Curt Flood in the Media: Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist-athlete (University Press of Mississippi, 2012).

35 Results reported in Richard E. Lapchick, The Politics of Race and International Sport (New York: Lexington Books, 1975), as discussed in Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 204–5.

36 Ibid, 82–92; Robinson quote from Track and Field News, November 1967.

37 For fuller treatment, see Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, 6–26.

38 Kim Parker, Juliana Horowitz, and Monica Anderson, ‘Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement’, (2020); Christopher Knoester, B. David Ridpath, and Rachel Allison, ‘Should Athletes be Allowed to Protest During the National Anthem? An analysis of public opinions among US adults’, Sociology of Sport Journal 1, no. aop (2021): 1–12.

39 Ryan Broussard, ‘“Stick to Sports” is Gone: A Field Theory Analysis of Sports Journalists’ Coverage of Socio-political Issues’, Journalism Studies 21, no. 12 (2020): 1627–43; Hans C. Schmidt, ‘Sport reporting in an era of activism: Examining the intersection of sport media and social activism’, International Journal of Sport Communication 11, no. 1 (2018): 2–17.

40 Lucia Trimbur, ‘Taking a Knee, Making a Stand: Social Justice, Trump America, and the Politics of Sport’, Quest 71, no. 2 (2019): 252–65. David L. Andrews, Making Sport Great Again: The Uber-sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture (Springer, 2019); Brett Siegel, ‘“True Champions and Incredible Patriots”: The Transformation of the Ceremonial White House Visit under President Trump’, Journal of Emerging Sport Studies 2, no. 1 (2019): 2; Alan Tomlinson and Bryan Clift, eds., Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2021); Evan Frederick, Ann Pegoraro, and Jimmy Sanderson, ‘Sport in the Age of Trump: An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tweets’, International Journal of Sport Communication 1, no. aop (2021): 1–23.

41 See, Green and Hartmann, ‘Politics and sports’.

42 Bryant, The Heritage; see also: Chris Knoester and Evan A. Davis, ‘Patriotism, Competition, Nationalism, and Respect for the Military in US Sports: Public Recognition of American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport (2021): 10126902211048769; Jeffrey Montez de Oca and Stephen Cho Suh, ‘Ethics of Patriotism: NFL Players’ Protests Against Police Violence’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 55, no. 5 (2020): 563–87; Michael L. Butterworth, ‘Sport and the Quest for Unity: How the Logic of Consensus Undermines Democratic Culture’, Communication & Sport 8, no. 4–5 (2020): 452–72.

43 Michael Serazio and Emily Thorson, ‘Weaponized Patriotism and Racial Subtext in Kaepernick’s Aftermath: The Anti-politics of American Sports Fandom’, Television & New Media 21, no. 2 (2020): 151–68.

44 Center for Sports Communication and Media, at the University of Texas at Austin, ‘Politics in Sports Media’, Annual Report, January 2022, 3. A 2017 ESPN self-survey of its viewers, reported by the Texas Center, claimed that 64 percent of its viewers felt the sports network—which has been a flash point on the subject at the time—‘provides proper coverage on the mix of sports and political issues’, though this has certainly gotten even more complicated in recent years. Ibid, 9.

45 For general reception research, see: Joon Kyoung Kim, Holly Overton, Nandini Bhalla, and Jo-Yun Li, ‘Nike, Colin Kaepernick, and the Politicization of Sports: Examining Perceived Organizational Motives and Public Responses’, Public Relations Review 46, no. 2 (2020): 101856; David Niven, ‘Who Says Shut Up and Dribble? Race and the Response to Athletes’ Political Activism’, Journal of African American Studies (2021): 1–14; Kenneth Sean Chaplin and Jeffrey Montez de Oca, ‘Avoiding the Issue: University Students’ Responses to NFL Players’ National Anthem Protests’, Sociology of Sport Journal 36, no. 1 (2019): 12–21; Jonathan Intravia, Alex R. Piquero, and Nicole Leeper Piquero, ‘The racial divide surrounding United States of America national anthem protests in the National Football League’, Deviant Behavior 39, no. 8 (2018): 1058–68. For public opinion surveys and research, see: Rachel Allison, Chris Knoester, and B. David Ridpath, ‘Public Opinions About Paying College Athletes and Athletes Protesting During the National Anthem: A Focus on Race/ethnicity and Political Identities’, Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (2021): 1–23; Chris Knoester, B. David Ridpath, and Rachel Allison, ‘Should Athletes be Allowed to Protest during the National Anthem? An Analysis of Public Opinions Among US Adults’, Sociology of Sport Journal 1, no. aop (2021): 1–12; Lisa Mueller, ‘Do Americans Really Support Black Athletes Who Kneel During the National Anthem? Estimating the True Prevalence and Strength of Sensitive Racial Attitudes in the Context of Sport’, Communication & Sport (2021): 21674795211019670. On television ratings: Judah Brown and Brandon J. Sheridan, ‘The Impact of National Anthem Protests on National Football League Television Ratings’, Journal of Sports Economics 21, no. 8 (2020): 829–47. For social media audiences and reception: Emmett L. Gill, Jr., ‘“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” or Shut Up and Play Ball? Fan-Generated Media Views of the Ferguson Five’, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 26, no. 3–4 (2016): 400–12; Nik Dickerson and Matt Hodler, ‘“Real Men Stand for Our Nation”: Constructions of an American Nation and Anti-Kaepernick Memes’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 45, no. 4 (2021): 329–57. And for more critical orientations to reception and framing, see: Ryan Turcott and Jules Boykoff, ‘The White Racial Frame in Sport Media: Framing of Donald Trump and LaVar Ball’s Public Feud Following the UCLA Basketball Player Arrests in China’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues (2020): 0193723520962953; Jules Boykoff and Ben Carrington, ‘Sporting dissent: Colin Kaepernick, NFL Activism, and Media Framing Contests’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 55, no. 7 (2020): 829–49.

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Douglas Hartmann

Douglas Hartmann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy (Chicago 2016), and co-editor of the ‘Critical Issues in Sport and Society’ book series at Rutgers University Press. Hartmann is currently working on a book on athlete activism and the changing politics of sport.