Harry Edwards, Black Power, and Countering the Mainstream Media’s Repression of the Revolt of the Black Athlete

Abstract

Harry Edwards led the organization of a Black Power campaign to organize a boycott of the 1968 Olympics. Contrary to the prevailing conclusion that the boycott failed to materialize because it was unpopular, Edwards’ efforts challenged the state-enforced Cold War-consensus that racial discrimination was declining in American society. Consequently, the state, including the mainstream media, moved swiftly to repress the boycott by demonizing him as a “black militant” and accessing the effort as misguided. Edwards, like several Black radicals, responded by adopting a militant façade that attracted media attention that allowed him to counter oppositional pronouncements and keep the boycott newsworthy for a year. Edwards’ use of the media, however, continues to complicate understandings of the boycott and Black Power. Uncritical mainstream media-based assessments suggest both failed because they were unpopular. By contrast, activist-focused studies conclude that activists succeeded by expanding discussions on racial discrimination in the national discourse.

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Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2021.1940058)

Notes

1 Alice George, “The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened,” Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1968-kerner-commission-got-it-right-nobody-listened-180968318/ (accessed March 1, 2018).

2 “Institutionalized racism” was coined by Stokely Carmichael and other SNCC activists in 1966 to explain the next stage of the Black Freedom Struggle. For a definition, see Stokely Carmichael, “Towards Black Liberation,” in Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal (New York: Morrow, 1969), 119–32; “The Man Who Coined the Term ‘Institutional Racism’,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 23 (Spring 1999): 39; for a discussion of the effects of riots on black and civil rights intellectuals, see Kristopher Burrell, “Where from Here? Ideological Perspectives on the Future of the Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1966,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 36, no. 2 (March 22, 2012): 138–47; Jack M. Bloom, “Ghetto Revolts, Black Power, and the Limits of the Civil Rights Coalition, Class, Race, and The Civil Rights Movement,” in The American Civil Rights Movement: Readings and Interpretations, edited by Raymond N. D’Angelo (Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2001), 186–213; Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ As Vampire: Temporal And Spatial Fallacies In Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of African American History 92, no. 2 (2007): 279.

3 L. H. Stanton, “The Black Power Conference,” Liberator, August 1967, 8; New York Times, n.d., July 22, 1967, 1; Chuck Stone, “The National Conference on Black Power,” in The Black Power Revolt: A Collection of Essays, edited by Floyd B. Barbour (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 194.

4 “Black Power Manifesto and Resolutions,” July 1967, MG 882, Box 8, Folder 14, The New Jersey Historical Society, 24; Harry Edwards, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York: Free Press, 1969), 50.

5 Douglas Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 71–72; David K. Wiggins, Glory Bound: Black Athletes in a White America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997).

6 Both reasons are explored thoroughly in the forthcoming manuscript, Dexter L. Blackman, “We Are Standing Up for Humanity: Black Power, The Myth of the Black Athlete, and the 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights”; they are also explored in David Wolf, “The Growing Crisis in College Sports, Part I,” Sport, June 1970, 24–25; Adolph H. Grundman, “The Image of Intercollegiate Sports and the Civil Rights Movement: A Historian’s View,” Arena Review 3 (October 1979): 17–24; Damion L. Thomas, Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012).

7 Grundman, “The Image of Intercollegiate Sports and the Civil Rights,” 17–24.

8 Chicago Defender, December 5, 1967, 24; Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1967, A5.

9 “Negro Olympics Boycott Is Off Target,” Life, December 8, 1967, 4.

10 Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt, 95–97.

11 Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, edited by George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder, 1993), 165–67; Stokely Carmichael, “Towards Black Liberation,” in Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal (New York: Morrow, 1969), 119–21; Harry Edwards, “Introduction to ‘After the Olympics: Buying off Protest’,” Ramparts, November 1968, 16; Bill Russell, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man (New York: Random House, 1979), 176–77; Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945–2006 (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2007), 52–54; Peniel E. Joseph, “Rethinking the Black Power Era,” The Journal of Southern History 75, no. 3 (2009): 707–16.

12 Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), 8.

13 Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 165; Carmichael, “Towards Black Liberation,” 120–21.

14 Harry Edwards, The Struggle That Must Be: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 57–100; for the experience of black student-athletes at predominately white schools, see Robert L. Green, Thomas S. Gunnings, and Joseph H. McMillan, “The Status of Blacks in the Big Ten Athletic Conference: Issues and Concerns,” Journal of Non-White Concerns in Personnel and Guidance 3, no. 1 (1974): 28–38.

15 Edwards, Revolt, 46; Edwards, The Struggle, 57–100; Lerone Bennett Jr., “Confrontation on Campus,” Ebony, May 1968, 27–34.

16 New York Times, December 16, 1967, 63.

17 Edwards, Revolt, 184; also see Johnathon Rodgers, “A Step to an Olympic Boycott,” Sports Illustrated, December 4, 1967, 30–32.

18 Chicago Defender, December 7, 1967, 44; Washington Post, May 26, 1968, C4.

19 Dexter L. Blackman, “‘The Negro Athlete and Victory’: Athletics and Athletes as Advancement Strategies in Black America, 1890s–1930s,” Sport History Review 47, no. 1 (May 1, 2016): 46–68.

20 Thomas, Globetrotting, 3–18, 90–93.

21 Erin Elizabeth Redihan, The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948–1968: Sport as Battleground in the U.S.-Soviet Rivalry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017).

22 Avery Brundage, “Avery Brundage’s Address at Banquet,” Amateur Athlete, January 1959: 11–13; Tex Maule, “Is America a Second-Class Track Power?” Sports Illustrated, February 2, 1959, 34.

23 “Should Negroes Boycott the Olympics?,” Ebony, March 1968, 110–11; Carroll Van West, “The Tennessee State Tigerbelles: Cold Warriors of the Track,” in Separate Games: African American Sport behind the Walls of Segregation (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2016), 65–67.

24 Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1967, 21.

25 New York Times, November 28, 1967, 60; Chicago Defender, December 6, 1967, 28; Los Aneles Sentinel, November 30, 1967, A1; “Boycott Major Issue,” Track and Field News, December 1967, 18; William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 12–23.

26 Cordner Nelson, “See You in Mexico City,” Track and Field News, December 1967, 14.

27 Chicago Defender, December 7, 1967, 44.

28 Russell, Second Wind, 176–79; Edwards, The Struggle, 101–35.

29 Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, 30–35; 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 (April 1, 2009): 99–121.

30 Edwards, Revolt, 58.

31 Edwards, The Struggle, 168.

32 Edwards, 166–71; Edwards, Revolt, 67; Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, 12–13; Bobby Seale, “Free Huey,” in Rhetoric of Black Revolution, edited by Arthur L. Smith (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1969), 177–78; Kelley, Race Rebels, 8.

33 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 (January 2, 2019): 52–76.

34 New York Times, 16 February 1968, 41; Carmichael, “Towards Black Liberation,” 125–129; Edwards, Revolt, 65–68.

35 Edwards, Revolt, 67; “Statement for Immediate Release,” American Committee on Africa Papers, February 1968, Reel 7, Frame 103/55, Schomburg Center for Research for Black Culture, New York, NY.

36 New York Times, February 16, 1968, 41; Washington Post, February 16, 1968, D1; Baltimore (MD) African American, February 17, 1968, 22; New York Amsterdam News, February 24, 1968, 31.

37 Jane Rhodes, Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 2–12, 68–79; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries: A Personal Account (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 504–5.

38 “Time for Non-Violence is Over,’ Edwards Tells Foothill Students in Campus Speech,” Sunnyvale, California Standard-Register Leader, September 28, 1967, in From Civil Rights to Campus Protest Collection, Box 1, Harry Edwards Folder, Special Collection and Archives, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, San Jose State University.

39 Arnold Hano, “The Black Rebel Who ‘Whitelists’ the Olympics,” New York Times, May 12, 1968, SM32–41.

40 Elroy Bode, “El Paso Dialogue: The Rhetoric of Revenge,” The Nation, April 29, 1968, 557–58.

41 New York Times, February 18, 1968, 175; “Sports Film Transfer - NY-19980624-0059” NBC News Clip, 5:33–11:30 minute, http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbcuni/clip/51A06381_s01.do (accessed August 17, 2016).

42 Baltimore (MD) Afro-American, February 17, 1968, 22; Edwards, Revolt, 67; Ronald Lawson with Mark Naison, eds., The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904–1984 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1986), 175–79; Joel Schwartz, “The New York Rent Strikes of 1963–1964,” Social Service Review, 57, no. 4 (December 1983): 545–53; “The Black Boycott,” Time, 23 February 1968, 6; “Rent Strike in Harlem,” Ebony, April 1964, 19, 4: 112–20.

43 New York Times, February 14, 1968, 35; Pittsburgh Courier, February 17, 1968, 15.

44 Hano, “The Black Rebel,” SM32; Tommie Smith, “Why Negroes Should Boycott,” Sport, March 1968; Harry Edwards, “Why Negroes Should Boycott Whitey’s Olympics,” Saturday Evening Post, March 9, 1968, 40–41; “Body and Soul, Part 1: Body” (CBS, 1968), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEczTF1_uds.

45 Pete Axthelm, “The Angry Black Athlete,” Newsweek, July 15, 1968, 56–60.

46 Edwards, The Struggle, 195.

47 Washington Post, July 2, 1968, D3; Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1968, E2, F2.

48 New York Amsterdam News, September 21, 1968, 33; “Plot to Kill the Olympics,” Newsweek, September 2, 1968, 58.

49 John Underwood, “Games in Trouble,” Sports Illustrated, September 30, 1968, 45–49; Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1968, A17, A19; Chicago Defender, September 10, 1968, 24; Washington Post, September 2, 1968, D1; New York Amsterdam News, September 21, 1968, 33.

50 Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1968, E2; emphasis in the text; New York Times, July 3, 1968, 44; Chicago Defender, September 10, 1968, 24.

51 Letter from Vince Flaherty to Avery Brundage, IOC Files, Box 178, Folder Smith and Carlos Dismissal, Avery Brundage Collection, LA84 Library, Los Angeles, CA.

52 Daily Worker, August 9, 1968, 12; Washington Post, August 1, 1968, F1; August 4, 1968, C7.

53 “Negro Olympic Contenders,” Track and Field News, December 1967, 16–17.

54 “Fans, Readers,” Track and Field News, December 1967, 19; “Fan Mail” Received by Tom, Lee,” Track and Field News, December 1967, 19.

55 Tommie Smith, “Why Negroes Should Boycott,” 68; Edwards, Revolt, 103; Carlos, The John Carlos Story, 106; Matthews, My Race Be Won, 169.

56 Harry Edwards, “The Olympic Project for Human Rights: An Assessment Ten Years Later,” Black Scholar 10, no. 6–7 (1979): 2–8.

57 Edwards, The Struggle, 282–300; Los Angeles Times, July 2 1968, E2.

58 Carmichael, “Towards Black Liberation,” 120–21.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dexter L. Blackman

Dexter L. Blackman, Ph.D., is the author of the forthcoming book We Are Standing Up For Humanity: Black Power, The Myth of the Black Athlete, and the Olympic Project for Human Rights and an Assistant Professor of history and African American studies at Morgan State University.