During the 1968 Olympic games held in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, both African American athletes representing The United States, competed in the 200-meter running event. Smith and Carlos had won gold and bronze medals in the event. During the medal ceremony on the podium while the United States anthem was playing, Smith and Carlos had each raised a black gloved fist into the air to protest all the discrimination African Americans were facing in the United States. The two continued to hold their fists up after the anthem was finished. Peter Norman, an Australian runner who got the silver medal in this event, also on the podium wore a human-rights badge on his Olympic jacket that was also on Smith and Carlos’ jacket as well. Following the anthem, the crowd was silent for a couple seconds followed by an outroar of negative reactions from the crowd including racial slurs and people “booing” raining down onto the three athletes. The backlash the athletes faced afterwards was intense, as they received death threats and were kicked out of the Olympic village and suspended from the US Olympic team. Peter Norman was also punished harshly by the Australian Sport Establishment, as he was kicked off the national team and was never accepted back even after having some of the fastest run times in Australian competitions after the 1968 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) response along with the banning of the athletes was said that Smith and Carlos’ protest were “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.” An interesting point was that Avery Brundage, the IOC president who was the president of the United States Olympic Committee in 1936, had made no objections against the actions of the Nazi Salutes during the Berlin Olympics. Smith and Carlos were also affected by the events of massacre of the Mexican students just 10 days before the opening of the Summer Games. Smith in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine in 2008 said “It was a cry for freedom and for human rights,” and “We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.” Referring to his and John Carlos’ protest at the podium. Smith and Carlos did both get re-accepted into the Olympic teams, but they went on to have careers in professional football. Peter Norman on the other hand, as mentioned before, did not get accepted back into the national Olympic team for Australia which had led him into a dark path of depression, alcoholism, and painkiller addiction. Caroline Frost from the BBC wrote “During that time he used his silver medal as a doorstop.” Norman had died in 2006 and was never acknowledged for the bravery he had to be a part of such a powerful event by his country and the contributions he had made to the sport in his country. The raising of their fists has transcended the Olympic Games and sports in general as a message was needed to be sent that human-rights and equal rights should not be something up for debate, and the light shed onto all the Black injustice happening in America and even the world still. Some examples of athletes stepping up and taking a stand against racial discrimination in the modern day are Lebron James and the NBA/WNBA athletes during the 2020 season supporting the Black Lives Matter movement by having the message written everywhere and kneeling during the National anthem. Along with Colin Kaepernick and his protests in the NFL to kneel during the anthem as well. Athletes decades later are still having to push for equality…