Read e-book online Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Sporting) PDF

By Tommie Smith

ISBN-10: 1592136397

ISBN-13: 9781592136391

ISBN-10: 1592136419

ISBN-13: 9781592136414

On the 1968 Olympics in Mexico urban, Tommie Smith and his teammate John Carlos got here in first and 3rd, respectively, within the 200-meter sprint. As they obtained their medals, every one guy raised a black-gloved fist, growing a picture that would regularly stand as an iconic illustration of the complex conflations of race, politics, and activities. during this, his autobiography, Smith fills out the tale round that moment--how it got here to be and the place it led him. Smith engagingly describes his life-long dedication to athletics, schooling, and human rights. He additionally dispels many of the myths surrounding his recognized gesture of protest: opposite to legend, Smith used to be now not a member of the Black Panthers, nor have been his medals taken again by means of the Olympic Committee. Retelling the phobia he felt in making plans and accomplishing his protest, the demise threats opposed to him, his hassle find paintings, and his selection to stay his values, he conveys the lengthy, painful backlash that got here together with his status, and his destiny, all of which was once wrapped up in his "silent gesture."

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Extra info for Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Sporting)

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That was not the issue with Tommie Smith; Tommie Smith’s issue was human rights, being a black person, a black athlete in particular. Some people would sum that up in one sentence: I don’t like America, I don’t like my surroundings, so I’m being a militant in letting people know that some things needed changing. The latter part of that is true: some things did need changing, among them the constitutional rights of black people and stomping out the race issue as much as possible. It wasn’t just me as a black athlete unhappy about how I was treated; it was a systematic battle over more than one issue.

Everything I saw in the family I thought was good. I would stick it in my mental compartment until I could use it later: how my mother ironed and cooked and cleaned, how my father hunted and fished, the routine my brother James went through when he came home from work. I didn’t associate much with grandparents, and I don’t remember a lot of aunts or uncles or cousins. There were so many of us in our own family that we never had a shortage of people around. My mother—we called her Mulla—was at the center, the strength of the family, as it is in most families.

Well, my goodness, athletics in this country produces more revenue than any other single profession in the world. And what black people put into the system in this country, including the industry of athletics, was not equal to what we were provided in terms of our constitutional rights and the rewards of the system. My eyes were not shut and I was not asleep, and athletics was one of the ways I had then to voice an opinion that was part of my personality, but which I’d held inside, ever since the cotton fields of Texas in the early 1950s and in California in the 1960s.

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Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Sporting) by Tommie Smith


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