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WATCH: Tribute to Smith and Carlos
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WATCH: Tribute to Smith and Carlos |
[by Amy Bass] I watched the NBC hit Heroes for a few episodes last fall until it freaked me out so badly that I couldn't sleep at night. And as much as I agree that if we save the cheerleader, we save the world, I simply can't go back to it. Too much guts and gore in a world that already has its fill. But I like the fact that at a time when Americans trust nothing and nobody, don't believe in their leaders (according to polls) despite the fact that they (sort of) elected them, and finally starting to understand just how globally vilified we are, a television show about ordinary people doing extraordinary and heroic things is getting a lot of attention. I'm not sure if I have any heroes, although until I just stopped and thought about it, I'm sure I assumed that I did. There are lots of people dead and alive who inspire me, of course: activists like Elaine Brown, rock stars like Bono, artists like Henri Matisse, writers like e.e. cummings. But a hero? What is that exactly? According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, heroes are people who aren't necessarily braver than the rest of us they are simply braver longer . And during lunch at the Carnegie Deli in New York City a few weeks ago, I understood why that particular interpretation of hero might work the best for me. I was sitting at the Carnegie with Tommie Smith and his wife Delois. Smith won the gold medal in the 200-meters at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, and then made history when he and teammate John Carlos raised black-gloved fists during the victory ceremony that followed. Their action and the movement behind it, the Olympic Project for Human Rights was the focus of my doctoral dissertation, Flag on the Field , and my first book, Not the Triumph but the Struggle . People often assume that I know Smith well, but this lunch was actually the first time I'd ever spoken to him. Why? I felt my work on Smith and the OPHR needed critical distance it was about the representations and interpretations of black power, not an oral history of those who took part in black power actions. So I never interviewed him, contacted him, or met him. His story was one that had to be told, I knew, but I wanted it to be told by him, not by me. But then a few years ago, a manuscript landed on my desk the autobiography of Tommie Smith, Silent Gesture , written with Baltimore sportswriter Davie Steele. An editor sent it to me and asked me to review it to see if I thought it was worthy of publication. I read it, gave comments, and then somewhat forgot about it. Then a year or so ago, this same editor came back to me with a project idea: would I like to edit my own series of books on the racial politics of sports? After much consideration, I agreed, and we began to strategize about which books we'd like to go after for my series. I asked him about Smith's autobiography, and he said he'd never heard back from Smith and Steele regarding the manuscript. So I gave David Steele a call. Many conversations later, I signed the book, and with its publication a few weeks ago, it became the lead title in my new series, Sporting. I was pleased, to say the very least, to have a role in the publication of Smith's Silent Gesture , and was even more pleased when he decided to come to New York to do some promotional appearances in support of the publication. We decided to have lunch. And when I met him, shaking his hand, looking up (way up the man is tall ), I had no idea how quickly I was going to learn just how correct Emerson was in his definition of a hero. The Tommie Smith of my work, the one that lives in my head, was a young man performing a brave, historic act in 1968. The Tommie Smith that I sat across from at the Carnegie Deli eating pastrami and cheesecake was a man who for the last forty years more than half of his life had continually relived that day and its consequences. Did he know, I wondered, when he stood on that victory dais that it would become one of the defining moments of his life, of sports, of the Olympic Games, of civil rights movements? Did he know that once it happened, it could never be left behind, because someone would continually use it as a source of inspiration, as a source of social change, as a source of racial hatred, as a source of anger? Perhaps he did. But I didn't. I sat at a table for over an hour and we talked about everything except that day in 1968. We talked about pastrami and cheesecake, our families, our travels, the cold weather, books we both enjoyed, the various students we had mentored over the years, and so on. We chatted, and for most of the conversation, I wasn't a historian, and he wasn't history. But it was that conversation that made me realize why he was a hero and I wasn't and perhaps more importantly didn't want to be one. He was a hero because he had done something that made him be braver longer than most people, longer than I would ever be willing to do anything brave, longer than most people would have the capacity to be brave. With his autobiography, Tommie Smith was finally getting a chance to tell his own story. And after spending the last ten years of my life focusing on that story, I think I finally understood it. I got it. And now I believe in heroes. March 14, 2007 |
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Fist of fury. (Photo: 
