It wasn’t so much that the five St. Louis Rams who gave the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” signal during pregame introductions were using sports to make a statement – it was the sort of statement they made that set them apart.
American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos set the standard for athletes hoping to take a political message to the highest level of sports – raising their gloved fists while atop the medals stand at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968.
Carlos applauded the gesture made Sunday by the Rams – Kenny Britt, Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Chris Givens and Jared Cook – saying if an athlete “thinks something is unjust, he has the right to say something about it.”
“You have a right, as an athlete, to express who you are,” Carlos said in an interview with The Associated Press. “People can make their own determination as to whether you were right or wrong.”
Carlos and Smith got booed out of the stadium and kicked out of the Olympics. During the racially charged 1960s, their Black Power gesture was deemed too political and divisive, both by a large segment of the public and the leader of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage.