Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Muhammad Ali are three athletes that spoke up against racism, discrimination, and inequality that is in the United States during the 1960s and 70s. The influential athletes were able to use their popularity throughout the world to shine a light upon the inequalities that many Americans faced. During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, in the height of the Civil Rights movement, Smith and Carlos used their international platform as Olympic medalist to show solidarity with the Black Panthers movement and to “interject [their] blackness” into the ceremony by wearing black gloves and raising their fists during the American National Anthem (Hartmann, 15). According to Hartmann, “Smith and Carlos’s image so clearly [transcended]
…show more content…
One of his first forms of activism was “his defiance of the draft board and his three-and-a-half year exile from boxing; then yet another Ali appeared with his return to boxing in 1970, an older, more mature figure of physical and mental courage in the Norton, Frazier, and Foreman fights” (Oriard, 392). Due to Ali’s public visibility as a “political martyr,” he was able to show people that even through resistance of the government and social norms, he was still ultimately able to come out on top in the end. As one of the most celebrated and influential athletes of all time, the media used Ali’s activists was publicized even more than usual than other athletes. As either Cassius Clay the “braggart or free spirit; the dancing Ali could seem [as] an artist or a coward; the Muslim Ali could seem [as] religious or a political man; the conscientious objector could seem a con man, a pacifist, a traitor, or a martyr” (Oriard, 392). Regardless of anything that Ali did, his forms of activism, small or large, were always made larger than they seem due to his performances as an
One of his first forms of activism was “his defiance of the draft board and his three-and-a-half year exile from boxing; then yet another Ali appeared with his return to boxing in 1970, an older, more mature figure of physical and mental courage in the Norton, Frazier, and Foreman fights” (Oriard, 392). Due to Ali’s public visibility as a “political martyr,” he was able to show people that even through resistance of the government and social norms, he was still ultimately able to come out on top in the end. As one of the most celebrated and influential athletes of all time, the media used Ali’s activists was publicized even more than usual than other athletes. As either Cassius Clay the “braggart or free spirit; the dancing Ali could seem [as] an artist or a coward; the Muslim Ali could seem [as] religious or a political man; the conscientious objector could seem a con man, a pacifist, a traitor, or a martyr” (Oriard, 392). Regardless of anything that Ali did, his forms of activism, small or large, were always made larger than they seem due to his performances as an