Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University

4
Feeding
the
Flame
Confrontation on the Campns
The successful boycott of the N.Y.A.C. fueled further
attacks on the committee and its supporters. Questions
such as the following were asked: "What was
gained through the N.Y.A.C. boycott and what will be
gained through boycotting the '68 Olympic Garnes?"
"Have more black people been fed as a result of boycotting
the N.Y.A.C.?" "Will a boycott of the Olympic
Garnes result in better housing or fewer rats for black
people?" In reply to these questions, I wrote the following
article for the late Saturday Evening Post:
John Carlos, of Harlem, a world-class sprinter, phoned
me from East Texas State College a few weeks ago. "I'm
70
quitting school," he said. "Can't take the heat here, man.
Don't like the snubs, the restricted housing, the way they
mistreat my wife, the whole phony deal." To my question,
"John Carlos, what will you do now?"-he said: "Join a
freedom movement somewhere, maybe." I told him, "Listen,
Quick Cat, make your sociological break count. Come
to San Jose State and work with the brothers to end all of
this racist bull. Join us in this movement to liberate black
people through the use of athletics."
He joined. Top black athletes of the country are mobilizing
. . . , risking their scholarships, school eligibility, and
families' welfare, ... to express what they should have stood
for years ago: you cannot, and maintain a claim to manhood,
run, hurdle, jump, throw punches, lift weights, or
stuff balls into baskets in the name of the American nation
when your people are headed for perdition. Grinning black
faces atop an Olympic victory stand only mock kids smothering
in slums, old women dying of malnutrition, bombedout
churches, the bodies strewn along the path of riot. "How
can you strain and sweat," I challenged Tommie Smith, ...
who is known as the world's fastest human, "for the ideological
merchandisers who promote the Olympic Games?
They tell the world that the Games are free of discrimina-'
tion, a wonderful example of fair play to everyone. And they
use big, box-office performers like you to make the U.S. a
big part of that scene. Meanwhile, neglect kills off your
people faster than you can sprint. Mothers, dads, brothers,
relatives of the same black guys who compete in the Olympics
get no anthems or medals-they're where they started,
at the bottom, hopeless, with a gun or club waiting when
they object."
Tommie Smith slept four in a straw bed as a boy; he often
shared one school lunch with five other little Smiths. His
parents, Jim and Dora, were shacktown migrants, picking
California cotton for 90 cents an hour. Tom Smith joined
the boycott.
Nothing on the human rights front has caused more highlevel
shock and arm-flapping than the proposed walkout.
... Mass refusal to understand [its] meaning has followed.
The most spotlighted basketball player of the day,
Lew Alcindor of UCLA, can say (as he recently did),
Feeding the Flame • 71