[ The Americans’ actions at the 1972 Games had echoes of Tommie
Smith and John Carlos. But today their story has been largely
forgotten. “The whole history of the Olympic movement is rife with
antisemitism and racism,” said Harry Edwards]
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FIFTY YEARS ON, MATTHEWS AND COLLETT ARE OWED AN APOLOGY FOR THEIR
OLYMPIC EXPULSION  
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Jules Boykoff
September 7, 2022
The Guardian
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_ The Americans’ actions at the 1972 Games had echoes of Tommie
Smith and John Carlos. But today their story has been largely
forgotten. “The whole history of the Olympic movement is rife with
antisemitism and racism,” said Harry Edwards _

Vincent Matthews (hand on hip) and Wayne Collett (barefoot, holding
shoes) chat during the 400m medal ceremony at the 1972 Olympics.,

 

Fifty years ago this week, two African American athletes, Vincent
Matthews and Wayne Collett, won gold and silver respectively in the
400m at the Munich Olympics. At the medal ceremony
[[link removed]] they threw themselves
into the maw of history.

During the US national anthem, the athletes shared the top tier of the
podium – which would usually have been reserved for Matthews alone
as the winner – an act of unity that broke Olympic protocol. They
angled their backs away from the American flag and chatted casually,
looking uninterested. Matthews rubbed his chin pensively before
folding his arms. Collett stood barefoot, jacket open with hands on
hips. As they departed, Matthews twirled his medal on his finger while
Collett thrust a clenched fist into the air.
 

Watch Italian broadcast [[link removed]]

The International Olympic Committee’s response dripped with venom.
In a letter to the US Olympic Committee, IOC president Avery
Brundage excoriated
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athletes’ “disgusting display” before handing down a lifetime
ban from the Olympics. The IOC allowed Matthews and Collett to keep
their medals, but Brundage warned that: “If such a performance
should happen in the future … the medals will be withheld from the
athletes in question.”

It is past time that the IOC rights its historical wrong and
apologizes to Matthews, Collett, and their families for the draconian
punishment that Olympic powerbrokers meted out at the time.

Harry Edwards
[[link removed]], the
civil-rights stalwart and sport sociologist at San Jose State
University, told me, “It’s never too late to apologize and to
honor people who not only tried to reflect the Olympic ideals but to
live by them, to be willing to sacrifice, to project and make real the
ideals of the Olympic movement.”

Brian Lewis
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the president of the Caribbean Association of National Olympic
Committees, went further. He told me that “the athletes should be
given the Olympic Order
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the IOC’s highest honor bestowed upon people who have enlivened the
Olympic spirit. Lewis called the IOC’s treatment of Matthews and
Collett “a travesty and an injustice,” adding that the ban
“should be rescinded.”

The lifetime expulsion from the Olympics was extreme. But what in 1972
was a drastic penalty looks more like a blatantly racist double
standard today. After all, only a few days before Matthews and Collett
took action, middle-distance runner Dave Wottle inadvertently wore
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hat on the medal stand after winning the 800m race. Wottle, who is
white, was not rebuked by the IOC. Matthews was 24 at the time and
Collett just 21, they had the potential to win more medals if not for
the ban.

When I asked Edwards why he thought the IOC issued such a stiff
penalty, he said, “The whole history of the Olympic movement is rife
with antisemitism and racism.” The IOC has “always fought any kind
of protest or demonstration that would tend to highlight and challenge
racist activities or actions.”

In the 1960s, Brundage was dubbed “Slavery Avery
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anti-Black racism. When Edwards teamed up with top-flight athletes to
create the Olympic Project for Human Rights in 1967, their demands
included
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“removal of the antisemitic and anti-Black personality Avery
Brundage from his post as chairman of the International Olympic
Committee” and the “curtailment of participation of all-white
teams and individuals from the Union of South Africa and Southern
Rhodesia in all United States Olympic Athletic events.”

To be sure, the IOC’s decision to issue a lifetime ban for Matthews
and Collett occurred in the eye of a political hurricane. The Munich
Olympics were meant to erase the painful memories of the 1936 Berlin
Games, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used the event to spread
white-supremacist propaganda. But Munich’s Olympic Park
was constructed
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miles from the site of the Dachau concentration camp and then,
brutally, Jewish blood was once again spilled on German soil when
Black September, a Palestinian terror group, took hostage numerous
members of the Israeli Olympic delegation. In the end, 11 Israeli
coaches and athletes were killed
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as were five Palestinian militants, and a German police officer.

Avery Brundage insisted that “the Games must go on”. And after
a 24-hour and nine minute
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they did. In Brundage’s official statement, he conflated the
horrific attack with a successful campaign to keep the Rhodesian
Olympic squad from participating in the Berlin Games because of the
country’s racist policies. Under pressure from numerous African
nations, Black athletes and their allies, the IOC withdrew
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invitation to Rhodesia on the eve of the Games. “The Games of the XX
Olympiad have been subjected to two savage attacks,” Brundage
stated. “We lost the Rhodesian battle against naked political
blackmail.”

Two days after the “Munich massacre
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amid this pianowire-tense, politicized context, Matthews and Collett
won their medals and climbed the podium.

In his memoir
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Matthews wrote, “For me, not standing at attention meant that I
wasn’t going along with a program dictated by Number One: those John
Wayne types – my Country right or wrong.” Although the athletes
suggested they were not carrying out a protest – just like Wottle
when he accidentally wore his cap on the medal stand – both
expressed dissatisfaction with the way Black people were treated in
the US. Collett said of the national anthem, “I couldn’t stand
there and sing the words because I don’t believe they’re true. I
wish they were. I think we have the potential to have a beautiful
country, but I don’t think we do.”

Matthews and Collett have slid silently into the folds of history.
This contrasts sharply with the unforgettable protest at the 1968
Mexico City Olympics when John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood atop the
medal stand and stabbed their black-gloved fists skyward to protest
injustice. Although both athletes experienced significant struggles in
the wake of their action, they are widely celebrated today. Barack
Obama honored
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at the White House. In 2019, they were inducted
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the US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame. Even the official Olympic
Channel praised
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and Smith as “legends,” calling their act of dissent “one of the
most iconic moments in the history of modern Olympic Games.”

When it comes to Matthews and Collett’s action, Edwards emphasized
that protest timing can be more important than messaging. He noted
that because social movements were on the decline in 1972 and a racial
backlash was in full force, “There was no broader context for
protest that they could use to frame up what they were doing,”
making their act of dissent largely illegible to journalists of the
time, especially because so few of them were African American.

Although Collett died
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2010 and Matthews is famous for avoiding the press
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not looking backwards, the 50-year anniversary of their medal-stand
action is the perfect time for the IOC to express regret and to make
amends.

_[JULES BOYKOFF is an associate professor of political science at
Pacific University in Oregon and a former professional soccer player]_

* sports
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* Olympics
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* Racism
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* Civil Rights
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* African American athletes
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* Black athletes
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* Tommie Smith
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* John Carlos
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* Vincent Matthews
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* Wayne Collett
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*
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