Tigerbelle

by Wyomia Tyus

  For one thing, I still had to run the relay and the 200, but those races were just not the same as the 100. That 200? I wasn’t even thinking about it. Didn’t care about it. That race was just something Mr. Temple wanted me to do. The relay meant more to me, but it was not the most important thing I had left to do, not by a long shot.

  * * *

  I was in the spectator area for athletes when Tommie Smith and John Carlos and Peter Norman, the Australian runner who got the silver in the men’s 200, came out to get their medals. There was a rail between us and the track, and you could look down the chute where the athletes come out. There were a lot of us there, and we were all yelling our support.

  When I saw Tommie and Carlos come out, the first thing that ran through my head was: They don’t have no shoes on. I watched them walk onto the medal stand, and when “The Star-Spangled Banner” started to play, I watched them raise their fists. Oh my! I thought. The crowd was just quiet at first. Nothing. No sound. Then people started talking, a buzz rose up, people near me whispering, “Did you see what they did? Did you see what they did?”

  “Yes, I did,” I said, but I was also trying to see if there was anybody up above us trying to do anything else—anything retaliatory. Because while some people were cheering, some people were booing. They were angry. You could see it in their faces. And I kept thinking, I just want to be out of here. Because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought: That was so powerful and It’s going to strike so many people the wrong way and I hope nobody hurts them. That was one of my first thoughts: I hope no one hurts them. I wanted to get out of the stadium before something happened. There were too many people there, and we were in front and kind of below everybody, and there were just a few of us Black athletes. And I thought, There are probably some Black people booing too. It was a scary moment.

  When they came off the stand, they walked right past us, and we were giving them back slaps and high fives and saying supportive things. After that, all hell broke loose—for them. Once we got back to the Olympic Village, there was a meeting of just about everybody, and everybody was saying that Tommie and Carlos were being sent home and that their medals would be taken away.

  “Take their medals away?” I said. “How can they take their medals away? What are you talking about?”

  “Yes, that’s what’s going to happen,” more than one athlete responded. “That’s what happens when you do things like that.”

  “Oh, please,” I said, “Tommie and Carlos are not going to give up their medals.”

  Still, that was what most of the athletes believed: that their medals would be taken—because that was the propaganda that was put out, just that quick. And who would do it, other than the officials? The word all around was that the Olympic Committee was going to take their medals and put them out of the Village. And that’s what came across to America too, in the papers: that they got their medals taken and they’d been put out of the Olympic Village for disgracing America.

  But I was thinking, They are not taking their medals. And as it turned out, I was right, but if you were to search it online right now, you would still find sources that say they were “stripped of their medals” or “forced to return” their awards. In reality, that never happened, but the propaganda continues.

  Tommie and Carlos were not at that meeting because it was true that they were banned from the Village—but in any case, they weren’t going to go there because they figured the officials wanted to put them out of not only the Village but also the country. So they went to a hotel. Still, I don’t see how anyone from the Olympic Committee could have put them out of the country; it wasn’t their country. In my mind, these were all just the rumors that were spread to cause confusion among the other athletes and keep them from doing anything else.

  Nevertheless, another meeting was called to talk about what other people were going to do in light of what happened to Tommie and Carlos. The outcome of that meeting was still: You can do whatever you want. What they have done, that said everything right there. And that’s when people started getting ideas: some of the men on the relay teams wore berets, and there were black socks and black shorts and black armbands and things like that, and Ralph Boston was barefoot when he went on the stand to get his medal. I don’t know how much of it came across on the television, but many athletes continued the protest despite all the threats to Tommie and Carlos, and I was one of them.

  * * *

  The next day, I ran the 4x100 relay. Even though I had achieved my goal of winning the 100 and felt satisfied, I had to think of my teammates—Barbara Ferrell, Margaret Bailes, and Mildred Netter. I knew we had the best team; the only thing we had to make sure of was that we didn’t make any mistakes, like dropping the baton or running out of the passing zone. Barbara had gotten second in the 100, and even though Margaret was only seventeen, she ran well in the 100, placing fifth, and had really been setting the world on fire in the run-up to the Games. The relay was probably most significant for Mildred: the 4x100 was her first race in the Olympics; she didn’t run anything else, so it was her only chance to get a medal.

  Barbara ran the first leg; she had a good start and was out in front when she passed to Margaret, who ran really well and handed the lead over to Mildred. Mildred had a good race—such a beautiful curve!—but I misjudged her speed coming up and was a little slow taking off. None of us were used to passing to each other, and even though we had practiced, three of us had to train for the 100 and the 200, so we didn’t have that much time for the 4x100—unlike the Europeans, who kept their relay teams the same so they got to work together all year. Despite all that, Mildred and I still had a good pass, and with such a solid lead, the fact that she ran up on me didn’t matter. Mildred ran after me almost all the way through the curve, yelling, “Go, Tyus! Go, Tyus! Go!” So I did, and we not only won but set both an Olympic and a world record with a time of 42.8 seconds.

  As part of my contribution to the protest for human rights, I had worn black running shorts for the relay, rather than the regular white running shorts that were issued to us—although I’m not sure anyone noticed. But after we won and had been given our medals, we went into the pressroom, and they asked us what we thought about what Tommie and Carlos had done.

  “What is there to think?” I said. “They made a statement. We all know that we’re fighting for human rights. That’s what they stood for on the victory stand—human rights for everyone, everywhere. And to support that and to support them, I’m dedicating my medal to them. I believe in what they did.”

  I don’t remember planning it in advance. I was in support of what the whole movement was about, so I was ready to say something. It was not just what they did in that one moment, I told them. It was about human rights: what had happened to the students in Tlatelolco and what was happening to people all around the world. That’s what the whole human rights project has always been about: we are all in this together. That’s what I said to the reporters. But none of that got printed, of course, only the fact that I had dedicated my medal—that we all, the whole relay team, had dedicated our medals. That was okay with me—as long as the press understood why we did it.

  Later, Mr. Temple asked me, “Did you think it through? Did you think it would have any consequences?”

  “I don’t think I really cared,” I told him. Doing it was just a part of me. I surprise myself sometimes, but that wasn’t one of those times. I had my medal. I had graduated. I was going to go and get a job—going to work eight to five, be shut off in some room someplace, and I knew that this Olympics was my opportunity—the moment when people might listen to me, the moment to speak.

  Mr. Temple didn’t ask me that until later because he wasn’t in Mexico City. He had always told us, “Don’t just go off doing things and then have to eat your way back home.” But he never said whether he approved or disapproved, one way or the other, which to me seemed perfectly consistent with how he always was. I think that Mr. Temple felt that he had
done his best to prepare us for the world. He always wanted us to be our own people even if it meant bumping heads with him. If he didn’t agree, he wasn’t going to say anything, and if he did agree, he might say one thing, but not much more. Because his main question was always, “Is this what you want? Is this what you believe in?” As long as you weighed it out and thought about the consequences—what else could he ask for?

  Some people felt he could have said more, tried to have more influence, but that was not the man he was. If he ever had said more, I would have listened to him, but nothing would have changed. I was still going to be saying what I said. I would say, “That’s me, Mr. Temple. You taught us to speak our minds.”

  Which to me meant he had been successful at doing the only thing that really mattered to him: making us feel comfortable being ourselves. He also tried to make it so we would enjoy that period in our lives—being in college, being able to travel, doing things that most people would never do. He wanted us to enjoy all of that. He wanted us to feel good about it, but he also didn’t want us to just speak without thinking. That was his biggest thing. And it wasn’t just about politics. It was about competition as well. Because he would say, “You hear athletes saying, I’m going to do this, or, We’re going to do this to this team or that person, and it doesn’t come out that way. Then they have to eat their words.”

  It makes great stories for reporters, though, when people brag and talk big. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get a lot of press. I was a nightmare for reporters because of my one-worders: “How do you feel?” “Good.” “How do you feel about your medal?” “Good.” Or “Great”—I changed it up sometimes. But that was me. When I said I was going to dedicate my medal to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, it was probably the longest thing I had ever said to a reporter.

  I don’t know for sure if there were any repercussions to me from that action. It’s a difficult thing to measure. Mr. Temple felt that, because of the whole movement and what Tommie and Carlos did on the victory stand, no one ever really looked at all that I had done: back-to-back gold medals in the 100 and three gold medals total and breaking all kinds of records. But if it was that, it wasn’t only that. It was also because I’m not only Black but a woman. Because you’ll notice that no one—except Howard Cosell—was trying to notice me or give me a flag even when I had done something that no one else in the world had ever done—before Tommie and Carlos even ran their race and before I dedicated my medal to them. It was bigger than that. At the time, they were not about to bathe a Black woman in glory. It would give us too much power, wouldn’t it? Because it would have been a moment, if you think about it: “She won back-to-back gold medals; nobody in the world has ever done that. Let’s paint the US all over her—let’s drape her in a flag!” You would think. But no. I would never see them hanging a flag on me. Because one thing the Olympics is not about is giving power to the powerless.

  I think Mr. Temple would have agreed with that. Although one way I know that he was right about my being overshadowed by Tommie and Carlos is that when anyone wants to talk to me about what I’ve done, and they ask what Olympic team it was, and I say ’68, they say, “Oh, you were with them! Those guys, those guys, those guys!” And I say, “No, I won my medal first, so they were with me.” I like teasing people. Because that’s the first thing they bring up.

  In some ways, I’m used to it. I came up in Wilma Rudolph’s shadow, so I learned years ago that you have to know who’s in the room with you. If the other person in the room is someone like Wilma Rudolph, there’s nothing wrong with them getting the attention. And of course it’s not just Wilma; if I go into a room and someone is talking to me, and then Serena Williams walks in, no one’s going to be talking to me anymore, and my little story is no longer going to be on the page. I’m not offended by that. It’s just the rule of the sports game.

  So the way it gets talked about now is one thing. But the way it went down at the time, in terms of building the movement—that’s a different matter. Sometimes I get asked if the movement would have been better at achieving its goals if it had included women. Of course I am going to say yes. We should have been included in the organizing, should have been consulted. It would have made a difference. But we weren’t. Partly it was just a sign of the times, where we were as people, not just Black people but the world: women were expected to follow, to do what the men said. In ’68, they weren’t thinking about what women in general were saying or doing. No one was. Women’s words and women’s lives were not considered worthy of attention. That was not a Black thing; it was an all-race, worldwide sexist thing. Men know better, men are stronger. That’s what most people thought. But I didn’t grow up that way. My parents taught me that I’m just as good or better than anybody, male or female.

  So for me, the fact that I and other female athletes were not included in the organizing before the 1968 Olympics was a problem. I can’t speak for anybody else. But I felt that bringing us into the organizing would have been consistent with the whole idea of the movement, or at least what the movement came to be: a movement about everybody everywhere who was struggling for human rights. That message of inclusion was the reason I got more involved, started to read and think more about the movement. And considering that it was all about inclusion, it just would have made sense for women to be brought in, front and center.

  I had somewhat of an inside source from talking with my ex-husband Art. He was always saying, “If we all band together, it should just work.” And I was thinking, No. It doesn’t work that way. You have to include people. You have to include them actively. No one asked me my opinion. No one asked me, “How do you feel about these things?” And I had feelings, feelings and thoughts, for sure, and if I had had the opportunity in the run-up to the Olympics, I would have shared them. Because I was in a situation that went like this: I need to graduate from college, and I am trying to go to the Olympics again and be the best I can be when I get there. Those parts were clear. Those were my goals. But on top of that, I had to think about this: Once I leave college, what am I going to do with my life?

  That was the main thing going on in my head: I have a life. And my life is getting ready to not be in college. My life is getting ready to be out on my own and trying to have a job. No one was knocking on my door saying, “Could you be the poster child for this or that?” I didn’t see anybody asking me to do commercials, I didn’t see a shoe company asking me to endorse their product—although I ran in their shoes, they never asked me—and I didn’t see anyone trying to give me any money under the table like they did for a lot of the men. That definitely wasn’t happening for me, and it wasn’t happening for Black women in general. None of those things. So my goal was to graduate from college, go out, and find a job.

  Up to that point, my environment had been protective, everything taken care of—my housing taken care of, my food taken care of, everything. But after the Olympics, I was going to be on my own; I had to get a job and find my own housing and put food on the table. I knew my family couldn’t help me. And since no one was talking to me about the movement, I didn’t know how to make the movement fit with all the things I had to do.

  Once I got to Mexico City, it was different. I could be at the meetings and hear what everyone had to say and planned to do and decide if it was an approach that would work for me. One thing I felt the movement needed was a clearer plan. When Mr. Temple would talk to us, back then and even recently, before he passed away in September 2016, he would say, “There was no clear plan—nobody knew what was going to happen!”

  And it was true. No one ever put anything down on paper, nothing was ever sent to us—airmail, special delivery, any old way—to say, “Listen, this is how we’re thinking.” That matters.Because not everyone is in the same place, not in their thinking and not in their needs. It’s great when quite a few of us can see a way forward and feel like we can take risks. But a lot of people were looking at the Olympics as their salvation: “I’m going to go to t
he Olympics, I’m going to win, and it’s going to propel me to do all these great things when I get back.” That’s hard to ask someone to give up. And the person you’re asking to do that, if you have not talked to them, included them, you have not given them a chance to ask, “Well, what are we going to do when we get back? Do you have a map or any kind of clue about what’s going to happen when you get back, if you do protest?” If they did have a plan, it wasn’t shared.

  Once they did what they did on the victory stand, I think it was bigger than they ever imagined. Because what Tommie and Carlos did made the world kind of stop. Everybody had to take a breath. And I’m sure they had things in their minds they wanted to say, but when people were throwing fifty questions at them, it was like they hadn’t thought about how they were going to say them. They didn’t have someone like Mr. Temple telling them all the time: “The press is going to ask questions to provoke you to say the things they want you to say—things that are going to follow you for the rest of your life, so always think before you talk.”

  I look at it now, and it occurs to me that Tommie and John were not that old; they were in their early twenties, same as me, which is actually very young. John grew up in New York—he had a brashness that Lee and Tommie didn’t have, maybe because Tommie was born in Texas and grew up in Lemoore, California, cotton picking, with strict parents and all those kind of things, and Lee Evans grew up similarly, also in California, Madera, picking cotton and grapes. They hadn’t had a lot of exposure. And then they were presented with this whole movement by Harry Edwards and some of the other people who were there. And you would have to talk to them to know how it all went down, because as I have said and said, I wasn’t there and I wasn’t told. But it seems like that must have been a factor.

  In any case, in my mind, when you are trying to build a movement, if there are a lot of people who get left behind or are not spoken to, that’s a weakness. My thinking is always: Have we included everyone? Do you think we’ve talked to everybody? Some people are going to say, “Well, they’re not going to join in no matter what we say.” My question is always, “But have you tried? Do you think we have tried enough?” Because everyone wants to be wanted and needed and feel like they’re a part. And that wasn’t there for us. I’m not upset with them. It’s just more that, “How could you not think of us? It’s the same thing that’s being done to us by the powers-that-be. I mean, we’re in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and you’re in Lake Tahoe, California? No one was thinking of us. How could you not think of us?”