John Carlos

The boy wanted to be a swimmer. His father, Earl, a cobbler with a shop in Harlem and a veteran of the First World War, sat him down and explained that a swimmer trains three or four times a day and that the pools where you could do that were closed to him. So Carlos ran. He ran alongside the freight trains in upper Manhattan, and by his own account he and his friends broke into the cars and handed the food out around the neighborhood. The speed took him to East Texas State on a track scholarship, where he found segregated bathrooms and left after a year, and then to San Jose State and Bud Winter, who was already coaching Tommie Smith.

He took bronze in the Mexico City 200 meters on October 16, 1968, in 20.10 — then stood on the podium in black socks and no shoes, one gloved fist up, for the Olympic Project for Human Rights he helped found. Brundage suspended both men and expelled them from the Village. Less remembered is the race. At the Echo Summit trials that September Carlos had gone 19.7 by hand, faster than anyone alive, and lost the record because his brush spikes were not sanctioned. He has said he eased off in the final to let Smith win. Smith says otherwise.

The Eagles took him in the 15th round of the 1970 draft and a knee ended the tryout. He played a season in Montreal in the Canadian league, and the injuries ended that too. What followed he has described in detail and without self-pity: security work, gardening, caretaking, whatever came. He had four children. One winter he chopped up his own furniture and burned it in the fireplace to keep the house warm. His marriage to Kim Groce, whom he had married in 1965 while they were both still in high school, did not survive the years after Mexico City. They divorced in 1974. In 1977 she took her own life. Carlos has spoken about her death and has connected it to the pressure those years put on his family.

He came back through the side door. He worked for Puma, for the United States Olympic Committee that had suspended him, and for the organizing committee of the 1984 Los Angeles Games. From 1985 he spent two decades at Palm Springs High School, coaching track and working as a counselor and in-school suspension supervisor, and for years the students had no idea who he was. San Jose State put a statue of the podium on campus in 2005, Peter Norman's step left empty so visitors can stand in it. He and Smith took the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2008. The memoir, written with Dave Zirin, came in 2011. He has publicly backed the athletes who knelt after him.

John Carlos's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Olympic Project for Human Rights other
  Founding member of the boycott campaign that preceded the podium 1967
• 19.7 at Echo Summit other
  World best in the 200 meters, never ratified because of his brush spikes 1968
• The Mexico City podium protest other
  With Tommie Smith, and with Peter Norman wearing the badge 1968
• World-record-equaling 9.1 in the 100-yard dash other
  The same season he led San Jose State to its first NCAA title 1969
• The John Carlos Story book
  Written with the sportswriter Dave Zirin 2011

• 1965 aged ~20 Marries Karen Benjamin Groce, known as Kim, while both are still in high school
• 1966 aged ~21 Takes a track scholarship to East Texas State and meets Jim Crow He has said the segregated facilities were why he left after a single year.
• 1967 aged ~22 Transfers to San Jose State and wins Pan American gold at 200 meters Trained there by Lloyd (Bud) Winter, alongside Tommie Smith.
• September 1968 aged 23 Runs 19.7 by hand at the Echo Summit Olympic trials Faster than the world record. Never ratified, because his brush-spike shoes had no sanction.
• October 16, 1968 aged 23 Bronze in the 200 meters in 20.10, then the fist Suspended from the US team and expelled from the Olympic Village within days.
• 1970 aged ~25 Drafted in the 15th round by the Philadelphia Eagles A knee injury ended the tryout. One season in the Canadian league followed.
• 1977 aged ~32 Kim, from whom he had divorced in 1974, takes her own life
• 1985 aged ~40 Becomes track coach and counselor at Palm Springs High School He stayed roughly two decades.
• July 16, 2008 aged 63 Accepts the Arthur Ashe Courage Award with Tommie Smith Forty years after the IOC called the salute a violent breach of the Olympic spirit.

• Tommie Smith b. 1944
  Won the Mexico City 200 metres in 19.83 seconds and raised a gloved fist on the podium. stood with
• Muhammad Ali 1942–2016
  Boxing legend and cultural icon known for his athletic brilliance and principled stance against the Vietnam War draft. campaigned for
• Jesse Owens 1913–1980
  Track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, defying Nazi ideology. opposed by
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. athlete-activist precedent
• Colin Kaepernick b. 1987
  Quarterback who knelt during the national anthem in 2016 and never played in the NFL again. influenced