The Third Man on the Podium and What It Cost Him

The photograph of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists up, heads down, no shoes, the anthem playing and them not singing, is one of the most reproduced images of the twentieth century, and it deserves every reproduction, but there's a third man in the frame, a white Australian sprinter, Peter Norman, who wore a badge, and what he did, and what was done to him, is the part of the story that sits heaviest on me, because it's the part about what solidarity costs when nobody required it of you, when you're not the one being lynched, when your people aren't the ones being killed, when your country's history doesn't put you on that side of any line. (Norman ran 20.06 seconds in the 200 meters on October 16, 1968, and it's still the Australian record fifty-five years later, which tells you something about how fast he was, and something else about how a country treats a man who embarrasses it, who stands up for something that isn't his to stand up for, who wears a badge that says "I'm with them," even when "they" are Black men in America in 1968, the year Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis and Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles and the whole country seemed to be deciding whether democracy was something it actually believed in or just something it said at parties.) Smith and Carlos had reasons that were written on their skin, reasons that made their protest not just a gesture but a necessity, a matter of life and death, and Norman stood with them, not because he had to, not because his people were the ones being murdered, but because he looked at two men he'd just raced against and decided that their dignity mattered more than his comfort. The Olympic Project for Human Rights had wanted a boycott, had demanded that apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia be banned, that Muhammad Ali's title be restored, that Avery Brundage be removed, a man who'd once told American athletes that the Olympics were about sport, not politics, as if sport were ever about sport, as if anything were ever just about the thing it claimed to be about, and the boycott didn't happen, so Smith and Carlos protested where the cameras were, and Norman stood with them, because he saw them standing, and he couldn't look away, he couldn't just walk off the podium and leave them to face the consequences alone, and that's the kind of solidarity that systems fear most, not the kind that comes from shared suffering, but the kind that comes from a person who has nothing to gain and everything to lose and shows up anyway.

The IOC knew about the massacre in Tlatelolco Plaza, ten days before the Games opened, and the Games went on, because that's what spectacles do, they absorb the blood around them and call it pageantry, and the men who run them sleep fine, and the men who interrupt them get sent home, and Brundage, the same man the OPHR wanted removed, demanded the US Olympic Committee suspend Smith and Carlos, threatened to ban the entire American track team if they didn't comply, and Norman stood with them, wore the badge, suggested splitting the gloves, and that's the part of the story that sits heaviest on me, because it's the part about what it means to stand with someone who's being erased or diminished or blamed for their own suffering, and what it costs to do that, what it costs to be the decent one, the one who shows up even when you don't have to. The Australian Parliament apologized to Norman in 2012, six years after he was dead, which is to say they apologized to their own consciences, and the AOC gave him an Order of Merit in 2018, twelve years after he was dead, which is the kind of timing that makes you want to throw something breakable at a wall, and a statue went up in Melbourne in 2019, but he never saw any of it, and that's the thing about solidarity, it's not about the reward, it's not about the recognition, it's about the act itself, the act of standing with someone, of wearing the badge, of suggesting that maybe we should split the gloves, and the empty spot on the pedestal at San José State, the one that Norman asked for, is an invitation, it's a dare, it says the spot is open, it says the need hasn't gone away, it says there's room for you, and the question is whether you'll stand in it, whether you'll wear the badge, whether you'll suggest splitting the gloves, and what you'll lose for it, what you'll gain for it, and what it will cost you to be the decent one, the one who shows up even when you don't have to.