In History: How Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics shook the world

In the wake of the protest, Smith and Carlos were vilified by much of the media and shunned by the US sporting establishment. In the years that followed, they were subjected to abuse and death threats. Smith attributed the break-up of his marriage to the stress of dealing with the fallout. When he should have been at the peak of his career, the US Olympic committee banned him from national and international competitions. By 1972, instead of preparing for the Munich Olympics, Smith, who was still the fastest man in the world, was reduced to training schoolchildren in Wakefield in northern England to earn a living.

Sport was one of the few areas where the ability of the individual could triumph over the barriers faced by black Americans, Smith explains in this BBC archive video. “The black athlete… has grown to know that the body could be a springboard to success. I think he works doubly hard at that as he would at anything else. Because in athletics, especially track and field, nobody can say you are no good. The only person who can say that is that clock,” he says.