Review of the book Silent Gesture 9/12/07
From my family’s apartment in the Redfern projects in New York City, I watched the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, on our 14 inch black and white television, with total amazement. While I remember a lot of people running, swimming, and jumping fast, it Is the image of two black men standing on the medal podium, each of them with a black-gloved fist in the air, a symbol that is now the athletic anthem of achievement and freedom by athletes from all racial backgrounds around the world that stayed with me the longest.
I really didn’t have a full understanding of what I was watching. As a 15-year-old boy, I was pretty sheltered from the issue of black and white. I knew I was watching something that was going to chance the life and those around me forever. Anytime I get goose bumps when I see or read something, I know it’s a changing moment. The announcers where discussing the scene on the medal stand as if these two men had just shot someone or committed a hideous crime. The two men, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were a part of the American Olympic team and the Speed City-the San Jose State College track team-coached by Bud Winter.
At the time I really don’t remember my parents saying much. There were people in the projects who thought it was cool that they (Smith and Carlos) stood up for something, but no one really knew exactly what they were standing up for. Some thought they were part of the Black Panther movement, others thought they, like Muhammad Ali, were part of the Nation of Islam. In truth, Smith and Carlos were just part of a group of athletes who knew they wanted to do something to bring attention to the condition of blacks, and black athletes in America.
In his autobiographical book—Silent Gesture, co-written with David Steele, Tommie Smith invites the reader into his world from childhood to present day. Tommie’s journey begins in Texas, gets fertilized in California and take root in Mexico City and then back to San Jose where he was not treated as hero or revolutionary, but as a pariah, he had to struggle to place a roof over his families head and food on the table. He informs us that that his gesture was truly a silent gesture designed to send a passive, non-threatening message to America and the world that they needed to pay attention to how a group of American citizens were being treated. Tommie never saw himself as a revolutionary, as Dr. Harry Edwards did. Harry Edwards a noted sports sociologist from San Jose State, who was also a basketball player at San Jose State, in the early 60’s. Had called for a Boycott of the 1968 Olympics. It was called the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
The book covers Tommie’s life as a sharecropper’s son in Texas and Lemoore, California. His father worked to put food on the table and give his family a better life than the one he had. In fact Tommie credits some of his athletic endurance to the years he worked in the field picking cotton, grapes and vegetables. The book also underscores some of Tommie’s bitterness for not being recognized more as a person who took a stand, when taking stands as a black person wasn’t popular. I wonder if Tommie was a boxer or basketball player, it he would have not benefited from the delayed acceptance of his petulance, like Ali, Jim Brown and other outspoken athletes have, once America accepted their position as more chic then revolutionary.
The most intriguing aspect of me reading this book, some 39 years after first seeing Smith and Carlos do something so powerful, but scary, was how often my path crossed with Tommie Smiths’. In 1977, I took my first Job out of College in Oberlin Ohio. Tommie Smith was there in his last year as head track coach and Athletic Director, I only stayed at Oberlin for a year, Tommie’s last year. I now know why he left. During the time I was there, I don’t recall ever having a conversation with Tommie Smith. I was working as a Resident Director and assistant basketball coach. I passed Tommie in the hallway, nodded, but I am pretty sure we never had a conversation.
Nine years later I moved to Santa Monica California, and to my amazement, Tommie was the Head Track Coach and Athletic director at Santa Monica Community College. Again, the book illuminates how this all came about and the various perilous journeys he had on his way there. Several years after moving to Santa Monica, I happen to run into Tommie and struck up a conversation. It wasn’t a long one, but it was a penetrating one. I told him how we were at Oberlin College at the same time and saw recognition on his face of what being at Oberlin College meant (slow, transitioning from a liberal place to a semi-conservative place).
I had heard that Tommie personality was acerbic when it came to discussing the events of Mexico City or just being approachable at all. That wasn’t the guy that I had my conversation with. He was reflective, even smiled several times and every time that I saw him afterward, he gave me a very personal acknowledgment. I guess after you go through what Tommie went through you adjust and fine peace. Which is what I feel his autobiography is about. Silent Gesture-the autobiography of Tommie Smith is a cathartic memoir of a life fulfilled, but with great anger and emotion that, while subsided, not fully eradicated.
So now in 2007, I get the complete story in Tommie’s own words. Silent Gesture is somewhat redundant at times, but it is truly autobiographical. It’ answers all the questions I had about that night, October 16, 1968, in Mexico City and more. Tommie pours his soul out and allows the reader to uncover the layers of Tommie’s life and to potentially examine their own.
The reader will see that Tommie Smith was a total athlete (he played football, basketball and Track), but more so a man who spent most of his life under construction and who was willing to go through what he did because it felt right to him.
I write these reviews because I truly feel that young athletes, especially black athletes, need to read more. Reading allows me to uncover and discover aspects of myself that might have been lost or unclaimed. It also gives me some deeper perspective on the world I live in. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the importance of the Silent Gesture and the hold that it has on our culture in the 21st century.