Olympic athlete and sports activist John Carlos, famous for making a black-gloved salute on the medal stand at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, will receive the American Visionary Art Museum’s highest honor, the Lifetime Grand Visionary Award, during a gala at the Baltimore-based museum on June 28. He will be the main speaker.
AVAM’s new director, Ellen Owens, will also speak to guests at the event. The former director of the Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University, Owens starts in Baltimore on June 23 and her welcoming remarks, in which she’s expected to discuss her vision for the visionary museum, will be her first public address there since she was named in April to lead it.
The event, called the Play(ful) Ball Gala, will celebrate the intersection of sports, art and activism, echoing the themes of the museum’s current mega-exhibition, “Good Sports: The Wisdom & Fun of Fair Play.”
Carlos, who turned 80 this month, won a bronze medal at the 1968 Olympics for the 200-meter race. He became famous when he and gold medalist Tommie Smith each raised a black-gloved fist during their medal ceremony to protest social injustice in Mexico City, the United States and around the world in 1968. In his autobiography, Silent Gesture, Smith called the act a “human rights salute.”
The year had been filled with upheaval on many fronts, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the passage of the Fair Housing Act and protests against the Vietnam War. There had been a call for countries to boycott the Olympics that October but the U. S. chose to compete. In addition to raising their fists in silent protest, Carlos and Smith removed their shoes and wore beads on the podium.
Because the Games were broadcast internationally, they gave athletes a platform to share their views in front of an enormous audience. The silent protest by Carlos and Smith has been called one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympics. Carlos went on to be a champion for civil rights throughout his life. He has the title ‘Dr.’ because he has received several honorary doctorate degrees.
AVAM’s board of directors and gala committee selected Carlos to receive the museum’s Lifetime Grand Visionary Award because of his commitment to sports activism.
“Few sports figures have demonstrated the courage and determination to stand for something larger than themselves, transcendent of their innate talent and competitor skills,” said AVAM board chair Christopher Goelet, in a statement.
“A true Olympian, Dr. Carlos’ heroic 1968 protest spoke volumes in a powerful plea for our nation to better honor its founding ideals of equality for all. Through his silent eloquence and subsequent actions, Dr. Carlos continues to practice the high art of social justice and compassion in action.”
Intuitive, self-taught artistry
AVAM is a Congressionally-designated national museum and education center dedicated to intuitive, self-taught artistry. The museum champions the role intuition plays in creative invention and evolutionary innovation of all sorts — including the fields of art, science, health and wellbeing, engineering, humor and philosophy – and especially in inspiring compassionate and creative acts of social justice and betterment.
AVAM’s event will be held from 5:30 p.m. until midnight on the museum’s campus at 800 Key Highway. The schedule includes an intimate gathering with Carlos; a guided tour of the “Good Sports” exhibit with curator Gage Branda; a cocktail hour; the main dinner and program with Carlos as the featured speaker, and an after-party with dancing and music by DJ Uncle Quincy in the museum’s Tall Sculpture Barn.
Tickets are available at three tiers — $750, $500 and $50 — that provide access to various parts of the program. The after-party, which starts at 9:30 p.m., is a summer highlight in Baltimore. More information is on the museum’s website at avam.org.
Carefully-planned protest
John Wesley Carlos was born in The Bronx in June 1945 and was raised in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. He received a full track and field scholarship to East Texas State University (ETSU), where he led the school to its first Lone State Conference Championship.
Transferring to San Jose State University after one year at ETSU, Carlos led that team to its first NCAA Championship, tying the 100-yard dash record with a time of 9.1 seconds. He was also the gold medalist at 200 meters at the 1967 Pan American Games in Canada, and set indoor world bests in the 60-yard dash and the indoor 220-yard dash.
After Carlos and Smith won medals for the 200-meter race at the Olympics, they planned their protest to coincide with the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner during the medal ceremony. The silver medal winner, Peter Norman from Australia, had been told by representatives of his country not to participate, but he wore a human rights badge on his jacket along with Carlos and Smith. Their salute, televised around the world, provided a poignant model for championing equal rights that many remember more than half a century later. It was Carlos’ only time at the Olympics.
Carlos wrote in his 2011 autobiography, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, that their protest was carefully planned to contain symbolic gestures that could be understood without words.
“We decided that we would wear black gloves to represent strength and unity,” he wrote. “We would have beads hanging from our necks, which would represent the history of lynching. We wouldn’t wear shoes to symbolize the poverty that still plagued so much of black America. On the medal stand, all we would wear on our feet would be black socks.”
After his track career, Carlos played one season with the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League. He later became involved with the United States Olympic Committee and helped organize the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
In 2003, Carlos was elected into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. In 2008, at ESPN’s ESPY Awards, he accepted the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage for his 1968 Olympic salute. In 2016, President Barack Obama recognized him at the White House. He continues to work for human rights and is a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. There’s a statue depicting him and Smith on the medal stand, called Victory Salute, at San Jose State University.
Joining Desmond Tutu, Patch Adams
Past recipients of AVAM’s Lifetime Grand Visionary Award include South African Archbishop and theologian Desmond Tutu; social activist and former Georgia Senator Julian Bond; American physician, clown, author and Gesundheit! Institute founder Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams; R&B musician Daryl Davis, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin.
“Good Sports: The Wisdom & Fun of Fair Play” is on view at the museum until August 31.
Goelet said he hopes others will follow Carlos’ example.
“In recognizing Dr. John Carlos with AVAM’s highest award,” he said, “we hope new generations of Americans will be inspired to model his courage, caring, commitment, and vision.”
