Original black and white poster of a key image from Australia’s sporting history. At the centre, Tommie Smith (gold medallist) and John Carlos (bronze) at the Mexico City Olympics, standing with raised black gloved fists during the playing of the American national anthem at the medal ceremony for the 200-metre event. Their salute was a silent protest against racial discrimination and violence against Black people in the US. The athletes wore beads and a scarf to protest lynchings and removed their shoes as they walked to the podium, to protest poverty.
Peter Norman, the Australian athlete and silver medallist, stands on the podium wearing a badge in solidarity, endorsing the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
The International Olympic Association took the medals back from Smith and Carlos; these were later restored to them. Peter Norman’s decision to wear the solidarity badge cost him his professional status in Australia: he was ridiculed as 'the forgotten man' of the Black Power salute, was not selected for the 1972 Munich Olympics, never ran in an Olympics again, and was not welcomed or included at the 2000 Sydney Olympics unless he renounced his actions thirty-two years earlier, which he never did.
Peter Norman died in 2006. Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave eulogies and were pallbearers at his funeral. John Carlos stated that 'If we were getting beat up, Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.' The US Track and Field Federation declared October 9, the day of his funeral, as Peter Norman Day.
