Twelve years after his death at age sixty-four and a half-century after he stood on a Mexico City Olympic medal podium in unblinking solidarity with Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Australian sprinter Peter Norman is finally getting his due. The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) recently awarded Norman a posthumous “Order of Merit,” a designation meant to praise athletes who achieved “remarkable merit in the sporting world.”
“This is an overdue award . . . The respect for Peter and his actions is still enormous to this day,” said AOC president John Coates. “We lost Peter in 2006 but we should never lose sight of his brave stand.”
AP Images
USOC-Smith and Carlos
FILe - In this Oct. 16, 1968, file photo, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos stare downward while extending gloved hands skyward during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner after Smith received the gold and Carlos the bronze for the 200 meter run at the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left. Smith and Carlos, the American sprinters whose raised-fist salutes at the 1968 Olympics are an ageless sign of race-inspired protest, will join the U.S. Olympic team at the White House next week for its meeting with President Barack Obama. Smith and Carlos were sent home from the Olympics after raising their black-gloved fists in a symbolic protest during the U.S. national anthem. They called it a ``human rights salute.'' The USOC asked them to serve as ambassadors as it tries to make its own leadership more diverse. (AP Photo/File)
Norman won the silver medal in that legendary 200-meter race at the 1968 Olympics and then, in arguably the most globally famous athletic photograph ever taken, he stood next to Smith and Carlos—winners of the gold and bronze metals, respectively—as they raised their black-gloved fists during the U.S. national anthem. While Smith and Carlos made their stance of dissent, Norman was ramrod straight and wore a button that read, “Olympic Project for Human Rights.”
Norman stood in solidarity as a white man against racism during a time when Australia’s racial policies were brutally retrograde. But he came from a family of Salvation Army workers and was raised on the social gospel, believing that religion should be used as a means to pursue social justice.
When Norman returned home to Australia, he did not receive a hero’s welcome. Instead, he found himself ostracized despite winning the silver, the highest finish for an Australian sprinter in Olympic history. John Carlos has told me, in conversations over the years, “I always felt like Peter Norman, after those Olympics, had it tougher than Tommie or me because in the United States they took turns kicking our asses. In Australia, Peter was on his own.”
Incredibly, Norman was left off Australia’s 1972 Olympic team, despite his myriad accomplishments. When Australia hosted the Olympics in 2000, he was on the outside looking in, with regard to all the festivities. The Australian Olympic Committee has denied that they consciously shut Norman out, but he was so isolated that the U.S. track and field team offered him lodging so he could at least be connected up-close to the games.
When San Jose State University erected a massive statue in tribute to alumni Smith and Carlos in 2005, they decided to leave the silver medal stand empty. After Carlos received word that Norman would not be represented, he marched into the office of the school’s president and said he wouldn’t have anything to do with a statue of 1968 that erased Peter Norman from their shared history.
But Norman, contacted by phone, told Carlos that this space was left open at his request, so that people “can climb the statue and stand where I stood and feel what it felt like for me to be a part of history.” To this day, when there are protest actions on campus, students climb to the spot where Peter Norman stood.
When Norman died in 2006, at age sixty-four, Smith and Carlos flew across the world to be the lead pallbearers at his funeral.
Two years ago, another statue of Tommie Smith and John Carlos was unveiled, this one at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. On this occasion, Norman was included, the carefully crafted detail of his Olympic Project for Human Rights button on full display.
Norman stood in solidarity as a white man against racism during a time when Australia’s racial policies were brutally retrograde.
“We can’t let them erase Peter and have statues or photos or book covers just be of Tommie and me,” Carlos said. “When they try to erase Peter, they are really erasing the truth that there were young white people who stood with us, who stood with our message of racial justice and our solidarity with oppressed people throughout the world. They want to isolate us and isolate the message.”
Peter Norman has been the ultimate symbol of true kinship in struggle for fifty years. His belated recognition by the Australian Olympic Committee presents an opportunity to recall what an extraordinary person he was, and why his part of this story—his place in the picture—matters.
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin is the host of the popular Edge of Sports podcast and sports editor of The Nation. His new book, Jim Brown: Last Man Standing (Blue Rider Press), was released in May.