How Did The Black Power Movement Impact The Civil Rights Movement

Almost one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3 million enslaved people, African Americans were still being treated unequally with segregation, several forms of oppression, and violence (History.com). During the 1960s, many of those African Americans who were being treated unfairly used nonviolent protests to change the way society viewed the differences between blacks and whites (History.com). Eventually, with the help of protesters such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Olympic athletes, and many others, the government worked to give African Americans equality through laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Somewhat unique for this time period, a surprising and memorable human rights protest occurred at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. After receiving their first and third place medals, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two black Olympians on the USA track and field team, raised their fists during the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner. This salute to the Black Power Movement symbolized resistance and defiance, changed the twentieth

He ordered Smith and Carlos to be suspended from the United States Olympic team and banned from the Olympic Village. Although the US Olympic Team refused to suspend the sprinters, Brundage threatened to ban the entire team which led to Carlos and Smith eventually being suspended. Another member of the International Olympic Committee called Carlos and Smith’s actions “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.” Avery Brundage, who was also the president of the International Olympic Committee in 1936, allowed the Nazi salutes during the Berlin Olympics. Brundage said that the Nazi salute was a national salute at the time, so it was acceptable in a competition of nations