Word: boycotters
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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TRACK & FIELD THe Black Boycott At California's San Jose State College a few years back, Harry Edwards, now 25, was quite an athlete: captain of the basketball team, school record holder in the discus, and such a hot upi prospect in football that several pro teams made him offers. Edwards, a tall (6 ft. 8 in.), brainy Negro, passed them all up to become an assistant professor of sociology at virtually all-white San Jose because "scholarship was my longest suit." Not quite. For the past six months, Harry's long suit has been Black Power...
...graduates were able to find jobs. None of the city's 135 elementary schools even had a library. After a white minister protesting de facto segregation in schools was accidentally crushed to death by a bulldozer (TIME, April 17, 1964), civil rights leaders organized a citywide student boycott...
...cooperate. But how many Americans care who wins the 440-yd. hurdles in Mexico City? There will be a few wails of wounded patriotism, if the Soviets win more medals than we, but it's unlikely that most white Americans will be moved to reform by a black boycott of the far-off Olympic Games...
...there are two factors mitigating such a joint action by the Negroes and whites. First, the blacks don't want the whites. At the meeting in Los Angeles which first announced the boycott, white reporters were barred. Second, if Negroes like Greene are unwilling to give up the glory of an Olympic medal, then whites not immersed in the cause are even less likely to pass up the Games...
...blacks say a major part of the boycott is to show the less privileged Negroes still in the ghettos that the athletes have not forgotten them. Boycotters like Tommie Smith have decided it is time for blacks to disabuse America of the notion that Negroes have "rhythm" but no brains. They hope their sacrifice will be an inspiration to the youngsters still in the ghetto. They have elected to scrap the inspiration of athletic glory for the dubious rewards of a political burden. It is a courageous but tragically misguided decision...