February 26, 2012, we are in Sanford, Florida, United StatesA boy wanders around a neighborhood with an attitude that does not convince one of the residents at all, engaged in a night patrol. Trayvon Martin he has black skin, he is 17 years old. He was 17 years old, because the man who looks at him suspiciously, George Zimmermanshoots and kills him. He will not be charged, a few months later in court, because the episode occurred in unclear circumstances. That is enough to unleash the social insurrection and the hashtag spreads #blacklivesmatter. In those days, the movement was born which over the years advanced, albeit silently, until it exploded on May 25, 2020, the day of the murder of George Floydafter the police officer had been there for 9 minutes Derek Chauvin he presses his knee on the neck to immobilize it. “I can’t breathe” – “I can’t breathe” – Floyd whispers unsuccessfully, before falling unconscious – this does not, however, suggest to the officer to lift his knee – and die.
Floyd’s death sparks a reaction from the sports world. Starting with the strongest African-American athlete of all, LeBron James. Black Lives Matter is spreading. Before each event, athletes from all over the world, with white or black skin, kneel down.. The age of social media amplifies the strong position taken. Yet, just over half a century earlier, in 1968 – a very turbulent year, of rebellion, in which the demand for rights reached its peak, there were the precursors of Blacklivesmatter. Mexico City was dealing with the Olympicsan occasion too important to be compromised by the protests of the demonstrators. Ten days before the mega event, the police bloodily repressed a protest demonstration of Mexican students. Dozens of dead and 700 injured. Among them also the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci: “It felt like Vietnam”he had the opportunity to declare. A massacre that did not prevent the Olympic machine from starting up. But the 1968 Games also went down in history for the Demonstrative gesture by Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos who, after having won gold and bronze in the 200 metres race, appeared on the podium barefoot, with one head only and with a black glove, raised to the sky in protest, joining the dissent expressed by the Black Panthers: “We were protesting for black rights”. They also wore a uniform with a star symbolizing the defense of those rights. A few days later their compatriots emulated them and won in the 400 meters Lee Evans, Larry James, Ron Freeman who added a beret to the black glove. They paid, all five of them. They were marginalized by their own country, they lost their jobs and the Olympian reputation that they had brought home thanks to the medal. And they also paid Peter Normanan Australian who won silver in the 200-meter race and chose, out of solidarity, to wear the same star as Smith and Carlos: he returned to his country and suffered the same segregation as his podium companions. He spent an anonymous life, as a physical education teacher, before dying of a sudden heart attack at the age of 68. Carrying the coffin on the day of the funeral, in the front row, were two elderly African-American gentlemen: Tommie and John.. Tommie Smith and John Carlos.
