The 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the display of black power

The Guardian

I first saw this image in my parent’s house in Harrow at the age of 15. It was showed on all the news bulletins and caused a sensation. I remember feeling thrilled and inspired by the image.

I had been brought up in the Harrow suburb which was at the time an almost exclusively white community. I was the only black girl at my grammar school and my family the only black family on our street. In the 1960s as a black person in the UK you still felt on the defensive and somehow as an outsider looking in on society. Enoch Powell was still a popular hero.

I followed closely the civil rights movement in the US but this image of young black men being so defiant on a totally unexpected occasion was subversive and thrilling. For me this image linked the civil rights struggle with all the other liberation movements, the ANC and Che Guevara. The whole civil rights movement in the US changed my perspective and I realised it was important to be proud of my race. It definitely helped shape my politics and it meant for me that one of the most important issues became black liberation. That remains a fundamental concern of mine to this day.

At the time it felt so subversive. I had seen a million Olympic athletes standing on the podium but the meaning of this was startlingly different. Though things have changed I still feel the thrill today when I look at the picture. The lasting message of that picture for me was that if those athletes could be brave enough to stand up for what they believed in front of millions, I too should be brave and proud in my life.

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