The night before the 200m race in Mexico city Tommie Smith and John Carlos, talked about what they were going to do and finalized and were going to do it.

John Carlos the day getting stretched and ready for the race, and Tommie Smith doing the same thing.

Runners get your mark,  get set, go and Tommie Smith went blazing and took gold, and John Carlos with bronze.

Tommie Smith with a world record time 19.83 seconds.

On the podium you would have seen Tommie Smith with gold, Peter Norman with silver, and John Carlos with bronze.

Still on the podium after receiving their   medals you see John Carlos bow his head and raise his left fist and Tommie Smith bow his and raised his right fist.

The two were immediately taken off the podium and taken back to the village were all the Olympians were staying, told to pack their bags and leave.

John Carlos and Tommie Smith were banned from the Olympics, and never allowed to compete again.

 “It was a cry for freedom and for human rights,” Smith says. “We had to be seen because we couldn’t ."

Smith and Carlos felt they needed to do what they did, because of civil rights given to African-Americans were different from the rights Caucasian people had and John Carlos and Tommie Smith didn't agree with what was happening to their African-American piers, they felt like they had to make a stand. 

 The people of the world mistaken the clenched fist as supportive to the black power nation. The reaction to the non-violent was as fast as it was negative. In the United States there was an outrage, people saw the bowed  head as a disrespect to the American Flag.

 The Associated Press accused them of a “Nazi-like salute.” Brent Musberger, then a columnist with the Chicago American newspaper, called them “black-skinned storm-troopers.”

One reason why people reacted like this is, because many people had different point of views of the silent protest, African-Americans apart of Black Panthers might have taken it as a protest to the African-American race to go against Caucasian people and Caucasian people might have thought of the protest as a sign we are going to stand up for what we believe in and we are not afraid anymore to stand up for what we believe in.

That moment on the podium in 1968 is the 6th most memorable moment in the 20th century.