Talk:1968 Olympics Black Power salute

Word choice

I had to look up quite a few words in this article to uderstand it. Do you think some of the words could be made less confusing. It does say somwhere that editor should aviode terms that may confuse people. ostracized!?! gagging clauses!?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emigaljeli (talk • contribs) 18:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Date of Occurrence

Many sites incorrectly cite the date of occurrence as October 17th 1968. The date of occurrence is October 16, 1968. This can be verified through this short biography [1]. Also, if one does a search through Google newspaper archives you will see that many news papers reported that the event happened on Wednesday night. Wednesday night was October 16th in 1968. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.163.231.144 (talk) 22:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Boycott

Removed:

The boycott had been the idea of Harry Edwards who set up the OPHR, which appealed to all Black American athletes to boycott the games to demonstrate that the Civil Rights Movement had not gone far enough.

Because there's no discussion of any boycott earlier in the article, and they clearly didn't boycott the Olympic Games. --Aioth 09:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Article name

shouldn't it be "salute" rather than "Salute" per WP:MOS? --Madchester 21:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Yes — I've moved the article to 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. jareha ^(comments) 07:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Tommie Smith has claimed that the gesture wasn't a "black power salute", but rather a move for human rights. Is this article misnamed? Tim Aug 9, 2008 7:20 —Preceding undated comment was added at 07:19, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Apology

has the ioc or the us track association ever issued an apology ... in light of today's ignorant remarks about mr bolts response to his own victory (in the 100m & 200m this year) i'd guess the ioc has never had the guts to admit they were wrong

Copyright issues

Parts of this article seem largely lifted from the timesonline.co.uk article on the event, rather than being an original summary of events. This has led to some POV statements. I'm going to attempt a rewrite.Stile4aly 18:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

NCERT's inclusion of this incident has no secondary sources.

Including discussion of NCERT's coverage of this incident is unwarranted. There must be hundreds of books and other publications that mention this. As the event wasn't in the U.S., any publication in the world save Mexico shares the distinction of being from a country other than where this occurred.

In order to show NCERT's coverage of this is relevant, you need to find reliable secondary sources that say as much; until then, it should stay out of the article. JDoorjam JDiscourse 05:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I dont understand your problem with this. The coverage by NCERT points out the notability of this incident. I also dont understand your insistence on secondary sources. An online textbook is a pretty reliable source to say that something is in that textbook. I am invariant under co-ordinate transformations (talk) 21:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia requires secondary sources in order to prove both the reliability and the notability of information. The textbook itself is not a reliable secondary source, it's evidence. That makes it original research. That the event is notable is beyond question, but it is not clear why NCERT's inclusion of the incident is relevant enough to warrant mentioning here. Surely you wouldn't suggest mentioning NCERT in the articles corresponding to every topic NCERT covers? Unless you have outside sources explaining why NCERT's discussion of this topic is particularly and especially important, it appears not to be critical to the topic. JDoorjam JDiscourse 20:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If you recall, the NCERT mention was in a section titled Literary and Textual references. The idea was to have a section dealing with how this incident is represented in literature. So, NCERT was just a start. I agree that NCERT mentioning this by itself is not notable, but a section containing references to this incident literature would illustrate its importance beyond just a protest for equal civil rights. I am invariant under co-ordinate transformations (talk) 20:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

San Jose State University sculpture

San Jose State University is the alma mater of both Smith and Carlos. In 2005 they erected a 20ft high statue of the incident in honor of the two great athletes. I've seen a few press pictures of it around the net and it's quite impressive. Here is a picture and press release on the SJSU website. I wonder if somebody in or near San Jose would be able to get a free picture of the statue. The location of the statue is in the university's Sculpture Garden, between Clark Hall and Tower Hall. --82.18.14.143 (talk) 16:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've tagged the talk page with a request template. Hope someone has the chance! Oliphaunt (talk) 13:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

A photo has been added today. The photo was taken before I added the tag, so it's probably a coincidence. Still, I removed the tag. Oliphaunt (talk) 17:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting that there is no representation of Norman in the statue. As if he had never been there at all! Of course he was, as photographs prove, but perhaps his appearance didn't "fit in" with the agenda of those who commissioned the sculpture. Was any reason actually given for this distortion of history? It would make an interesting addition to this section.Shiresman (talk) 16:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Added a picture of the statue as found on flicker to commons and linked it here. Leav (talk) 05:31, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Geoff Small documentary

Although I did not see it, apparently the BBC broadcast a documentary about the protest and its aftermath earlier this month. It was called Black Power Salute and the director was Geoff Small. --82.18.14.143 (talk) 01:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a "Black Power salute"

According to Smith, the gesture was not intended as a Black Power salute (see NY Times article), but rather an expression of black humanity and pride, and a statement of rights. It was however was very widely interpreted as a Black Power gesture, and disentangling the two is pretty difficult 40 years after the fact, and is firmly embedded in popular culture with this meaning. The article needs to be renamed to something slightly more neutral to reflect this, and the same with the content, but thought I'd get comment before doing so. Mostlyharmless (talk) 03:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this seems the most appropriate thing to do. Of course the content should be amended right ahead according to the given NYT reference. I agree on the article title too, although I have no title to propose at the moment.--Sum (talk) 11:33, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

How about 1968 Olympics salute, for the title and lead. It will still be very clear what is referred to. Mostlyharmless (talk) 22:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I have to chime in here, haven't edited in a bit myself but here goes. Basically it comes down to what the event is referred to in literature on the topic. What is the most common name? Is the event commonly referred to as the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute, or some derivation thereof? If the answer is yes, then it should stay the same. Honestly, the intention of the participants has little relevance to the title of the article. --IvoShandor (talk) 04:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

We are not here to repeat the bottom lines of the mainstream media. If there are multiple sources asserting that it was not a "black power stalute", we should correct the article.--Sum (talk) 06:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

"1968 Olympics salute" has an odd ring to it, and sounds like it's a salute to the Olympics. Maybe something along the lines of "1968 Olympics protest"? Oliphaunt (talk) 09:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

@Sum: I wasn't saying anything about repeating the mainstream media, I said literature. Surely this topic has been written on at length somewhere, probably peer reviewed. I was merely pointing out that it generally seems accepted on Wikipedia that article titles defer to the most common name for historic events. In fact, you brought the mainstream media into this to begin with. EDIT: wasn't you, sorry about that. I wasn't challenging the suggestion. By all means, if multiple references state it's not a black power salute in intent this should be pointed out in the article. But the article name should be how it is commonly known. Whatever way that may be, I don't know, I haven't read all the available sources. Largely, it seems this is known as a black power salute. I'll see if I can dig up anything, I don't contribute much around here anymore. The longer I am away, the more I can see why I left. --IvoShandor (talk) 13:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

It should stay as is because for three reasons, Its well known as is, it was 40 years ago so its quite difficult to prove intentions and the action they performed is widely recognised as a Black power salute. Lots of pages have loaded title and in many cases they don't need to but this one should as there aren't any good alternatives. For my money the 1986 Olympic controversy or simillar would be more correct but noone would type that.(Morcus (talk) 19:12, 26 August 2008 (UTC))

There is just no way. These results on Google Scholar are clearly showing that this is well known as a Black Power salute. State the participants intentions in the article but no way will I go along with an article title change. We are not here to change history. The title has to stay as is, anything else will violate WP:NPOV. --IvoShandor (talk) 14:10, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org/content.asp?id=21&nid=116&p=20
  • In 1968 Olympics Black Power salute on 2011-05-25 04:01:52, 404 Not Found
  • In 1968 Olympics Black Power salute on 2011-06-06 13:54:22, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 2

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1056987
  • In 1968 Olympics Black Power salute on 2011-05-25 04:01:52, 404 Not Found
  • In 1968 Olympics Black Power salute on 2011-06-06 13:54:30, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)