A Moment's Gesture.

This post is dedicated to John, Audrey and Dominik. Sometimes i'm a really ignorant guy, but really lucky, at the point to meet in New York these three guys who let me know the story I am going tell you in this post. Dominik is the friend who explained me the contest in wich the story took place, John is the author of the article about the story and Audrey is the editor of "American Legacy Magazine", where the article is published.

The story:
Wednesday, October 16, 1968. Five days into the XIXth. Olympiad in Mexico City. A pair of African-American track stars - two of the fastest sprinters in the world, tommy Smith, 24, and John Carlos, 23 - stood in a tunnel in the Estadio Olimpico Universitario waiting for the medals cerimony to begin. They had just run their most important race, the 200-meter final, and won the bronze and the gold medals respectively. With the world waching, their actions in the next moment whould change history and the lives of these two young men forever. The spring and summer of 1968 han been one of the most tumultuous times in modern history. The civil rights movement was at its height , and the war in Vietnam raged on. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Democratic presidential hopeful had been assassinated two months apart, King on April 4 and Kennedy on June 5. Antiwar demostrations had become increasingly violent, and race riots peppered cities nationwide. Two days after King's murder, members of the Black Panther Party had engaged in a shoot-out with the Oakland Police, leaving 17-year-old Bobby Hutton, who had surrended empty-handed, riddled by police gunfire. And in August, as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated Hubert Humphrey to run for President against Republican nominee Richard Nixon, a clash between antiwar protesters and the Chicago Police Deparments had expoded outside. On Augist 21st the Soviet Army had marched into Czechislovakia with 5,000 tanks and 200,000 troops, ending the liberal reforms put in place a few months earlier. In France, student protests and a general strike had effectively shut down the country and almost toppled the Government. All over the world, a generation was staging rebellions against traditional norms.

This is the contest. And now I stop my story to let you to continueand read directly on the magazine. You'll know what these two amazing athlets did. You can find the link to American Legacy Magazine just looking between my favourite links. I'd like to thank again John Spingola who wrote this really intristing 9 pages article. Thank you for your time and attention.

- American Legacy -