By Brooke Finister – Staff Writer
The untold story of the John Carlos and Tommie Smith statues is important when looking at the legacy of encouragement at San Jose State University.
A fiberglass and bronze structure was erected on October 16, 2005, the 37th anniversary of Carlos and Smith’s bravery.
For the last 13 years, the statue has stood as a permanent reminder of the sacrifice the athletes made on an international platform to stand for what they believed was right.
As many have a deep emotional connection to the act of bravery, it comes as no surprise that 50 years later the public takes its stand in support of their causes.
Stand, a new documentary about the making of the statue, by Cotton Stevenson and Marc Chiat, a former professor at SJSU and a filmmaker, respectively.
Erik Grotz, SJSU alum and the man behind the idea of the statues, sat down with the Napa Register in 2003 to talk about the need to commemorate Smith and Carlos.
“I couldn’t understand why the campus didn’t acknowledge their efforts as student activists,” Grotz said to the Napa Register. “It would be an inspiration to other students. It would prove to them they can make an impact now.”
Many weren’t aware that the protest was carried out by SJSU students and there hadn’t been a single bit of recognition on campus. So, Grotz brought the idea of publicly recognizing Smith and Carlos to the Associated Students.
“This is an opportunity for the university and the community to give the athletes the welcome they didn’t get decades ago,” Alfonso de Alba, former Executive Director of Associated Students, told the Napa Register in 2003.
Dr. Robert Milnes, former chair of SJSU’s Department of Art, envisioned this project as a permanent stance for equity.
Rigo 23, a Portuguese muralist, painter and political artist whose work is associated with Black Power and civil rights movements was a front-runner for this project. Having done public art but just getting back from Portugal, Rigo asked if there was anything he could do to meet the deadline to which Abla responded, “Well a good idea is a good idea, even scribbled on a napkin.”
The Portuguese artist’s first sculpture in his career was the 23-foot-tall Olympic statue.
“These young people had chosen that photograph from the Olympics to use on the flier. So this was a no-brainer, to me,” Rigo said in an interview for Stand. “Why reinvent the wheel?”
Fundraising for the project began and a mock-up, no bigger than a shoe box, showed the public what was to come.
As Rigo put it, these statues were going to be a “labor of love.”
When Carlos received word of the art piece, he chuckled in an interview with Stevenson and remembered thinking, “… it was going to be some bronze statue and bronze turns into turquoise and pigeons shit all over it.”
By incorporating fiberglass, he was able to replicate the exact uniform without bronze being the main medium as Carlos’ initial understanding had been.
Rigo deemed it important to get 3D-printed scans of Carlos and Smith to get the muscular texture just right.
The artist’s attention to detail of the event included the thumbs up behind Carlos’ back, reflecting the success of the action.
Smith asked Rigo to reflect the feeling of fear through the eyes on the statue by having them look downward, projecting the idea of reflecting inward. He said he was praying on the podium because he thought he was going to be shot. This was the reality of those times.
“It’s like people’s tribute,” Rigo said. “And I wanted this to have a feel of a tribute coming from the people and not from the statue.”
Peter Norman, not depicted on the second-place platform, wanted people who visited to stand in solidarity with Carlos and Smith.
Dr. Milnes spoke to Stevenson about the location of the statues, which were originally planned for the courtyard outside of the AS house when San Carlos was a through street.
The goal was to have the statues in a prominent location and ultimately was moved to the heart of the school’s campus. With the gentle swell of the hill, coincidentally resembling the Mexico City stadiums hill that gave it the nickname of a sombrero.
When the athletes were in the crowd watching the unveiling, the emotions ran deep.
In an interview with Stevenson for the documentary, Carlos recalls the unveiling, “When my mom saw it she looked up at it and cried.”
“Right here, these are our mentors, they did it with their heads bowed, they did it with humility, and that, nobody can question,” de Alba said in a Stand interview. “At the end of the day, their goal was to improve America.”
There are many other individuals that worked and supported the project through committees and collaborations that helped to unveil the sculpture.
Their work, much like the statues, the memory and legacy are unforgettable.
Follow Brooke on Twitter @the_brookestar