Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist For Justice by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes & Dawud Anyabwile

Set against the backdrop of the 200 metre race at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, Tommie Smith tells his story in this excellent graphic novel, Victory. Stand!

The book opens with Tommie remembering the race at Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico, October 16, 1968. Tommie is in the starting block, preparing to race. He was afraid and filled with anxiety but determined. In the semifinals, only a half hour earlier, Tommie had pulled a muscle in his upper left thigh. He was worried the threats he had received over what he was planning had succeeded but that was not the case, so far. He flew out of the blocks....

The scene flashes back to Tommie's life growing up in a poor family  where he was the seventh of twelve children. In his early life, they lived in Acworth, Texas where his family lived in a wooden shack with no running water, heat or air conditioning. His father was a sharecropper, which meant he worked land he did not own and was once part of a slave plantation. His father grew and picked cotton but also worked sugar cane and corn. Tommie's mother, whom they called Mulla, was strong and kind and not only cooked and cleaned, but also worked in the fields.

Tommie's parents believed that everything came from their faith in God. The family went to church every Sunday to worship, but Tommie had questions. Why did the white people own nicer homes, with indoor plumbing? Why did his mother have to work so hard while the wife of the white man who owned the land did not? Tommie and his brothers and sisters had to walk to a one room school where all the grades were taught by one teacher. "If we were all God's children, why did it seem as if those with fair skin, eyes, and hair were receiving most, if not all, of the benevolence, the favor?"

 

Eventually Tommie's parents moved the family from Texas to California where they hoped life would be better. In the early 1900's, many Black Americans fled the south, migrating to northern cities like Detroit, Chicago and New York. Industrialization had made their work picking cotton obsolete. During and after World War II, more than four hundred thousand Blacks migrated to California. Tommie's family travelled to Stratford, California in Central Valley, to a labor camp. They lived in rough shacks, sharing an outhouse and a place to wash up. 

It also meant a big change for Tommie and his sisters and brothers. In Texas the children of Black sharecroppers worked in the fields most months helping with the crops. But in California, all children were required to attend school and so Tommie was pulled off the bus taking him and his family to the fields. That day Tommie and his siblings got off the bus and walked to Stratford Elementary.

The school too was much different: there were separate grades and the classes were integrated. But Tommie found he was invisible to teachers who never called on him for answers or asked him to help out.

After his father paid off the debt to the people who brought his family to California, things began to improve. Tommie's father moved them into better homes as Tommie grew taller. Two events however, were to foreshadow his future. The first was being bullied by a white boy who Tommie eventually confronted and beat up. The second was being asked to race older students when he was a student at Central Union in Lemoore. The coach of the track team, who was also the PE teacher AND the school principal, Mr.Focht asked Tommie's sister, Sally to get him out of class to race against her and also the fastest boy in seventh grade. Tommie won the race handily. Tommie adored and loved his sister Sally so much, that beating her for the first time in a race made him realize anything was possible.

Mr. Focht did not seem to have any issues with the Black students at Central Union and he set out to help Tommie's family. He told Tommie's father not to move up north to Fresno, offering him a job as a school custodian. For Tommie it was the beginning of a future that would involve his participation in many sports, but ultimately track and field and offer him a way to take a stand against the injustices he and his family had experienced.

Tommie soon found himself excelling in many sports including football, basketball and track and field. He won trophies and medals, which in turn got him scholarships to university. As he moved up in competition, Tommie found he could not ignore what was going in his country with regards to equality for Blacks. It was his athletic abilities that would propel him to a destiny he could never have imagined.

Discussion

Victory. Stand! is the story of Tommie Smith whose life centered around his one act of defiance during the 1968 Olympics. Using the graphic novel format incorporating the black and white illustrations of award winning comics artist Dawud Anyabwile, The graphic novel employs flashbacks, opening with Tommie Smith's races at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. It then alternates between the two periods, the Olympic races in 1968 and Tommie's story of growing up and his path to the Olympics through four chapters, from Chapter 1 Country Boy to Chapter 4 Still Standing.  Victory. Stand! presents the most important details of Tommie Smith's life and how he came to make a stand for equality on the international stage.

Smith had lived first hand the inequality that continued to exist in the United States, despite constitutional changes that were supposed to guarantee equality to all Americans. Describing his early life, how hard his parents worked in the fields, their impoverished living conditions, the one-room school for Black students and how the children of sharecroppers missed school to work, Smith presents to young readers some of the inequalities Blacks faced in the 1940's and 1950's. These inequities meant it was very difficult for Black Americans to improve their situation and Smith soon came to recognize this. As he grew into adulthood, Tommie Smith encountered more inequalities: discrimination in housing, in higher education and even services like renting hotel rooms or being served in a restaurant we inaccessible to him as a Black man.

A series of events throughout the 1960's appear to have been the catalyst that led Smith to become actively involved in the civil rights movement and ultimately to protest at the 1968 Olympic Games. Repeated attempts throughout the early 1960's by young Black activists to peacefully obtain racial equality met with little success and often violent opposition that led to jail, injuries and death. The murder of three young civil rights activists in Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964, the violent actions of police against marchers from Selma Alabama in 1965 were just two such events.

As Black athletes began to dominate certain collegiate and professional sports, they also began to realize they could effect change by demanding change. As more Black athletes began to speak out against racism and demand equality, Smith felt that he had a part to play as well. Issues of inequality also existed in academia and on college campuses. Smith, along with many other Black collegiate athletes became part of a group, Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) formed by Black Panther, Harry Edwards and Ken Noel, a track athlete. The OPHR was to become an important part of Smith's life.

With the approach of the Olympics, Smith was in a unique position. Now in his early twenties and educated he had more life experience and understood what was at stake. With the assassinations of civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. in April, 1968 and then civil rights supporter, Sen.Robert Kennedy in June, 1968, America was in crisis. Black athletes decided against a boycott of the Olympics after South Africa was banned and a number of Black coaches and officials were added to the Olympic team but they also knew they had to protest what was happening at home too. After winning the 200 m in record time, Smith had no definitive concept of how he would protest until he received his medal. 

Although his action of raising his fist in defiance against systemic racism in America cost him almost everything, Smith remains adamant today that he would do the same thing again. In reading Victory. Stand!, readers will understand why Smith and Carlos acted. After years of peaceful protest, ongoing violence and murder of Black activists and leaders, and equality laws that were not enforced, Blacks in America chose increasing militancy both at home and on the international stage. Black American athletes also had to contend with Avery Brundage, head of the IOCC and a known racist who had supported Nazi Germany in the 1930's. Smith paid a high price for his actions: he never competed again so the world never knew what else he might have accomplished on the track, which is truly a shame. He lost his job and eventually his marriage failed. Despite this he persevered obtaining several degrees and teaching and coaching at Oberlin College and Santa Monica College.

In this regards, Victory. Stand! is a testament to Tommie Smith's courage, determination, resiliency and integrity. Victory. Stand! is highly recommended and should be partnered with John Lewis's graphic memoir series, March.

Book Details:

Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist For Justice by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes & Dawud Anyabwile
New York: Norton Young Readers       2022
202 pp.