WHEN RAISED FISTS RAISED NATION'S IRE.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

Evening is still coming as Tommie Smith sits on a wooden bench and looks over the Santa Monica College track, his young charges heading off for the day while the football team continues to work out.

He gives them all a long look, smiles a peaceful smile.

``None of these kids know who I am,'' Smith said. ``They don't have the slightest idea. To them I'm just `Coach.' ''

In the late afternoon, John Carlos is trying to talk on the phone from Palm Springs High where he is the suspension supervisor, but he has to keep barking out instructions to students whose heads turn the wrong way.

In the desert, too, when Carlos arrived on campus, he found few were aware of who he was.

``When I came here 17 years ago, they didn't particularly know,'' Carlos said. ``A few years later a textbook came out and they happened to see my picture and name in the history book.''

The stand

The defining moment that elevated Smith and Carlos beyond American sports figures and into history books happened 35 years ago today in Mexico City.

It was during the 200 meters victory ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. Smith had won in world-record time; Carlos had captured the bronze.

Then as they took the victory platform and the U.S. anthem began, they bowed their heads, and each wearing a black glove, raised a clenched fist in a black-power salute.

It remains one of the most vivid images in Olympic history. A picture once seen, never forgotten.

It was a courageous, nonviolent protest, benign but impassioned dissent. They meant to bring further attention to civil rights issues, to give pride to African-Americans, and they succeeded.

Only the reaction was as swift as it was negative. In the U.S. there was outrage from many in white America. People saw heads bowed as disrespectful toward the American flag. They mistakenly saw the clenched fists as supportive of the Black Panthers.

The Associated Press report described them ``in a Nazi-like salute.'' Brent Musburger, then a Chicago columnist, called them ``black-skinned storm troopers.''

The outspoken Carlos made the kind of comments that only inflamed the establishment. Said Carlos after the ceremony: ``We're sort of show horses out there for the white people. They give us peanuts, pat us on the back and say, `Boy, you did fine.' ''

The International Olympic Committee demanded the U.S. Olympic Committee ban them from the Games, but it refused. The next day the IOC said if the sprinters were not banned, the entire U.S. track and field team would be barred from further competition. The USOC caved in.

Smith and Carlos were not allowed to run in the relays and were kicked out of the Olympic Village and seemingly into Olympic infamy.

Turning away

Never have U.S. Olympic heroes been so shunned. The endorsements and acclaim were hardly at the same level as today, but Smith and Carlos were ostracized. Jobs became difficult to come by. They received death threats. Rocks flew through windows into their homes.

``One rock came through our front window into our living room where we had the crib,'' Smith said. ``It seemed like everybody hated me. I had no food. My baby was hungry. My wife had no dresses.''

Even today, there are those who remain angry and full of hatred.

``There are still threats,'' Carlos said. ``I was never concerned about those punks. I just let them know it will be remembered, that life doesn't stop when you leave this planet.''

Smith, now branded the great rebel, had been a member of the ROTC program at San Jose State but never had to serve after graduating.

``They gave me an honorable discharge for un-American activities,'' Smith said.

They probably did him a huge favor. At the time, the war in Vietnam was raging and the body count growing.

``I was going to 'Nam,'' Smith said. ``I could see myself in rice paddies. I believe there's a God. Sixty-eight had its downfall, but it had its protection for me. I might not be alive.''

At the time, Carlos had two brothers serving in the Armed Forces.

``After the Mexico demonstration, my brothers got discharged immediately,'' Carlos said.

Smith borrowed money to complete his education and get his teaching credential. He tried football a few years for the Cincinnati Bengals, then finally got a job as a track coach at Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1978 he moved to Santa Monica College, where he has been a social science and health teacher, and continues to coach cross country and track and field.

Carlos had an even more trying time. He worked various jobs, hustling where he could, working as a security guard or a bouncer.

``I'd get minimum wage and then go to Vegas and roll the dice to get it up so something to feed my family,'' he said. ``We had to chop up furniture, the kids' beds, to stay warm.''

Carlos looks back now and the first thing that comes to him is basic.

``That I survived,'' he said. ``That I still have any sanity.

``My first wife is deceased as a result. She took her life because she couldn't deal with the pressure from the results of Mexico.''

The beginnings

Smith was born in 1944 in Clarksville, Texas, where his father worked on area farms. ``A dirt farmer,'' said Smith, one of 12 children.

``I was the sixth out of 12, the third of six boys, and born in June,'' he said. ``I'm right in the middle of everything.''

His family moved to a camp in the San Joaquin Valley in 1951, where they lived for two years. Smith would help his father in fields, working cotton or corn or grapes, or with the irrigation.

Even as he began to excel athletically in high school, he still worked the fields up to 10 hours a day. His abilities landed him a scholarship at San Jose State, and he soon was an astonishing world-class sprinter. When he went to Mexico, he held 11 world records.

When he returned from Mexico, he went to visit his father, still working the fields. His father could not read but had heard people were angry at his son.

``He kind of looked at me, looked up and down, and said in his Southern drawl, `You know, I've been hearing a lot of things about you. Everybody been telling me you did something wrong. You stuck a hand up or hit somebody or something.'

``I said that's not truthful. He said, `Well, you're telling me that and I'm going to believe you. You're my son.' First time I shook hands with him in my life.''

Carlos is from Harlem, where his father was a cobbler and his mother a nurses' aide.

``My mom and dad never saw me run a single race,'' Carlos said. ``They were always working every weekend. They were just trying to raise us.''

One of five children, Carlos lived with his family in an apartment behind his father's shoe store and across from the Savoy Ballroom, where the best big bands and jazz groups of the day played.

As a boy, Carlos and his friends would help people out of cabs or sing and dance outside the club. ``We were out there hustling,'' he said.

Then he would retreat to his apartment, where he could hear Duke Ellington lead his band or Frank Sinatra sing, music he still loves to this day.

Like Smith, Carlos was a multisport star, who ultimately wound up a San Jose State.

Together but apart

People often assume Smith and Carlos were great friends. Sprinters from the same college, bonded together forever by their Mexico protest.

In truth, the two were never close. They never competed at the same time at San Jose State. They never forged some great plan should they both make the podium. At best, they are cordial to each other.

``I don't think John Carlos likes me even now,'' Smith said. ``I don't think Carlos likes very many people. That's just his demeanor. I'm more of a human person. I will not sit and talk to him. I talk to him on the phone. That's just my own preference.''

Smith lives in Chino, Carlos in Palm Springs, but they have never been to each other's home.

And to this day, they disagree on exactly what happened in Mexico, whose idea the protest was.

Harry Edwards, another former San Jose State athlete, had formed the Olympic Project for Human Rights and wanted blacks to boycott the Mexico Games. In a meeting in Denver before the team flew to Mexico, athletes in OPHR met and decided to compete and protest individually.

In the race, Carlos - who had beaten Smith in world-record time at the trials - led early before Smith closed to win in 19.83, still a world-class time.

But a stunned Smith heard Carlos had claimed he allowed him to win because the gold was more important to him. Smith said later when they were on a flight returning from an AAU meet in Kentucky, his wife confronted Carlos and he said it was true.

``I heard him say it,'' Smith said.

Carlos said: ``Tommie can say whatever he wants. All I can say is, I respect Tommie Smith as one of the greatest sprinters in Olympic history.''

The two also disagree on whose idea it was on the actual protest at the victory stand.

After the race, the two and Australian Peter Norman - who wore an OPHR badge on the podium - had to wait two hours in a tunnel before the ceremony. Smith said he had the gloves and was trying to determine exactly what to do with them.

``The thought process was of power or strength, and I didn't know how to do it except just hold my hands up like in church,'' Smith said. ``I've been religious all my life. Praise God with your hands up in church, with your head bowed. I thought this would be a good thing for me to do.

``So I told John, `This is what I'm going to do. I have another glove if you want it. You are welcomed to do, and you do what you think is necessary.' I said if you want to do it, just watch me and follow my lead.''

Carlos tells a much different version: ``He had the gloves, I had the idea.''

While Smith said his head was bowed in prayer, Carlos said his was in reflection.

``I reflected on my father who had fought in the the first World War,'' he said. ``I reflected on when I was 7 or 8 and my mother would be working a lot of nights and away from her family. I reflected on the ignorant-ass teachers sent into the urban parts of the city who had no business being there. There was much to reflect upon.''

35 years later

What both still agree upon is, despite everything, they have no regrets.

These two supposed radicals, these two combative outsiders, have spent their lives teaching the young. Both remain very religious.

``They wanted to build us to be arrogant, militant, unruly African-Americans,'' Carlos said. ``Anything but individuals serious about life, serious about their country, and its responsibilities to its citizens.

``People looked at us like we were subversive. We were like birds busting out of a cage.''

Smith said: ``I was always an advocate of equal rights. Not that I wanted to whup the white man, or get whupped by the white man, because I saw that happened to my father. I wanted to be equal to the man doing the whupping. Give me equality.''

Today both will be at San Jose State, where a ceremony is planned to honor their protest. The school hopes to raise funds to erect a statue next year.

``What's so surprising about it is, on a positive note, it's the brainchild of a 23-year-old white student,'' Smith said.

Thirty-five years has passed since two sprinters made a stand, made a difference, made history.

``We still have a way to go,'' Carlos said, ``but we can see some distance for where we were.''

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- color) Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos extended their gloved hands skyward in racial protest during the '68 Olympics, sparking a storm of controversy.

(4) Moments after accepting congratulations from the Duke of Exeter for winning the 200-meter dash, Tommie Smith made his imprint on history.

Associated Press

(5) John Carlos, who was awarded the bronze medal before the clenched-fist protest, now is a suspension supervisor at Palm Springs High.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer