In the summer of 1968, a roiling year of war, assassination and political and racial tension, I turned 14 in the Cajun town of Eunice, La. Schools would not fully integrate until a year later, after man walked on the moon. So naïve was I as a boy, so complete and unquestioned was segregation, I thought the sign at the laundromat that said, “Whites Only,” referred to the color of clothing.
In 1968, I was also first drawn irresistibly to the Olympics, an event I have now covered 14 times: Bob Beamon launched a magnificently unbound long jump at the Summer Games in Mexico City. And most startling to a sheltered white teenager in the South, the 200-meter sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists on the medal stand during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest the treatment of black Americans.
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