Retrospective reflections on the Black American male athlete and the 1968 Olympics: an elite interview with Dr Harry Edwards

Abstract

This research note presents an abbreviated version of an ‘elite’ interview conducted with pre-eminent sport sociologist Dr Harry Edwards. As the architect of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, Edwards’s activism targeted racial apartheid in the USA and in South Africa. Edwards’ leadership in the area of human rights catalysed the African-American boycott of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. A series of semi-structured, retrospective interview questions were posed to Edwards to garner his perspectives on the progress that Black American, male Olympic athletes have made in the USA from 1968 to present day. Analysis of the interview with Edwards revealed the following about Black American, male Olympic athletes: (1) the social conditions in the USA had changed for the better since 1968; (2) in the second millennium these have become ‘commoditised’ after the Olympics and gain substantially from their celebrity; and (3) Black male, American athletes can become enslaved to the economics of their celebrity if they are not careful.