#Power to the people fist portable#

John Carlos: 'It's what I was born to do,' he says of his salute. 'Sometimes you say, 'I love you' and they say, 'I don't want your love' and you say, 'Well, it's out there, so you're going to have to deal with it.' And I learn a lot from them, too.' 'Being a counsellor, you have to talk to the children as though you're talking to a thousand people,' he says. Pictures of Malcolm X and African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, the pledge of allegiance, which American schoolkids must say to the flag every day, and a small poster saying Go For Gold Olympics.įor all its challenges, Carlos loves his job. Among the family photographs on the wall are the vaguest allusions to his moment in history.

#Power to the people fist portable#

More than four decades later, you'll find him at his desk in a spacious portable building behind the basketball courts at Palm Springs High School in California, where he works as a counsellor. That single moment on the podium cost Carlos dear. Running came so naturally, he never thought of it as a skill. When the police gave chase, he was often the only one who never got caught. He used to steal food from freight trains with his friends and then run with it into Harlem and hand it out to the poor. Carlos always knew he was good at sports and originally wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, until his father broke it to him that the training facilities he needed were in private clubs for whites and the wealthy. As a teenager, he used to chase Malcolm X down the street after his speeches and fire questions at him. Raised by two involved, working parents, he learned to hustle with his friends in Harlem and fight his way out of and into trouble. Carlos's beginning was, to say the least, eventful.