San Jose St. to restore men’s track, 50 years after famed protest

San Jose State announced Monday that it will reinstate its men’s track and field program in 2018 — 50 years after two Spartans turned a medals-presentation ceremony at the Mexico City Olympic Games into an iconic social-justice moment. Olympians Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Lee Evans, all former Spartans, were joined by SJSU alum and noted sociologist Harry Edwards at a luncheon and panel discussion at the school Monday. The move was meant to bring attention to the plight of blacks in the United States at the height of the civil rights movement — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated six months earlier, and race riots had roiled the country that summer — but the gesture turned Smith and Carlos into pariahs in many corners of the country. Smith and Carlos were ousted from the Olympic Village and sent home before the end of the Games, and they were targets of death threats when they returned to California. Despite the program’s individual and team successes (the Spartans won the 1969 NCAA Division I championship), San Jose State disbanded men’s track and field — along with wrestling, men’s cross country and women’s field hockey — in a cost-cutting move in 1988.