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Negroes Threaten Olympic BoycottLOS ANGELES (AP) - Negro athletes threatening a boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games to illustrate their feelings of racial injustices ran into opposition and support from their race Friday.Harry Edwards, a teacher of sociology at San Jose State College and former allilete there, said. 50 to 60 sports figures attended a Thursday meeting inLos Angeles and unanimously endorsed a boycott.Edwards, 24, commented, “This is a significant stand because 1 know of no other group of people who can make our feelings known.“I hope the country can see what these black athletes have dune. Tliis is our last chance to avert a racial catastrophe in this country.The melting on the Olympics was part of a three-day Black Youth Conference held at the ( Second Baptist Church in South I is /geics. Before the session adjourned violence erupted outside between a picketing leftist group and followers of a mili- , tant Black Power leader.One 17-year-old suffered a , bullet wound in his wrist.Olympia gold medal winner j Ralph Boston, holder of the . world record in the long jump, j commented in Nashville, Tenn., , on the proposed boycott, saying j It doesn’t make sense.’’He declared, “I don’t think . this would be the thing that very . many people would go along ■ with. I’m sure there are some people who feel that way, but , I’m not one of them.”In Washington, D.C., Norvell Lee, who won a gold medal box- ■ mg at the 1952 Olympics, said, ; “I don’t know who the people : are behind the boycott, but the}' don’t realize what they're doing : at all. The young athletes are ill advised.“Athletics is the only field in ; which the Negro has been treat- . ed well...“The athletes, if they carry out the boycott, will be doing . more to hurt themselves and their image than anything I can . imagine.Cassius Clay, who won an Olympic boxing gold medal in 1960, said, “Giving up a chance at the Olympics and a gold medal is a big sacrifice. Butanything they do that’s designed to get freedom and equality for their pople, I’m with 1,000 per cent.”Top Purse Slated In Boat RaceLAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. (AP)—A record field of 127 speed boats goes into a two-day marathon grind Saturday in the annua! Lake Havasu City Outboard World Championships, shooting at an all-time high purse of $27,750.The schedule calls for a four-hour run Saturday and Sunday on the Colorado River.Pre-race trials produced four drivers as co-favorites in a fleet that includes boats powered by from one to five outboard engines.The list includes Pint Schoonover, Lima, Ohio: John Merritt,Owens CriticizesTalk Of BoycottCHICAGO (AP) - Jesse Owens, who stoic the show at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, criticized Friday a threatened boycott of the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City by U.S. college Negro athletes.Owens said of the movement, accentuated at Los Angeles meeting Thursday:“I deplore the use of the Olympic Games by certain people for political aggrandizement. There is no place in the athletic world for politics.” Owens, now 53, won four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics to the consternation of Adolf Hiller, the Nazi dictator who declined to congratulate the lithe Negro from Ohio State University.He was a sprinter as is Tommie Smith, a top Olympic hopeful from San Jose State, who said in Los Angeles Thursday he would join the 1968 Olympic boycott to help the Negro plightin the U.S.tr‘It is my personal experience that the Olympic Games have been one of the greatest areas in which personal achievement is rewarded culturally, and, eventually, financially and economically,” said Owens.Owens said he agreed with another Olympian, Ralph Boston, who broke Owens’ world broad jump record, that “first you have to make the Olympic team before you talk about boycotting it.”★ ★ ★ ★ ★ * Japanese SurprisedWith Boycott NewsTOKYO (AP) - Japanese sports circles received with disappointment the news that a group of American Negro athletes were considering a boycott of the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.Major newspapers and sports publications gave the reports Lop play.The decision was made last Thursday at a Black Youth conference in Los Angeles, Calif.While expressing surprise at the “depth of America’s racial problems,” Japanese sports officials credited. Negro athletes with maing “Olympic Games worth seeing.”“No more fascination can come from the Olympics without top Negro athletes participating,” commented Tetsuoj Ohba, director of the Federation I of Japanese Amateur AthleticAssociations.| Hanji Aoki, also of the Federr-lion, described the proposed boycott as “a serious blow to the world’s sports.”A large sports daily, Sankei, doubted if a boycott would spread across the United States.'The.. problem is how many other Negroes will follow suit,” it said. “Just how their decision would affect other Negroes remains to be seen.71But another large sports daily, Nikkan Sports, said, “There cannot be any more race for gold medals between the United States and the Soviet Union, particularly in the track and field clients.77
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Florence Morning News
Florence, South Carolina, US
Sat, Nov 25, 1967
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