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Stand Up And Be Counted: The Black Athlete, Black Power And The 1968 Olympic Project For Human Rights, Dexter L. Blackman

History Dissertations

The dissertation examines the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a Black Power attempt to build a black boycott of the 1968 US Olympic team that ultimately culminated in the infamous Black Power fists protest at the 1968 Olympics. The work challenges the historiography, which concludes that the OPHR was a failure because most black Olympic-caliber athletes participated in the 1968 games, by demonstrating that the foremost purpose of the OPHR was to raise public awareness of “institutionalized racism,” the accumulation of poverty and structural and cultural racism that continued to denigrate black life following landmark 1960s civil rights legislation. …