Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice

Richard Smith is Tommie’s father, a strong man whose influence molds Tommie’s approach to life. Even though readers see little of Richard after Tommie leaves for college, he continues to affect how Tommie views his place in the world. Richard stands tall in his son’s mind, providing an example both physically and mentally of how to survive when the world is working against a person.

While they live in Texas, Richard is a sharecropper, meaning that he works on land that isn’t his, giving some of the profit to the owner of the land. In the wake of the Civil War, sharecropping as a profession was a way for white people to take advantage of the newly emancipated African Americans who had no land themselves. The formerly enslaved people continued to work the land, often times at wages that were barely livable. The land that Richard works was “mostly land that had once belonged to slave owners” (12). Tommie himself also comments on this lineage from slavery and sharecropping by stating, “We were not a priority. We, the children of sharecroppers and farm hands, and the grandchildren of slaves” (143). However, Tommie’s father wanted to break this connection, encouraging his children to attend school. Richard serves as a key figure within the theme of Education as Providing Access to Opportunity, and he is explicit in recognizing how society can also abuse the value of education, namely by withholding education as a means of denying opportunity.

Tommie greatly admires his father. The man has heroic proportions in his mind: Tommie sees Richard as “a Black Superman before I ever knew who Superman was” (14). Despite his father’s strict edict that Tommie could never come in second, Tommie looks back fondly on his time growing up with Richard. In fact, Tommie’s “earliest memory is of when [his] father would take [the] kids fishing” (8). This memory stands in contrast to many other memories, as Tommie’s father is most often depicted as working. That Tommie remembers the fishing, though, helps indicate that Richard’s top priority—and the reason that the man worked so hard—was for his family. In his adult life, Tommie emulates his father through his willingness to work hard to do what he needs to survive. His father’s warning to never come in second in sports only spurs Tommie on, encouraging him to make sure that he is at the top of his game. Likewise, after Tommie’s running career comes to an end, Tommie returns to physical labor at times, having to shovel a track or stay out in the cold. Emotionally, too, Richard’s perseverance inspires Tommie both on and off the track.

Tommie takes his running to the next level when he begins working with Bud Winter at San Jose State. Lloyd “Bud” Winter was San Jose State’s track coach, and many of Winter’s students went on to become All-Americans, Olympians, and world-record holders, including Tommie. Winter spent 39 years coaching, establishing such a reputation while at San Jose State that the track and field became known as “Speed City” (120).

Bud provides young Tommie with new insights into his physical body that play out in Tommie’s ability to build perseverance mentally as well as physically. Tommie does not initially commit to only doing track, spending his first year of college playing both football and basketball as well; however, his decision to focus on football is one that excites his coach. Winter is also a surprising coach, in contrast to the more intense and hyper-masculine coaches more typical of men’s college sports, someone who looked like “your […] extremely nice, humorous uncle” (120). Tommie is appreciative of Winter’s approach to his job. Winter “didn’t yell and scream. He had one of the coolest, liveliest laughs you’d ever hear” (120). For Tommie and his teammates, Winter created an environment in which athletes could come to know their bodies as machines. Winter’s calm demeanor lent itself to pushing runners, “always find[ing] a way to get the most out of the guy” (121). It is through Winter’s commitment to helping runners that Tommie is able to maximize his raw talent.

Tommie further illustrates the effects of this training when he sets his first world record, listening when his coach tells him to “[u]se the science to [his] benefit” (126). Because of Winter, Tommie understands how he can alter how he uses his muscles while running, changing his approach to increase his speed without tiring quickly. It likewise comes up again when Tommie is at the Olympics in 1968, illustrating how Winter’s advice helped him throughout his career. Moreover, as a coach himself, Tommie carries on Winter’s legacy through the athletes with whom he works.

Harry Edwards was a professor at San Jose State during Tommie’s time at the school. Edwards taught in the sociology department, where he focused on the sociology of spots and the treatment of Black students. Edwards himself was a student-athlete, having attended San Jose State; he then became interested in how colleges and universities treated and capitalized on Black athletes. Edwards’s activism drew attention from a number of federal agencies, and he was the victim of several racist attacks, including when his car was set alight, as Tommie mentions.

Edwards is an important guiding force in Tommie’s journey toward becoming a Black activist. When Tommie finds fellowship among other Black student athletes, Edwards also explains how Black athletes can and should “tak[e] ownership of [their] own bodies, [their] own lives” (135). Because student athletes bring a lot of attention to their college or university, they also generate a lot of revenue for the institution, money that is likely to exceed the amount they receive through their scholarship. Edwards emphasized that college sports—and sports in general—should not take such advantage of players, specifically Black players who often face unfair treatment on or off the field. Edwards made explicit the connection between sports and activism, a connection that Tommie was still figuring out for himself, and ultimately, Tommie’s commitment to work with Edwards demonstrates Tommie’s growth as an activist. Edwards’s connection to the Black Panther Party worries the university, as the Black Panthers were seen as a violent and militant organization. Like Tommie, Edwards received a number of death threats and was under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, given his critiques of the United States government.

Edwards is also central to the formation of the Olympic Project for Human Rights movement, which aims to demand better treatment of Africans and African Americans at the worldwide event. Tommie joins this movement as well. Flashbacks to interactions with Edwards also help bring into the narrative the treatment of Black people outside the United States, such as those affected by apartheid in South Africa. Edwards’s voice in the novel is often assertive, marking Tommie’s shift from passive observer to active participant in the Civil Rights Movement: “The Black athlete has left the façade of locker-room equality and justice to take his long-vacant place as a primary participant in the Black revolution” (145). Much of Edwards’s influence is evident in Tommie’s decision to use the first-place podium at the Olympics as a platform for protest.