Colorado Springs community powered radio major funding for backstory is provided by then honest donor the National Endowment for the Humanities the University of Virginia the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur finding Davis Foundation's. From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities this is backstory. Welcome to the show I'm Brian Balla And on that airs if you're new to the podcast we're all historians and each week we explore the history of one topic it's been in the news Russian athletes dominate the Winter Olympiad But this year the ever formidable Russian Olympic team banned from the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea because of prior systemic don't think we'll see you new investors it is an open question with the United States to speak in the Winter Olympics. Isn't over the question is that now in doubt when a little bit 1st tonight for North Korea they'll play together united women's hockey team this is the 23rd Winter Olympics is about to open in Pyongyang South Korea and given the tensions in that peninsula the event has something of a Cold War feel to our 1st story takes us back to the 1980 it was tough times for the United States the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and the United States was in the dying days of the Carter presidency but the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid are about to serve up an unexpected sporting victory against the Soviets which gives American morale a much needed shot in the arm no wonder it got called The Miracle on Ice the United States in many respects at that time you know felt paralyzed on the world stage this is Don Ableson professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario Jimmy Carter who's president for $977980.00 often talked about a crisis in confidence that Americans have lost faith in government that they have lost faith in the believe the United States to project power abroad. About the Cold War sports it become a proxy for political antagonism between east and west but the American ice hockey team at the Winter Olympics was an unlikely group of national heroes and this team of 20 college students came together under the leadership of the legendary college coach her Brooks from the University of Minnesota and these were you know kids drawn me in many from you know Minnesota and enter of Massachusetts primarily in the Boston area. And these college students were facing the most fearsome ice hockey team in the world. In the Soviet Union had won the Olympic gold medal in hockey in 19646872 in 76 not surprisingly were heavily favored to take the gold again in 1980 yet didn't they have some awesome nickname like Big Red Machine they like that they were the big red machine and they were the big red machine. Now I understand that the 1st game that they die States played which ended in a tie the stadium was only half full I don't think it was half full yet when they faced off against the Soviet Union several games later. To be killed the fans were shouting USA USA even before the game started people went crazy so you're absolutely right when the games began in the 1st game that the u.s. Played in their pool was against Sweden and was very very late in the 3rd period that they were able to tie it up and ended up being 22 then they went on and they played chuckle some back you which was really rank seed it ranks 2nd in the in the pool. They defeated the Czechs $7.00 to $2.00. Or 73 that was a fantastic team and then they went on to beat the Romanians that you know the West Germans and the Norwegians before getting to the Soviets so every time they were able to to to win again the media focus became more intense politician right again to to focus more on what was happening in Lake Placid So not surprisingly by the time they entered the 1st medal game again or the medal round against the Soviet Union there was this frenzy around the American team and as Al Michaels of a.b.c. News at the time he was one of the keep broadcasters along with the legendary much welcome news goaltender Ken Dryden said you know most of the people in this arena most of the people in this country might not know the difference between a blue line and a clothesline but they do understand the significance of this contest and he was right it wasn't a bad note hockey it was about what a potential victory represented but in a match that was increasingly cast as an episode in the Cold War the American college students kept their cool on the ice for the players it was about a hockey game it was a sport they loved it was it was something they felt passionate about and yes they were going up against you know team that had won you know 4 previous gold medals and yes they thought you know staring across the ice that these were many of the players that they had admired for years. But I think they were able to keep focused on what was important and although other people wanted to draw them into this cold Who or arena they were although they wanted them to to take on a role that they weren't comfortable with they were able to remain focused on the issue at. And and that was to play a sport that they loved. The American team had a strong leader and their inspirational coach Herb Brooks Brooks had spent time in the u.s.s.r. Of watching their game and he understood just what it would take to win against the Soviets certainly in the a limb picks when you're playing against all of these European teams particularly the Soviets the emphasis had to be on skating it had to be on speed it had to be on passing it really had to be executed with what he regarded as surgical precision and get the players that think less about themselves individually and more as as a team. And it worked it's akin to you know a college football team beating the Green Bay Packers that's what they did even the Soviet players were able to acknowledge that something quite incredible had happened when the Soviets saw the American celebrating in the famous photo of you know sticks and gloves in the air and helmets coming off and players on the eyes how do you each other and crying and looking up you know really to they have insist you want to know how how is that that this happened that many of the Soviet players you know looked at the Americans and thought we have lost that feeling and look at how the Americans are celebrating look at what this means to them perhaps it didn't mean as much to us before long Don Abell since says that the Miracle on Ice was being used by Americans who were desperate for a much needed national victory. The media certainly embraced the policy makers did President Carter was among the 1st people to call you know her Brooks in the team to congratulate them later on Ronald Reagan would you know tap into the victory as a you know as as a way of promoting American values and our ideology and political system over that of the Soviets so it became far more than a hockey game in the ensuing years but there's no question that even today when people watch footage of that game and what it represented it really sends a chill down their spine it was a magical moment and which helped not only bring hockey on to them on to the radar in the United States but I think tied a very important role in boosting the spirits of a nation that was suffering terribly. For the rest of the hour today on Backstory we're going to be marking the upcoming Winter Olympics with a look back on the history of Americans compete on the World State and what this competitions have myth to the people back home with that stories about the 1st American woman to throw the shot put on foreign shores about the famous black power suit on the limbic victory stand in 1968 and about the tectonic shield political shift that was triggered by a game of. Ping pong. But 1st we're going to dial the clock back to the years before the American Revolution as you can imagine this was a time before American athletes competed as Americans but sports were already an important feature of social life and the category of sports and compassed a surprisingly wide range of activity. All sorts of competitions you know in the colonial period there's a reference to sport being you know a question of whether a man can smoke 100 pipes in the course of a day which a man doesn't a Philadelphia tavern and then promptly dies before he can he can walk out this is kind of the Cohen historian of sports at St Mary's College of Maryland can tell me that when it came to the things that we would more easily recognize a sports today like horse racing or cock fighting there were representative competitions going back as early as the 727 counties who go up against counties or one colony would challenge the other and so I asked him if the revolution ushered in a new period when Americans competed in sports as Americans Well I don't know that the revolution actually sort of sparked national or international competition in some way that's still a long way off but the revolution does sort of impinge on sport because of the Continental Congress and a number of state legislatures ban a wide range of the sort of best known and most organized sporting activities in the period claiming that these are a waste of resources a waste of time that they are an immoral distraction from the sort of pure cause of liberty so after the revolution they kind of go through the crucible of saying hey not now we're fighting a war creating a nation but in the sports reassert themselves what does that look like yeah and so that is actually in many ways more discursive or sort of in the language than it is in the actual act of participating in sports so even through the Revolutionary period you find newspaper articles that sort of reference you know British Imperial politics as a as a horse race in which the factions that support America you know are presented as sort of horses named Liberty or you know names that Americans would sort of identify with and then there are the factions that oppose Americans which are present. With horses with horrible names like changeling you don't know what they're going to become and what they're going to do to you and the Americans really do use sport as a metaphor even though the actual activities are banned and to some extent become less frequent during the Revolutionary period and this then carries through to the post-war period and really begins to flourish when America fights Britain again in the war of 1812 the best example of this is a great political cartoon that shows James Madison boxing George the 4th and George the 4th is punched in the nose and he's actually streaming blood out of his nose in the cartoon and you know Madison is sort of saying Ha ha you know you're you're overweight and out of shape and can't handle this fight and I'm sure it doesn't say and I'm 5 foot 3 in way 105 pounds right right and you're going to hire only different weight classes. You know all sorts of ways. Exactly pugilistic of our presidents. You have all this kind of metaphorical use of sport does the reality of sport begin to catch up with this country sort of regains its balance after the War of 1000. Yeah so I mean it takes a while these bands get lifted as America is reaching or enjoying an economic boom that does allow wealthier Americans to begin to fund and finance and organize larger scale sporting events and it's the moral critique against these activities certainly continues but it gets less traction people sort of look around and say well we're doing fine we can afford to do these kinds of things now and so you really see a takeoff in these sort of regional representative of vents in terms of a series of North and South horse races starting in the 820 s. Which get the most press and attract probably the largest crowds of any sporting events before the Civil War These are sort of presented as section on regional events it seems like a kind of a dangerous way to a re competition at a time when the real competition. Between slavery and free labor and the Republicans the Democrats whatever is is brewing. Yeah I think it could have been but but the way that sport is constructed by the folks who are funding these events really sort of bridges that gap and sport becomes a place where Americans can play out these tensions in a somewhat safer space a safer way and so the Northern Italy and the Southern a leader both using these events to sort of rally support behind them within their regions in a very subtle very political way yet it's important to recognize having said that there's not a whole lot of differences between the way the northerners and southerners approach these kinds of sporting events in the way they organize them there is a difference in the way they execute them and so the races in particular reflect one of those primary differences right which is the labor system where Southerners primarily employ African-American slaves to ride their horses and northerners primarily but not exclusively employ generally Irishman to ride their horses which of course really reflects that labor divide but does so in a way again that's trying to rally the sort of general population behind their leaders and representatives from their region so by the $830.00 s. Forties the United States is sort of recovered sporting mojo and sports are especially horseracing seem to be quite common in other venues the United States is eager to project itself on the world stage business and they happen in sport. Yeah I think all of this you know overall economic growth that we talk about in the 1st half of the 19th century has America sort of feeling its oats right you know whether you're talking about theater and the search for a great American drama or whether you're talking about sporting events and trying to prove to the world that America is a mature and competitive country on the on the global scene you do find you know nationalism sort of sparking. Greater conversation and so by the time you get to the 840 s. And 850 s. Americans are trying to stage and challenge largely England to a range of sporting competitions the the 1st notable one of these is the America's Cup The sailing competition that still exists today but you know shortly on the heels of that you have a chess prodigy Paul Morphy from New Orleans who goes over to England and basically beats all the individual national champions around Europe who are willing to face him and so he comes back sort of hailed as a world champion who's different you know sort of placed America on the global sporting stage now I can't help but notice as a historian of the civil war that a lot of this really seems to be picking up in the 850 s. Is there anything to be made of the fact that United States is projecting itself as a unified nation abroad at the same time it's kind of coming apart at the seams at home yeah I mean for the same reason that we talk about so many of the regional and local events being staged in a way that sort of tries to tie local populations to local leaders or regional elations to regional leaders you know these representational sporting events there's always a certain element of promoting domestic unity in one's own backyard as much as there is projecting some sort of identity or superiority against your opponent and so that's certainly true in the fifty's and 860 s. Is a great quote from a newspaper covering Paul Morphy's chess tour and when he comes back home there's this great celebration the newspaper says quote here. They have come with fraternal impulses from the hills of New England the rich regions of the Middle States the flowery Prairie's of the illimitable west and from my own golden and sunny section where the blue waves of the Gulf of Mexico swell up a constant coral symphony with the music of our national union they come together as strangers but they have met. Others and friends and so all of these supporters of chess from all corners of the country come together to support Paul Murphy our national champion which sort of speaks to our roots as a as a unified country it's a great quote Yeah and so you can really see this being spun in a way to try to represent the fact that sporting culture does bridge these sectional divides and it's a way in which leaders in both regions try to hold the pieces together over the course of the long sectional fission that ultimately results in the Civil War Ken thanks so much for explaining the sack complicated story to us thanks for having me . Cohen is a history professor at St Mary's College of Maryland he's the author of They will have their sporting culture and the making of the early American republic. Our next story has to do with the sport that I recently learned was America's most popular spectator sport of the 870880 s. Brian any guess as to what that sport might be come on at this is this is 1st of all out of my century. I'm going with horse racing Ok and what your logic on that there are a lot of horses back then we hadn't invented the car I don't know Ok that's a very good present istic perspectival So let me give you some sense this is a sport that involved competitions lasting several days on end it was so taxing in fact that many of the athletes who participated in it died young Wow Would you like to refine your answer so taxing Well that rules out golf. You know I'm going to forget for a ling to you better tell me what it is competitive walking. Laugh and it was perhaps you would laugh less if you knew it was called pedestrianism. The most popular version of the sport competitors would walk on an indoor track for 6 days straight. Historian Matthew Al Geo told me about the huge numbers of people packing into arenas to watch the walking matches most of the big races took place at Madison Square Garden the 1st Madison Square Garden in New York and because the race was continuous people were coming and going all day day and night and so total attendance for the week might be you know $100000.00 or more these races were so popular that kids would imitate the walks of their favorite pedestrians one of the most famous walkers was Edward pace in Weston he was known for walking with exaggerated Sweeny hips wearing flashy outfits and carrying a gold tipped cane but he made a name for himself by walking up and down around the East Coast but $875.00 he lost a big race out of Chicago and that's when Weston decided to take his act over seas he sailed the London to challenge William Perkins the champion pedestrian of Britain to a 24 hour race now the British really considered themselves the the originators of the sport of pedestrianism there'd been a Scottish guy named to Captain Barclay who'd famously walked out 1000 miles one mile every hour Poor 1000 consecutive hours something like $41.00 days wow this was in $1000.00 No Don you know it's many years later but the Brits still consider themselves the inventors of the game so to speak and and they were very suspicious of Weston for one thing that they didn't believe some of the records that he claimed to set walking 100 miles in 24 hours for instance they just thought maybe these were outright fabrications or you know there could be a problem measuring distance or time that sort of thing and also western got on their nerves because he kind of. Embodied everything that the Brits kind of hated about Americans he was flashy He was cocky he would you know play the cornet while he walked he was kind of like Mohammed Ali of his era very kind of figure and would really play it up to the crowd ham it up in the again this was really kind of not considered sportsman like by the Brits and so it sort of further added fuel to the fire of anti Western sentiment and the British were also suspicious of sort of American stamina and at lettuces I'm in general right yeah there was an article in The Lancet which is a medical journal a scientific journal still published today just before the 1st Western race in London and I'm just going to read here the Journal said American athletes were far beyond other nations in their hygenic on wholesomeness living habitually in their close stove heated rooms bolting their food at railway speed year by year Americans grew thinner lighter and shorter lived. So I don't think the thinner part really applies anymore and I still eat too quickly but definitely I mean and the Lancet I mean that's a fairly respected medical journal even in 1976 and they were pretty unequivocal that Americans were inferior in many ways especially at athletics so Weston's bring quite a heavy burden not only of his fancy clothing and gold tip but also suspicion that the United States never really would produce great athletes so he shows up there $876.00 challenges the English champion pedestrian and then what happens well this is a match it was a 24 hour race and the long in the short of it is Weston won he defeated purr. Ince Perkins quit after just 65 miles west and went on to walk 109 miles was said Perkins feet were so blistered and he was so footsore that it was literally impossible for him to keep walking in so this really stunned the British they were kind of flabbergasted really not only that Weston had won but that he had won so decisively and did this change their mind after this that they kind of slap Assad their heads and say oh we were so mistaken Americans are vector one full natural athletes which I think Americans today would believe that there's something about our landscape the vast open spaces the kind of the shoulder right that would actually make us more athletic was pedestrianism a turning point in that you think it was a little bit actually because after Weston had his very successful series of exhibitions in London one of the newspapers came out and basically apologised and said It's true that Mr Weston is no chicken and it was interesting to see this gradual changing of attitudes I think West and had a lot to do with that he proved Americans could compete on the international stage did people in the states show as much interest in the West and Perkins race as the Brits did yes they did the 1st transatlantic cable had been late. I think it was about 10 years before and papers would would print extraditions or have a big chalkboards out front that they would do you know lap by lap updates of where the competitor stood in international athletic contests that you could follow in real time on both sides of the Atlantic where you know supposedly I'm historian of 19th century America and I must admit Matthew this is the 1st that I've ever heard of this why is that has this fall. And out of our consciousness if it was so popular a couple things one it was hurt by gambling scandals there was also a doping scandal Weston when he was in London was found to be chewing coca leaves during a race and he just insisted this was on doctor's orders it was not meant to give him any advantage of course but there were reports that other other racers were using strychnine to stay awake and so it became kind of a almost a public health issue there was a backlash ministers began a sermonizing against pedestrianism they thought it was excessive and abusive to the competitors but the real answer to your question is that in the mid 880 s. Around 885. British guy John Starlee was his name he invented the 1st safety bicycle to the bicycle we still use today and these were funded race for 6 days and almost overnight 6 day bicycle racing replaced pedestrianism as the most popular indoor In sport you know I say pedestrianism was Nascar it 4 miles an hour well with the 6 day bicycle race was Nascar now it was up to 1520 miles an hour and you could have crashes it was much more fun to watch especially the 5th or 6th day when everybody was so out of their mind with sleep deprivation. That you Algy 0 is the author of a pedestrian as a when watching people walk was America's favorite spectator sport that he spoke to us from his home in Mongolia. In the early 1920 s. American women were coming into their own they won their long battle for the right to vote and more women were going to college a booming economy meant new employment opportunities flappers were pushing the boundaries of female sexuality American women were making great strides but not in sports not in 22 a small group of female track and field athletes set out to change that despite inadequate training and a lack of national support a team of 15 women sell to France to participate in the 1st international track meet for women former Baxter producer Kelly Jones has a story. At $21.00 Lucille Godbold stood just over 6 feet tall I think she probably looked more like her father than she looked like her mother this is Jane Tuttle a librarian at Columbia College in South Carolina Lucile gobbled wasn't especially beautiful by 1920 standards but that didn't matter she had a wicked arm. A track meet in her senior year she broke the American record for the shot put and said she was invited in May to take part in the tryouts for the 1st international track meet for women that was going to Paris in August that track meet was a scheme designed by the French to establish women's track and field as an official Olympic event in the early twenty's there were no standard Olympic sports for women some years there would be golf or tennis others there might be swimming or archery there weren't any track and field events. At home the American Physical Education Association. Discouraged women from track and field because they believed that lots of running and jumping could knock women's reproductive systems out of whack making them unable to fulfill their primary social role as mothers. Competitive sports were thought to be too intense for educated. They felt emotionally it was very tough on women to lose and if you were in the elite a society who were actually going to college track and field it was not something that you needed to get involved in. But Dr Harry Eaton Stuart an American physiotherapist didn't buy those claims he wanted to prove that a wrong he asked for help from a group called the Amateur Athletic Union who governed sports outside of schools but they refused him so he held his own tryouts and his athletes organized bake sales to fund the trip. On August 1st 1902 Lucille Godbold and 14 other women set sail for Paris. This is. Just before it began each team marched around the field with one member carrying her nation's flag I was chosen to carry a warrior and believe me I was proud to lead an American team around the track. 5 teens competed that day Great Britain France Czechoslovakia Switzerland and the American underdogs. Though the other teams had all competed internationally before the women on the u.s. Team had hardly any practice competing at home in front of a crowd of 20000 people who steal Godbold earned 6 medals in 7 events and set a new world record in shot put and seeding the French champion she said as the announcer took me around and introduced me to all those thousands of people in French might have been cussing me out. But as everybody clapped I reckon it was all Ok I can see those Americans yelling now they open their mail so wide I was scared to death for fear the sun would work their ribs or blister their tops once. The u.s. Team came in 2nd overall losing only to Great Britain the team's successes should have convinced the a.p.a. That women could achieve more than society had planned for them and that women could handle competition but actually when the opposite direction physical education directors sort of die in their heels even more a lot of high schools and colleges suspended their truck and she'll programs and they sort of set out to put into track and field the team successes in Paris did prove their point today a you the group they govern sports outside of schools who began to fund women's track and field teams the very next year. That paved the way for athletic superstars like Babe Didrikson and Stella Walsh in the thirty's and forty's to rise to fame without the help of college programs and the French scheme eventually worked 6 years after the meet in Paris 5 track and field events for women were included in the Olympics in Amsterdam. But what should have been a no brainer was the struggle instead of catapulting American women into the international sports arena participating in the 1st international track meet for women was a small step on the road to play. That's former backstory producer Joe We also heard from a librarian at Columbia College in South Carolina. You may think you know the story or maybe you don't but Watergate was stranger wilder and more exciting than you can imagine what did it feel like to live through the scandal that brought down an American president join host Leon they fuck for 8 episodes podcasts mini series that tells the story of Watergate as it happened and asks if we were living through Watergate would we know it slow burn attempts to answer the question What was it like to live through 2 years in which an odd local news story about a burglary grew into a scandal that consumed the nation's attention and brought down a president. Most people know the outlines of Watergate the burglars arrested Woodward and Bernstein getting the scoop Nixon resigning the presidency but there were actually 2 years of incredible stories in between. The 1st episode tells the story of Martha Mitchell She was a huge celebrity in are they a regular feature in the gossip columns but she learned too much about Watergate and found her life destroyed by a political thriller with the immersive drive of True Crime podcast like serial slow burn is gripping funny and slyly relevant to American politics and $28.00. So you gotta give this a listen search for a slow burn Apple podcast or on your favorite podcast app we're going to turn now to one of the most iconic images from American sports history it's from the Summer Olympics of 1968 held in Mexico City American runners Tommy Smith and John Carlos had just won the Golden bronze medals in the 200 meter race as they sort of the victory stand and receive their medals they bowed their heads and each held one of their fist sheath in a black glove up to the sky and what would at the time have been recognized as a symbol for black power it was a moment of silence but powerful protest. The symbolism didn't stop there Smith and Carlos came to the victory stand shoeless to represent the poverty afflicting black people in America Smith were a black scarf to represent black pride and Carlo's and sipped his tracksuit revealing a necklace of beads that memorialized victims of lynching and both men as well as the white medal us from Australia were buttons for an organization called the Olympic Project for Human Rights the organization had formed the previous fall and they had originally favored analytic boycott by athletes their demands were that South Africa and Rhodesia be uninvited from the games that the heavyweight title that had been stripped from Muhammad Ali for refusing military service be restored that a long time president of the International Olympic Committee stepped down and that more African-Americans be hired as assistant coaches. Harry Edwards had been a scholarship athlete with Tommy Smith at San Jose State he returned there to teach in 1968 and he spearheaded the Olympic Project for Human Rights I sat down with Edwards in 2014 and asked him about Smith and Carlos his famous act of protest on the victory stand when the immediate results was tremendous bulling catcalls there were a lot of United States citizens at the Games in Mexico City and easily accessible. To games and they took tremendous exception at the gesture by Thomas Smith and John Carlos they were banned from the Olympic Village and then shipped out of Mexico day and a half later by the United States Olympic Committee once they got here the death threats and so forth began to roll in I mean it's very very difficult to understand the kind of courage that it took for these 2 men to do what they did and there was even some confusion and the African-American community about the appropriateness and so forth of what they did many African-Americans assumed that sport was the citadel of in a racial harmony and brotherhood and so when Smith and Carlos began to demonstrate and to protest not just what was going on in society but in sport itself many black Americans did not understand of course over the years as more and more discussion and so forth came on about how black athletes are often used and exploited to project and present one image while black people in this country were living another type of experience more and more black people came to understand that not only was the gesture that Smith and. Arlo's did it from the Olympic podium appropriate it was absolutely necessary I'm curious to know whether what Mithun Karla's did in 68 deferred in any way from what other athletes had done before them . I think we have to understand that every generation of athletes protest within a context of their circumstances at the turn of the 20th century African-American athletes receive virtually no coverage much less adulation and applause for their athletic prowess in this country they were in a constant struggle for legitimacy and so it was the international arena that this legitimacy typically was demonstrated and that was a profound form of protest whether was Jesse Owens one in 4 gold medals in the $36.00 Olympics Joe Louis winning the heavyweight championship and of the immediate post World War 2 era the struggle was for access fighting for our desegregation becoming involved in a struggle for access and of course you saw Jackie Robinson at the Brooklyn Dodgers being really the face of that struggle for access by the 19th sixty's the struggle was for dignity and respect and equity of outcomes beyond the sports arena so every generation struggle is different and it's within the context of the circumstances that they are confronted with you know the prominent athletes today who say we shouldn't be mixing sports and political protests and we definitely shouldn't be mixing them in huge fan use like the World Cup or the Olympics. In light of your own history what would you say to those people we thought the Olympics were a not just an appropriate but a preferable form because it is the 2nd most political form outside of the United Nations itself in the international arena also of the Olympics have long been political not just going back to the Nazi Olympics of my team 36 but going back to the racial epics in St Louis and 1904 where there was an effort to demonstrate white superiority over the nonwhite peoples of the world by literally cataloguing scientifically the outcomes of races and so forth and valving whites who competed against nonwhite people so the games have long been political George Foreman who was the heavyweight boxing champion of the 1908 Olympics walked around the rain waving an American flag which was a totally political gesture no one in the United States Olympic Committee are and the international Olympic movement accused him of engaging in politics when it was crystal clear that that gesture was in response to Smith and Carlos So celebrate Tory politics is just fine it's so he the oppositional politics it does a kind of attention and criticism that Smith and Carlos did absolutely I mean this notion that somebody told me Well Dr Ed was I understand what you were trying to do but we shouldn't expose our dirty laundry to the world well every time someone was lent. It was on the front pages of newspapers all over the world when Dr King was shot it was on the front pages of newspapers all over the world that was airing our dirty laundry and we weren't protesting America we were protesting racism and discrimination and I'm. America and demonstrating that we have the freedom and the right to protest far right which is what America was supposed to be about they should have been proud to have that on the front pages of newspapers around the world as opposed to the deaths of 3 civil rights workers trying to register black people to vote in Mississippi are the pictures of a church that had been bombed were 4 little black girls were killed while they were praying they should have been proud to have Smith and Carlos on the front pages instead of that that was the airing of our dirty laundry as a nation and as a society. Harry Edwards is in America is professor of sociology at the University of California Berkeley he's a consultant for the San Francisco $49.00 ers and he's written numerous books about African-American athletes including the revolt of the black Affleck. We're talking today about the history of American athletics on the world stage and we're going to turn now to another unexpected moment from that history teams around the world had gathered in the Japan for the 971 World Table Tennis finals table tennis or ping pong often evoke thoughts of basement rec rooms for Americans but the sport was a big deal in Japan and China Nevertheless these championships were an unlikely setting for a major diplomatic breakthrough between 2 of the Cold War's biggest enemies as Bruce Walsh reports however that's exactly what happened. If you've heard anything about the events in April of 1971 that became known as ping pong diplomacy you probably heard about this matches were winding down for the day and u.s. Players stumbled onto the Chinese team's bus thinking I was going back to his hotel there were a few tense moments and then the American strikes up a conversation he's Chinese counterpart the country's best player hands me a gift a silk screen with an image of the Hong Shan Mountains it's this wonderful moment where these 2 athletes one from communist China and an American hippie from California had this accidental meeting in the back of a bus create this friendship but that's just not the true version of the story this is Nicholas Griffin author of a book called ping pong diplomacy for the Chinese This was a really methodical approach the only person who didn't know what was going on was when Cowan the American hippie. Had stage managed the event had been building China's being punk team into a powerhouse and became the vanguard of its soft power approach to improving the country's image abroad. This was a very deliberate policy through the 1960 s. So they would send the team out to countries they were interested in establishing foreign relations with even before they had foreign relations you could call them so sporting invested it on the surface relations between China and the us in 1971 were as bad as they've ever been since Mal came to power in 1949 but Nixon and mouth both secretly started seeing the other as a way out China with a u.s. Ally could cool down a growing Soviet threat in China might give the u.s. Leverage in their stalled peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Of course neither side could officially acknowledged this unless Chinese premier showing libraries and they could 1st manufacture a very public very friendly and very benign exchange between the 2 countries which brings us back to the bus in Japan when Talon and his Chinese counterpart stepped down from it or surrounded by a scrum of journalists one Ascalon and his team would be interested in visiting China the long hair says sure and 2 days later they were headed to Beijing for some friendly matches. The Americans had no idea what was about to happen to them one day in the Americas been there in Japan for a few days for the tournament and 48 hours later to the 1st American delegation to enter communist China I mean these guys know nothing about China there's no reason they should we flew to Hong Kong we took the train to the border and we walked across the border before the train. Was it 15 the youngest of us players walking across the border it was like being in a movie there was this really dramatic patriotic music playing and it just looks different everything smelled different and it was just like something that I had never seen before. Iran in Beijing was packed for their exhibition games with the Chinese but the crowd was different than the ones he was used to in the Us Here is just people are very individual they scream they yell they clap at all different times in China at that time in 1901 it seemed like everything was in unison everybody clapped at the same time or stopped at the same time he won 3 of her 4 matches and says it was totally obvious that her opponent was fighting or when the team was also whisked around the country walking on the Great Wall and putting water buffalo to commune because he says everywhere she went she saw pictures of mouth and signs but different political slogans there were some that were in English and I remember one well because I have a picture of myself standing in front of the sign and it said people the world unite and defeat the u.s. Aggressors and all their running dogs and when we asked the white you have the sign and they would say oh well they make a distinction between our government and our people what his skin or teammates didn't see as they toured the country was how this trip was playing back home. The coverage is extraordinary. That the American team is in China not 1234 there are 5 opticals in the New York Times and none of them are in the sports section carried on the front page of every newspaper in the. Team catapulted to fame but the only ones who don't know what's happening because of course they read any of this press because they're in communist China. We train. Train. Train. That. Is exactly what. The wonderful thing about. Incredibly well. But what it does is it changes the way Americans think about the Chinese. Happy American kids hanging out with their Chinese counterparts have been beamed around the world. Shaking hands had been on the cover of newspapers everywhere maybe the Chinese were scary after all so what it does is it creates this enormous amount of maneuvering room for the politicians to carry out that design because ultimately. Thinking very similar just over a year until the point what it needed was a catalyst and. 3 months later Henry Kissinger to China 1st secret meeting with Joe in live in early 1972 Nixon makes his trip to China. Because they decided to give ping pong a chance. Contributor. To the arts playing. Of teams of different countries together. Played such as. The. Example. Do the heavy lifting of international diplomacy. Between. The. The Soviet Union as you know was our bitter enemy throughout the Cold War but for the most part we talked to the Soviet Union we even negotiated settlements with them from time to time we simply had no relationship with the People's Republic of China there was nothing there there was nothing to work with there the 2nd reason I think has to do with how little knowledge each society had about the other society so something that's associated with regular people being at home in America suburban life like ping pong was very effective for getting the people on each side of this great divide interested in each other curious about each other and of course because each side knew nothing about each other there was a great curiosity on both sides you know this is because it's certainly the case that the Americans and the Chinese not only did not know each other what they did know about each other really led them to profound distrust each other and sports are important but sports are only a vehicle for other kinds of power well that's right Ed but I also think we have this very strong belief that we can separate the 2 you know it's so common to hear we shouldn't sports with politics we gotta keep politics out of sports well as it turns out it it's hard to escape the long reach of politics it pretty much penetrates most of what we do and it's pretty hard to skate the long reach of sports to serve. 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With Corp socking away massive profits and with the labor market fairly tight for her workers' wages still stuck at Monza really and even poverty levels one big reason is that corporate leaders have their head stuck in a dreamy future they actually are spending wildly on workers just not human workers while few Americans are aware of it buses are quietly investing in hordes of autonomous robots powered by cognitive technology called artificial intelligence instead of paying a decent wage to you corporations are buying millions of these cheap humanist thinking machines in order to take a shocking number of jobs from well from new accountants bank loan officers financial analysts all of these numbers jobs are already falling to bots that can calculate much faster and more accurately than people journalism Associated Press now uses artificial intelligence machines to write thousands of financial articles in sports reports and Forbes magazine uses an ai system named coil to pin articles skilled labor made Sam a robotic bricklayer that lays 3 times as many brick. In a day is humans can displacing the jobs of 3 people farmers the 1st robot farm is opening in Japan with automatons transplanting watering and harvesting the crop There's also a shepherd robot that can run an entire livestock farm also the jobs of librarians pharmacists lawyers air traffic controllers doctors teachers hospital administrators bartenders and so many more are targeted for massive displacement in just the next 5 years 6 percent of all u.s. Jobs are expected to be robot a saddest this is Jim Hightower saying why aren't our political leaders and mass media alerting the people to the job aka lips that's about to hit us. What do the corporate powers from Wall Street to Wal-Mart have in common they hate the high tower low down you can see why at w.w.w. High tower Low Down dot org.