One well-known image exemplifies the way Cold War competition pushed California colleges and their black students onto the world stage. Relying on black people while exploiting and mistreating them has been one of the keys to America’s success since the beginning, and that is a risky proposition. The Cold War contest extended beyond science and technology; the Soviets dominated international athletics, and some American colleges systematically recruited black athletes to try to improve their positions. San Jose State University was one of those schools, and the year after the master plan was announced, the school nabbed a runner named Harry Edwards, who used the opportunity to study sociology. After some graduate work at Cornell (where he, too, got to see Malcolm X in the minister’s last year), Edwards returned to SJSU to teach in 1966. He was only a few years older than his youngest students, and as one of only two black professors for 72 black students (out of 24,000), 60 of whom were athletes, as he’d been, he attracted a following.

Edwards helped organize his students so they could improve their treatment at the school, and they forced the cancellation of a football game—the ultimate act of university sabotage. Governor Reagan wanted to send in the National Guard to police the field; the RAM milieu offered Edwards its own guerrillas if need be. But the school had to face a hard truth: It couldn’t operate without the participation of black students. The game was not played. The “revolt of the black athlete,” to quote the title of one of Edwards’s books, that began in San Jose and spread across the country attracted international attention and embarrassed the American government, which from the state’s perspective defeated the whole point of international sport. But despite the drama, SJSU had a very strong program, especially in track and field. One of Edwards’s protégés was a national champion sprinter, and the school recruited a second from Texas. Only after Olympic organizers agreed to exclude South Africa from the 1968 games in Mexico City did the SJSU sprinters agree to represent the United States. When the teammates took gold and bronze in the men’s 200-meter, there must have been a moment when Team USA’s white leaders patted themselves on the back. Then Tommie Smith and John Carlos mounted the podium in stocking feet, bowed their heads, and raised their fists, one black glove each. The gesture humiliated America on the global stage, turning a national triumph into a searing Black Power tableau, an indelible salute of international solidarity. The last will be first, and then: Look out!