Now, that we've set the stage of how God puts you on this journey and your mother's not given up your Bible. We took the picture, you got your name back. You about to change the basketball world. Now let's talk a little basketball from my perspective. The players in Detroit to come through because of you and others like George Garvin, you have to be able to shoot, rebound, pass, and dribble. You can't be a fake specialists, you can't be soft, you better be able to rebound. If you a big failure, you better get over 10 rebounds. This is the pressure I felt from you to others directed that put this in line and right now, you're about to change the game because what you're doing because of the coaches they've watched you go against Dan Issel, they've watched you go against some of the best players, Pete Maravich, that were older than you or getting more publicity. You're from this junior college, you come in and this is when the moment switch. That talent is more important than rules made by men to just make people wait. I. We are in Olympics where your friend and brother. Dr. Carlos, he puts his fist up at this Olympics. Him and Tommy Smith, we're at the Olympics where George Swan and waves that flag because he wins. We're in the '68 Olympics we'd come in into the '70s with some of the badass brothers. We've just seen the assassination of King and others in Vietnam. Is a tough time, people put their hopes in you and it's the Olympics. Could you talk a little bit about what you did at the Olympics? Well, what happened was once we got the passport, I had to travel. We were supposed to be the team that couldn't shoot straight and we will go on to lose the Olympics for the first time in American history. Wow. That's was the big prediction. That was the world [inaudible]. Yeah. The big broadcaster at that time was Howard Cosell and I was his favorite subject. "How can his young boy do this and do that? We're going to lose it all." Scrim is the New York Knicks and we beat them and so Willis Reed and Walt Frazier and all those guys, well, Willis Reed was there but I don't know if Walt had gotten there. But they were like, "Oh man, you guys are going to be all right." Then we went and scrimmage against Oscar Robertson, the big-O in Cincinnati on our way to Mexico City. We beat them, and everybody was like, "Wait a minute. They got something going on here." We get down to Mexico City and we go into the big meeting. The meeting of the meetings. Nobody is going to be bored camping out here, boys. Let me tell you something. Now we go to win this goal and so everybody is talking about, well, no, we're not going to do anything. We're going to be all right and then Jesse Owens came in. It was so important for me to interview you and Dr. Carlos because you speak to two ends of protest, you guys are brothers. He loves you, he talks about you, and encouraging you and you do the same, and for some people, they might have thought, how could you be friends with this guy, did this and this? Could you explain just a little bit about the tension, the times, and then the meeting with Jesse Owens. Could you just set the tone a little bit for people out there that may not understand. Yeah, well, once you get there, we are living in American compounds. So we are like one big team. George Foreman and I had a plan. We were going to eat this place, we're going to eat all the food they have. [inaudible] along with the Russians and [inaudible] we were going to tear this place apart, because we were 19 years old, and you're like, "Men, I'm going to eat all of this stuff." So Tommy and John was there under Dr. Harry Edwards and also Lee Evans was another great person. They were like head a little bit more possess and they were like a year or so older than we realized, yeah, we got to follow these guy. Then we get into the big meeting and we're talking and blah blah blah and, and the brother that ran in the Olympics. Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens was talking and he was talking about the importance of this American dream and no boycotting, no shenanigans, and nothing. You get out of this. You're going to be able to go home and get all kinds of jobs and everything. "John Carlos, hey, hey, wait a minute. We'll not get more jobs, we will get nothing." So we'd like, "Oh man, George hit me like hit me on my side. Come on, George really hit me in my side." He's talking back to Jesse Owens. Oh, man. Jesse did drop the H-man on us. At the end of all that comes in, you've got a little pissed off and he said, "What would any of us as of this would have done if you had to run before Hitler?" We're like, "You dropped the H-name." [inaudible] No. Let's lace them up. Let's get ready to go, boys. Everything is done, and that was the story. Then when we were playing our games, we were winning them some clothes. The big battle with us was the Russians. The Russians are like [inaudible]. They take everything from us in the Olympics. They might even take your country. Right. So everybody was like, "We got to kick them Russians out." When Jones got a chance to fight against the Russian, he puts it, "I'm going to knock him out." But before he fought against the Russians, we had the track and field. First, we had Bob Beamon. He's talking to this man, "Man, I'm going to set a record." He jumped out of the pit, 28 laps, and we were like, "Wow." Yeah. The way he was in the air. All Americans was feeling it. I don't care, [inaudible]. We've got to do this this year. Yeah. This was like the blacks coming out there because with Oscar and others like Muhammad Ali and those guys, they would like the individual but this was some brothers here, so watch your brothers. Then [inaudible] , she was the swimmer. She was like, "Yeah. Thank you, I'm controlling everything. Watch me tomorrow in my meet." We don't want to go. It was like, "Oh, man." Dick Fosbury says, "I got something new." He was the high jumper. Oh, man. Come on, nobody got nothing new in the Olympics. He [inaudible] good as sizzle and kick. He ran up to the pole and jumped over backwards. We were like, "Oh, he did it." We were getting popped up and then the big race was coming up. We were like, "Oh, man." Everybody's nervous, man. We got to see Tommy and John go and take this one and two. They came in and the race was going on. Bam, bam, bam. They were moving, man. John gets almost to the finish line. He looked over and that threw his stride off a little bit, so he finished third and Tommy finished first. Then he gets up on the podium and he just put on the glove. We [inaudible] solidarity back home with our people who are struggling. Here we go. Here we go, Avery Brundage, who was a Nazi in real life. And the head of the Olympics? The head of the Olympics. That's right. He came in. "They got to go, they got to go." And we were like, "What do you mean they got to go?" They put him out of the Olympic village. He had to walk through these people and they were like, "Hey, you're un-American. You're ungrateful. Yada, yada, yada." Then they had to leave. Man, we just sit there and just cry because I have seen the experience of Mississippi so it wasn't like [inaudible] would talk to me. Right. What [inaudible] reaction when you saw it? Did you think, when you saw it, that it would have that big of a long-lasting impact of them getting kicked out or even, till today, people being inspired by that picture? Did you know that back then? I didn't know it at that time. I got a call and it was Will Robinson and he's like, "Whatever you do, don't you try those again. It's shinanigan here." We really came too far, boy. [inaudible] crazy down there. In fact, I got a ticket. The Olympic Committee flew him in. We don't want the young boy to get crazy. So they pulled him in. He said, "I'm gonna kill you. You will never get back to Detroit." That was [inaudible] by him. Dean Smith was on the phone with Charlie Scott and he was like, "Did you try anything?" You dare too. Georgia White was from the University of Kansas and he was a former military guy, he did a year. So he was like, "No, we ain't doing nothing. We're going to beat these Russians." The Russians got upset by the Yugoslavs. We had Yugoslavs in the final. So we get ready to go into the arena to play the final. Here come Howard Cosell. Yada, yada, yada. He pulled me off to the side. "All right. If you lose this game, people in Detroit is going to hang you." What? You broke to a black hole, you're planning the games, you're doing all of this, and [inaudible] at everyone nuts. Oh, why did you mess up the kid? Because I wasn't a person then, I was just a kid. Right. So we got to the game and I'm planning the game and I'm thinking about Detroit. If we lose, what do they all do to me? I'm planning. I go in for lay-up. In international ball, you don't see us say, "Hey, I'm out." [inaudible] I ran straight to the bathroom, threw all up, and ran right back out on the floor, and just continued to play. So I ended up setting all of these records in the Olympic game. That's right. Most valuable player, most outstanding player in the world, the youngest. I set the most points that lasted for 44 years. The most rebounds that lasted until the Dream Team. Then the field goal percentage still stands at 72, I think, percentage, and the youngest player in the history of the game until there was a substitution when we had the team that was gone over, I don't know what year. It was 2012. Blake Griffin was dunking at UNLV, just dunking and stuff, and he hurt his ankle so they brought in Anthony Davis to replace him. Then he took me out as the youngest player. But man, Chris, I got on that stage, and they were like calling off this stuff, and I'm like, "I did this?" The people were cheering, "Haywood," because we were in Mexico, "Haywood. Grande." I'm just standing there, man they put that gold medal on my neck and everything just let go. My tears. I mean my legs got weaken. Charlie and Jo Jo and Mike from Ohio State, I can't think of his name right now, and John Clawson from Michigan, all those guys just held me up like, the kid then melted down. Because they didn't know all that you've been through. They didn't know you had two bags on your back picking cotton before, is those type of things. Bill Hosket was my first, he was from Ohio State. Like I said, I never lived with a white person in my life. Right. That was the first time I had lived in the same room with one. He taught me so much man about unity and about how good white people were. Because I hadn't experienced that side. Exactly. Right. I only thought of the oppressive side. Damn, man, that was my guy. Isn't that just really special in this world when we talk about how Nelson Mandela says, sports is more powerful than government in bringing people together? You think about it. Here you are and I can speak a little too only because my father went through and you guys went through it for us. But my father would talk about having to go to school as a young man, if you saw white people walk in your way, you had to put your head down only because you didn't want any problems. Or the fact that everything that you had seen from an economic level, everything was not fair. With segregation, the schools were different. It wasn't the same, resources, people weren't treated the same. So here you are, the best player in the world, the youngest player, at this time, still wide open, still hurt open, figuring out all these things going through this and you're still open enough to say one of the best relationships in your life, what you learnt so much was from a white athlete. Could you talk a little bit about the relationships that you had that proved your upbringing was wrong. Well, when they assigned the rooms and I panicked because they assigned me to Bill Hosket. We were like, " Man, what am I going to do? Because I'm nervous, I don't know how to behave in this." Bill Hosket, the first thing he did when I walked into the room and I'm like, "That's your bed, or is that my bed?" He said, "Come here. Give me a hug." What do I have to give you a hug for?" He hugged me with that big old bear hug. He is 6'8", 6'9", big bearly guy from Ohio State. I was like, I needed this so bad. I needed this so many years. I needed this thing because in Mississippi, if you look up, they punch you in the face. The whites would punch you in the face, literally. If you did anything out of the way, you could be harmed. So all of a sudden this guy is grabbing and squeezing all of this my bad memories out of me. I'm like, that feels pretty good, man. Then we laid down and we just talked all night long about relationship, race relationships. What's the difference between black and white? He wanted to hear about all my experience and I told it all. I was, my God, I've just been waiting so many years to tell this to somebody. I'm telling this white guy and he's absorbing and he's telling me his story. I was like, wow, we're very similar. He was this protected for me. When guys would get rough in practice with me and he was a star, so he was like, hey, watch it now, watch that's my roomie. Then I was getting a little arrogant and stuff like, all right now. All right. Calm down. Because he was a senior, I'm a freshman, he's like, calm down. Let's look at this realistically. Then I was like, Oh yeah, you're right. So when you look at what was going on in Mississippi, I always wondered why we were doing all of this work. We would do all, we pick the cotton, plant the cotton, do everything and this guy was sitting on the porch with a mint julep and a big cigar and he didn't do nothing, but he got all the benefits. So I had that in my mind.
