“Faster, Higher, Stronger”To highlight the start of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, w

“Faster, Higher, Stronger”

To highlight the start of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, we again dig into the Albert Rainovic collection at UWM Archives, call number UWM Manuscript Collection 43.

Pictured above is an image drawn by Rainovic that was published in the “Men’s and Recreation Section” of The Milwaukee Journal on Sunday, November 18, 1956. Find this image in Box 14, #459.

Clockwise, the featured Wisconsin athletes include Ken Wiesner, Del Lamb, Ralph Metcalf, and Don Gehrmann. The following caption is included with the image:

Track and skating have provided Wisconsin with most of her Olympic stars, such as these from the last quarter century. Gehrmann ran eighth in the 1948 1,500 meter race. Wiesner placed second in the high jump in 1952. Lamb came in fifth in 1936 and tied for sixth in 1948 in 500 meter races. He was coach of the 1956 speed skating team. Metcalfe took second in the 100 meter dash and third in the 200 in 1932. He ran second to Jesse Owens in the 100 in 1936. - By Al Rainovic, a Journal Artist

In1968, the Olympics Games were in Mexico City, Mexico, and Rainovic drew the above image to commemorate the event. Uncle Sam is drawn in a track and field uniform with the American flag in the background, and on the flag, are surnames of U.S. Olympians. This image was published in the Milwaukee Journal on October 25, 1968. The quotation reads:

“Nothing is more synonymous of our national success than is our national success in athletics. Nothing has been more characteristic of the genius of the American people than is their genius for athletics.”
- Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1928)

What Rainovic’s drawing does not capture amid the national triumph of Olympic gold, is the protest of Black American athletes during the 1968 Games. In what is now an iconic image (pictured below), Tommie Smith and John Carlos, sprinters in the men’s 200-meter race, raised their gloved fists in the Black Power salute during the U.S. national anthem. The gesture was done in solidarity with the Black Freedom Movement in the U.S. and was rewarded with the expulsion of Smith and Carlos from the Games because their action was deemed too political for the apolitical nature of an international sports competition, according to the president of the International Olympics Committee (IOC).

Smith, Carlos, and Australian sprinter Peter Norman also wore patches during the medal ceremony that supported the Olympic Project for Human Rights, an organization that protested against racial segregation in the United States and racism in sports.

Find Rainovic’s 1968 drawing in Box 14, #448.