When Tommie Smith and John Carlos, both San Jose State University students, stood on the podium to accept medals in the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, each raised a black-gloved fist and lowered his head as “The Star Spangled Banner” played in the Olympic stadium. Perhaps the most iconic image of protest in American history, it is newly relevant after Colin Kaepernick’s more recent demonstration against black oppression.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of the 1968 games, a small show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art contrasts the moment on the podium and other images of political dissent with the groundbreaking graphic design Mexico City used to shape an upbeat vision of a rapidly modernizing country — all of which a global audience would see on television.

“Part of why moments like the protests on the podium became so iconic is that those images travel and spread as soon as that act happens,” says Robert Kett, who curated the show.

In 1968, student protests broke out in much of the world, including in France, Czechoslovakia and the United States. In Mexico, the growing prosperity and quality of life many experienced did not benefit everyone equally, which led to the deadly Mexican Student Movement protests just days before the opening ceremony.

But before the protests, Olympic organizers set out to reshape the world’s image of Mexico through a bold and colorful design system that centered around a unique logo.

The logo consisted of curvy, repeating lines that formed patterns and letter forms, including the words “Mexico 68.” It took cues both from yarn paintings of the Huichol, a group indigenous to Mexico, while also referencing op art, a global movement popular in the ’60s that uses patterns to create optical illusions.

“The designers involved were trying to link Mexico to the world,” says Kett. “The graphics are very impressive themselves, but it’s also interesting how graphic design became an exercise in urban design.”

Mexico City did not build an Olympic village, which required visitors to traverse the sprawling city to find each venue. To aid navigation, a unified system of graphics could be seen not just on medals, programs and informational posters but on the city itself. Color-coded maps matched up with patterns laid out on sidewalks, directional signs and the transit system.

The success of the Olympic graphics system allowed the Mexican Student Movement to use design as a tactic of resistance. Activists remixed official pictographic icons that featured athletes into protest posters that featured armed soldiers instead.

For Americans, high-school history books still show the iconic image of Smith and Carlos raising their fists on the podium. But the moment has its roots at San Jose State, where Harry Edwards, then a teacher and coach, launched the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

“He’s really at the heart of that boycott movement,” Kett says.

On the podium, the athletes included several subtle visible visual signals, including going shoeless to recognize poverty at home and wearing OPHR pins to partially obscure the U.S.A. embroidered onto their uniforms.

“When you see that on such a stage, it is an alert to white American audiences that black Americans’ relationship to national pride is at best a very complicated one,” says Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African American history at UC Berkeley.

But Smith and Carlos suffered for their action. After the ceremony, officials stripped them of their medals and forced them to leave Mexico within 48 hours. When they returned to the U.S., both endured scorn and stretches of poverty. However, by 2005, history had changed its view of their demonstration and San Jose State honored the two with a statue on campus. Yet today when African Americans protest, their anger remains controversial.

“It feels like we’re reliving this history at a certain level,” says Kett about former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick, who first demonstrated in 2016 against the ongoing oppression of blacks when he kneeled during the national anthem at NFL football games.

Since his time at San Jose State, Edwards continues to counsel athletes. But he emphasizes that each athlete thinks for himself, including Kaepernick.

More Information Mexico 68: Through Nov. 25 at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., S.F. www.sfmoma.org.

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“He didn’t need me to either point out or to encourage him to respond to threatening life circumstances burdening every African American in this nation, the deadly realities of which in the age of the social media are literally and recurrently caught on camera,” Edwards says.

Like Smith and Carlos, Kaepernick found himself jobless after his demonstration.

“I’m amazed by how much ire the protest inspired,” says Raiford. “The issue is how white audiences have chosen to respond with anger at the protest — rather than at the conditions Kaepernick is raising.”

Andy Bosselman is a San Francisco freelance writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com