Tommie Smith got off to a slow start in the 200-meter finals at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Smith had pulled a muscle in the semi-finals and had been unable to even warm up for the medal race. “I was in trouble coming out of the turn, because I was in third or fourth place. I knew the only way I was going to win was with a burst of speed,” he said with the preternatural confidence of a champion in a 2008 interview with the BBC. So he turned on his “Tommie Jets.”

He caught his teammate John Carlos and Australian Peter Norman on the backstretch. When the race was over, Tommie Smith, one of 12 children of black sharecroppers from East Texas, who had grown up picking cotton in the San Joaquin Valley, had run the 200-meter dash in 19.83 seconds, faster than any human being ever before. It was the culmination of years of training, a dream come to spectacular fruition. But his most difficult journey was just beginning.

The Black athletes who formed the core of the U.S. track and field team had decided long before to stage some kind of protest, even debating, for a time, a boycott of the Olympics altogether. But when Smith and Carlos stood on the victory rostrum, shoeless, with their heads bowed in silence, and raised black-gloved fists during the national anthem, the reaction was intense and immediate.

The next day, the picture was on the front page of newspapers around the world. Within 48 hours, Smith and Carlos had been kicked off the Olympic team, thrown out of the Olympic Village, had their visas cancelled, and were sent home. Death threats had already been coming for almost a year, when they first began to talk of a boycott.

Of course, not all of the reaction was negative. “Tommie Smith became a hero to me for that stand,” his friend Robert Taylor, head football coach at Santa Monica College, said recently from his office. “He really did something that needed to be done.” Oakland resident Delroy Lindo echoed a similar sentiment at the 2005 unveiling of a statue at San Jose State University, where Smith and Carlos had been students, depicting the protest. “Tommie Smith told me, I am somebody.”

Somehow, this simple, “silent gesture,” as Smith has called it, epitomized the relationship between Black Americans, especially athletes, and the greater nation at that time: Proud and humble, resourceful and talented, they brought glory for the United States, but they were still second class citizens – overwhelmingly poor, frequently discriminated against, and sometimes humiliated.

When they stood on that podium, with the anthem playing, medals around their necks, heads bowed, shoeless, with fists in the air, it shattered the cognitive dissonance that the country had with respect to her Black athletes: They were black, they were proud, they were champions, and they were Americans. As John Carlos put it at the statue dedication, what each of them was saying was, “ America, I am your son, and I’m wounded.”

In a way, Smith was an unlikely candidate to lead the protest. Originally on a basketball scholarship, he switched to track and field, and along with Carlos, and Lee Evans, formed the nucleus of “speed city,” as the San Jose State track team became known. Along with other athletes and community leaders, some of them white, they formed the Olympic Project for Human Rights in October, 1967. It was this group which had threatened to boycott the Olympics.

In the end, they went, breaking seven world records at Mexico City. There were many memorable moments: Lee Evans, Larry James, and Ron Freeman finishing first, second, and third in the 400-meter, posting times of 43.86, 43.97, and 44.41; Bob Beamon breaking the long jump record by almost two feet with a leap of 29 feet, 2 ½ inches, and, in the moment of realization, dropping to his knees, overcome by emotion; and Jim Hines breaking the ten second barrier and setting the world record in the 100-meter with his 9.95 run.

But it was Smith and Carlos and their “silent gesture” that stole the show. On the other side stood Avery Brundage, the head of the International Olympic Committee. Brundage, an American, decried the mixing of politics and sports, warning ahead of time that he would not stand for any sort of political statement.

His long history in the Olympics showed otherwise. As Allen Barra mentioned in the New York Times, “In 1936, German athletes made the Nazi salute when awarded their medals. Brundage, then president of the United States Olympic Committee, made no objection, and rejected any proposals for boycotting the Berlin games.” In fact, Brundage, a well-known Nazi sympathizer, had helped Hitler secure the ’36 Olympics for Berlin. Shortly afterwards, Hitler awarded the contract to build Germany’s embassy in Chicago to Brundage.

Lest anyone think that he had changed in the ensuing 32 years, Brundage, by then a multi-millionaire, was an owner of Santa Barbara’s Montecito Country Club, which had a clause in its charter specifically excluding Blacks and Jews from membership. It is worth noting that he was also opposed to the inclusion of women in the Olympics.

Avery Brundage wasn’t the only person targeting Smith and Carlos. The men were shunned from track and field events and unable to secure endorsements after Mexico City and even had trouble finding work. Death threats and harassing letters continued to pour in. And worse, “Carlos’s dog was slaughtered and thrown on his front porch,” Olympic rower and OPHR member Paul Hoffman related in a BBC special. “His wife committed suicide,” added Ralph Boston, another gold medalist and OPHR member.

Tommie Smith did eventually find work, playing professional football under coach Bill Walsh for the Cincinnati Bengals. He even managed to tackle O. J. Simpson during a game against the Buffalo Bills. But, in the end, it lasted less than three years.

From there, Smith found his way to Santa Monica College and coaching. He stayed at Santa Monica for 27 years, producing a number of Olympic runners, including Johnny Gray, who won the bronze medal in the 800-meter at Barcelona in 1992. “Tommie knew how to get in your head about competition,” said Coach Taylor. “He knew how to bring the best out of you.”

In a way, that was exactly what he did with the country. “One can measure tremendous progress from that day to this on things that they were demonstrating about – the treatment of black people generally in America and particularly so for athletes,” noted Hoffman. “Those guys did more to change this country than they would ever realize, and I’m glad they are my friends,” said Ralph Boston with a smile.

But even within his own circle, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Smith has been married three times. He was also suspended from coaching for a year in the mid 1980s for using an ineligible athlete. “I tried to help the kid, I ended up hurting him and other students,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “If I can’t do the job right, maybe I should quit.” But he didn’t quit. He’s not the type. He also didn’t make excuses. He’s not the type for that either.

Tommie Smith is not a perfect man, but he stepped up when his country needed him, and he made a difference. And he did it without drugs, steroids, blood doping, or violence. He did it without breaking the law and, in fact, without even uttering a word. But even after several decades, Smith is clear about his actions: “It didn’t just represent black rights, it represented human rights,” he said in his 2007 autobiography. “It was a cry for freedom.” It just took a while for some of us to hear.