KEY POINTS:
Friday was the 40th anniversary of the black-gloved salute by US athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympic games -outside of the horrific Black September massacre at Munich four years later, probably the most remembered single event of any Olympics.
Yet few people know the aftermath of that medal podium salute nor that, all these years later, the great Tommie Smith has never been inducted into the US Olympic Committee Hall of Fame. Racism dead in sport? Uh-huh - and my backside's a pineapple.
Tommie Smith was one of the greats. Think a slightly smaller Usain Bolt; Smith stood 1.91m and 82kg. He had long, gangly legs which he couldn't get moving properly for ages but when he did... He was excitement to watch because those long legs would see him drift back in the field before an explosive burst carried him home.
Because of that, he was not a top-drawer 100m runner although he had a best time of 10.1s. But he was a fantastic 200m runner and, at one time, held 12 world records - more at one time than any other athlete in track and field history.
This was probably due to being in the time when track and field was transitioning between metric and imperial measurements.
He still holds the record for obsolete distances like the 220 yards straight (it is run over a straight distance with no curve) and 200m on the straight. In his gold medal win at Mexico, he ran 19.83s - a record which stood for 11 years and is only a half second beyond Bolt's record of 19.30s.
But it was his and bronze medallist Carlos' black-gloved salute, heads bowed and arms raised on the Olympic podium for which Smith is best remembered.
Those were tempestuous political times. The colour issue, the Vietnam war, women's rights and many other social issues which are today taken for granted were in full flow or about to be. Athletes were more politically aware than perhaps they are now; when money tends to be the most important issue.
Smith and Carlos' determination to do something at the Olympics to highlight the plight of black people in the US resulted in their podium protest - but the response was of a nation wounded by two of its own.
The American team sent them home to an outraged US after an equally outraged International Olympic Committee demanded it. Many Americans mistakenly saw the salute as that of the Black Panthers, a violent civil rights organisation; leading sportswriter Brent Mussberger called them "black-skinned stormtroopers".
Doors were shut, jobs were almost impossible to find. There were death threats and their houses were attacked. Carlos' first wife, unable to endure the backlash, committed suicide.
Smith told how a rock crashed through a window near where their baby was stationed. "It seemed like everybody hated me," he said. "I had no food. My baby was hungry. My wife had no dresses."
Carlos, unable to find a job paying more than minimum wage, struggled to house and feed his family. Smith's mother died, aged 57, after receiving a parcel of dead rats in the post.
America didn't like its blacks "uppity". It liked them knowing their place. Smith said as much in a fascinating interview with the Independent recently where he criticised the reception accorded the great Jesse Owens, whose 1936 gold medal at the Berlin Olympics squashed Hitler's "master race" theory.
"He stayed in his place as a black man. He couldn't afford human aspirations. America liked that. Even now, America looks positively at the 1936 Olympics, when Jesse made Hitler mad, and negatively at the Mexico Olympics."
Clearly, activism was and is a part of Smith's life. He became a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals for a year and then became a professor of sociology (now retired).
He retains some venom for the then head of the IOC, Avery Brundage, who forced the shamed US Olympic Committee to send him and Carlos home. Brundage, he said, was a racist who admired Hitler's SS.
Today, 40 years later, the USOC have still not admitted Smith to their hall of fame, presumably because of the protest and affirming remarks Smith has made down the years.
"To this day, nobody there [the USOC] will admit what they did was wrong," said Smith. "They say: 'I wasn't there; I wasn't even born then'. They do not have the backbone to do the necessary - and I'm not a beggar."
Strong stuff - as is Smith's view of the modern black athlete; that too many have been seduced by prize money and the sponsors' dollars to fight a fight that still needs fighting.
By any stretch of the imagination, Smith is a great Olympian. His and Carlos' gesture helped to change the world.
Let's hope the USOC and Hall of Fame authorities wake up to this, 40 years later.
