FORTY YEARS AGO there occurred a seismic event in African-American history and the annals of the Olympics. Two black American world-class sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, protested race relations in the United States following their stellar performances in the 200-meter race at the 1968 XIXth Olympiad, in Mexico City. Smith had won the gold medal in record time, Carlos the bronze.

While the Star Spangled Banner was played, the duo stood on the victors’ podium, their heads bowed, each with a black-gloved clenched fist raised aloft. Both men were shoeless, emblematic of African-American poverty. Jeers, whistles and some cheers filled the Estadio Olimpico. Almost immediately their action became a cause célèbre and the photo of the silent demonstration soon achieved iconic status. But in 1968 they were reviled by many of their countrymen as un-American, disloyal or worse.

Of course, the Smith-Carlos phenomenon took place in the historical context of the turbulent 1960s. Along with the Vietnam quagmire, America’s racial dilemma was center stage. Despite the passage of civil-rights laws in 1964, 1965 and 1968, there were indeed two societies, one white, one black, separate and unequal, as the Kerner Commission had concluded. Gross disparities persisted in income, employment, longevity, maternal mortality and infant mortality. Deadly race riots, some triggered by allegations of police brutality, broke out in many cities. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in April 1968, was the catalyst for a new cycle of racial violence.

There was much talk among black American Olympic athletes about boycotting the Mexico City Games as a way of crying out against the subjugation of black people, but many believed that their careers in track and field and possibly professional football would be endangered if they passed up Mexico City. Demonstration at the Games was potentially more effective and, they thought, less risky than staying home. The U.S. Olympic Committee saw trouble on the horizon.

For the African-American Olympians, the bête noire, to be more precise, the bête blanche was Avery Brundage, who had been elevated to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee in 1952 after serving as head of the USOC for a quarter of a century.

Imperious, pugnacious and condescending, especially toward people of African descent, Brundage was as much a satanic figure for blacks in 1968 as he had been for Jews in 1936 at the time of the Berlin Olympics, when he minimized Hitler’s persecution.

For the USOC the drama that unfolded on Oct. 16 constituted a major crisis. Prodded by Brundage, who had insisted for decades that politics had no place in Olympic sports, the USOC suspended Smith and Carlos from the American team and ordered them to leave the Olympic village.

Inconsistency and hypocrisy were charged against Brundage and the USOC because they did not object to what was plainly a symbolic protest by Vera Caslavska, a Czech gymnast, who earned seven gold medals in Mexico City. On the dais with her Soviet rival, with whom she shared the gold in women’s field exercises, Caslavska defiantly lowered her head when the Soviet national anthem was played. Her action was blatantly political. Her unmistakable motive was to show her antipathy towards the Soviet Union for its August invasion of her homeland. Brundage conveniently asserted that he did not see Caslavska incline her head. In any event he thought it quite different from the “belligerent attitude” of the two American runners. Critics could say with justification that it all depended on whose ox was being gored, on which country was being rebuked. In the Caslavska case, if Russian pride was wounded, so much the better.

Then there was the case of pugilist George Foreman, who decisively defeated his Soviet opponent to capture the gold medal in the heavyweight division. The 19-year-old and ebullient Foreman pranced around the ring waving a small American flag. His exhibition elicited no condemnation from jubilant American Olympic officials, who swelled with pride. It was perceived as Americanism at its best, not an unwarranted injection of politics into sports. In fact, Foreman was used by Brundage and others as a public-relations counterpoint to Smith and Carlos. Expressions of pro-American sentiment were non-political, while criticism of America was deemed political and therefore objectionable.

Both Smith and Carlos paid a very high price for their rebellion against injustice. Their lives were badly damaged. Smith has written that not just he but also some other members of his family were subjected to continuing threats. Heightened Olympic-related stress contributed to discord in his marriage, which ended in divorce. Their professional lives were hurt as well. Jobs were hard to find, their illustrious athletic accomplishments notwithstanding. For a while, Smith had to wash cars to keep body and soul together.

It is worth remembering that Smith and Carlos did not disrupt the Mexico City Olympiad, not for one minute. Their gesture, simultaneously stupendous and subdued, was both eloquent and poignant. It is hard to imagine a more dignified protest. Theirs was surely a moral statement no less than a political one. Their real offense was to focus global attention on racial inequality in their own country in the midst of the Cold War with the communist world, to graphically tell the truth about the plight of blacks in the United States, a truth belied by their prominence in athletics.

With the passage of time, appreciation of the courage shown by Smith and Carlos has grown. Understanding of their sacrifice has deepened. They are increasingly recognized as bona-fide members of the pantheon of human-rights champions. They were patriots in the best sense of the term. They and their Olympic gesture were American to the core.

Robert Weisbord is a professor of history at the University of Rhode Island.