Becoming involved in sports and traveling the world and seeing how people of color were treated around the world, and America being such a great nation, probably the greatest nation in the world, I think that the thing that would destroy this nation more than anything is the inequality that we have amongst people of color.

The beads around my neck [at Olympics in 1968] indicated that there were so many Blacks throughout the history of this country that have been maimed and killed by way of hangings.

I think the Olympic Games have been married to political statements. If I go back to Berlin in 1936, it was very politically orientated then, just with the Nazis.

If you look at the Olympic Games as a whole, if we would say we didn't want to interject politics into the games, then why are we using nation's flags? Why don't we use one Olympic flag to encompass all the Olympians, as opposed to being separatists in terms of China versus Russia or Russia versus the United States? Why don't we just say man versus man?

[Sport officials] blocked their support of us. But those individuals [ Muhammad Ali, the Jim Browns, the Bill Russells, Kareem Abdul Jabbar ] were old enough, they were wise enough, and they knew their history and this is why they came out in support of us, because they knew that we had our finger on the right move.

I'm sure there was people in Australia that told Peter Norman that hey, man, you shouldn't have done what you did, you shouldn't have gotten involved in those individuals, it wasn't your business.

[Peter Norman] was a man of principle and pride, had a strong moral character.