Muhammad Ali, the Jim Browns, the Bill Russells, Kareem [Abdul Jabbar ], these individuals supported us, but yet still, when you sit back and say the coverage that was done relative to their support was very shallow.

Peter Norman is a humanitarian, and I say "is" because in my life, Peter Norman is never deceased. He's always going to live with me.

As a kid growing up and seeing so much strife taking place in society, and particularly on Blacks and people of color, I had an opportunity as a young man to witness the change that was taking place in Harlem, the exodus of white folks leaving Harlem, which I thought was a very cohesive situation. But they felt that they needed to leave.

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?

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.

It took some time for us to realize that [people] didn't particularly say they didn't like us or have the love for us that they had in the past, nor the respect. I think they chose to leave based on the fact that they felt a reprisal for being associated or having a friendship with John Carlos or Tommie Smith, or Peter Norman, for that matter.

The bottom line is, if you stay home, your message stays home with you. If you stand for justice and equality, you have an obligation to find the biggest possible megaphone to let your feelings be known. Don't let your message be buried and don't bury yourself.