The government did a lot of things to us in terms of sending pictures to my house. If I had to go to a school to give a speech and the sorority wanted to sign a song, they would send [a person] to my house and tell my wife that I had sex with this woman or that woman.It got to the point where my wife didn't know what to believe anymore, and the fact that I didn't have a job, I couldn't support my bills, the fact that I was getting ready to go through maybe a mental setback in terms of depression, we just had a tremendous amount of things on us.

Yet and still, Peter Norman took into account that the aboriginals were suffering just as much in Australia as Blacks in the United States were suffering.

The beginning don't matter. The end don't matter. All that matters is what you do in between...the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.

He took a stance as a man, and the greatest thing about Peter Norman is when you sit back and think about Tommie Smith and John Carlos here in America, they could go beat up on Tommie Smith and get tired of beating up on him and go to the other side of town and find John Carlos and beat up on him, but when Peter Norman left and went to Australia, there was no switch-off on Peter.

The black socks [on me at Olympics in 1968] emphasized the fact that we had so many Blacks and people of color here in the United States, the greatest country in the world, that was running around in poverty every day, so we wanted to illustrate the fact that these individuals did not have shoes and they had to walk 20 miles to and from school every day with no shoes in the greatest country in the world.

In life, there's the beginning and the end. The beginning don't matter. The end don't matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you're prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice. When all the dust settles and we're getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.

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.