There absolutely is no other gathering in the world that can compare with the Olympic Games.

And in American history there has never been a sports human rights protest that has rang louder and stood the test of time, like John Carlos' and Tommie Smith's silent, raised, black-glove fist in the '68 Mexico Games.

HBO has recently run its excellent sports documentary, Fist of Freedom: The Story of the '68 Summer Games and its presentation is powerful, haunting, commanding, compelling and enlightening.

Smith won gold in the 200-meters and Carlos won bronze. The two U.S. athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride. Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S. and wore a necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage."

I call Smith's and Carlos' stand for equal rights the loudest silent protest ever!

Unlike other protesters around the world that realized the Olympics world-wide television and collective human gathering as the biggest in the world, Smith and Carlos remonstration was unquestionably peaceful.

In the 1972 Munich Games Palestinian terrorists slipped into the Israeli team's quarters in the Olympic Village, killing two and taking nine others hostage. All nine Israeli athletes, five terrorists and a German police officer were killed in a disastrous rescue operation.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games are remembered for Adolph Hitler and the Nazis claiming Aryan supremacy - before U.S. sprinter Jesse Owens destroyed that myth.

At the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games, the world's two superpowers took the Cold War to the playing fields. At the 1980 Moscow Games, the U.S., under orders from President Jimmy Carter, boycotted the Olympics. The Soviets retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Sure the Soccer World Cup and the NFL Super Bowl have gained international recognition as world community sporting events. However, the Olympic Games are the only gathering in the world that pulls together over 200 nations in a spirit of celebration of sports and humanity.

With the Games' initiation and commencement, national leaders and dignitaries make sure they find their way to the world's best attempt at inclusion and collectivism.

In Beijing, China during the 2008 Olympic Games, world leaders from a record number of countries, including then U.S. President George Bush, and Premiers and Presidents from Italy, France, Russia, Brazil, Israel, Japan, Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America all having come to Beijing to network, build relationships, and most importantly, honor and glorify the world's most outstanding athletes.

Carlos and Smith said they just wanted to affect positive change in racist America during the '68 Games.

"What we did was a very thought out project for human rights," Smith told me in an exclusive interview. "We wanted to aware the people of our country and the world . . . the problems of human rights we were facing in America."

Carlos later told me in another interview: "There were people doing some bad things to Blacks in America. It was a strange feeling running for your country when your country treats you less that a human being. So, when most of the media misnamed our protest and started calling us Black militants, I knew things were going to get rough back home."

And rough it got!

Smith and Carlos were completely ostracized by the U.S. sporting establishment and were subject to unmerciful criticism of their actions. Time magazine showed the five-ring Olympic logo with the words, "Angrier, Nastier, Uglier", instead of "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Back home they were subject to abuse and they and their families received death threats.

"We knew the system didn't represent many of us," Smith explained, "and certainly there would be a backlash against out human rights stand. The Constitution is one of the things we based the Olympic Movement on . . . non-violence, free speech, and, that's the approach we took. I was not surprised what the system did (expel him and Carlos), not then nor now."

Concurred Carlos: "What I did in Mexico City was not for money. I'm glad God put that (protest) in my heart and showed me the way. It was set in concrete; I had no choice, because it was in my soul that it was the right thing to do. However, when we got back to the states people just did not want to look at the human rights point of our protest."

Smith and Carlos with their "Fist of Freedom" produced one the most overtly political statements in the over 100-year history of the modern Olympic Games.

Their grievance was not a Black Power salute; it was implemented as "Fist of Freedom" and a Power to the People recognition for basic human rights - nothing more and nothing less!

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