Tommie Smith calls the basement of his Stone Mountain home "The Gallery."

Every wall is lined with the photos, magazine covers and plaques you would expect to see in the home of an Olympic gold medalist.

Jessica McGowan/Staff (ENLARGE)

Tommie Smith is one of the sprinters who raised a black-gloved fist on the Olympic medal stand to protest the unequal treatment of blacks in America.

Jessica McGowan/Staff (ENLARGE)

Smith holds what he calls the 'infamous gold medal' that he won during the 1968 Olympics. He's currently promoting his autobiography 'Silent Gesture.'

Jessica McGowan/Staff (ENLARGE)

After retirement in 2005, Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith and his wife decided to settle in Georgia. 'Our daughter wanted to go to Clark Atlanta. So we brought her here, we saw this as a place for us and we stayed.'

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But there is no sign of the gold medal he won during the 1968 Mexico City Games, where he ran the 200-meter race in a record 19.83 seconds.

It was the moments after the race — when Smith and teammate John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists in a Black Power salute during the playing of the National Anthem — that made the victory and that gold medal so significant.

At the time, the gesture brought praise from supporters and intense criticism from those who thought it was inappropriate — even un-American.

But Smith seems surprised when asked where the medal is.

The 63-year-old walks to an old wooden cabinet and digs past Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke eight-tracks and under the Pumas he wore for the race.

The gold medal is there in its original box, now dusty. The "infamous gold medal," as he calls it, hasn't been cleaned in years.

"I tried to polish it once, but it scratched," said Smith. "I just haven't thought of putting it up. Maybe I will."

The glove? Smith has no idea what happened to it.

Smith puts the medal back in the box and mentally moves on, just as he's tried to do for 40 years.

A sign of the times

Four decades ago this summer, Smith became an American icon more for his fist than his feet.

It was a year of controversy, violence and sorrow.

The Vietnam War was raging. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic front-runner for president, were assassinated. And America was boiling with riots and anger over race relations and civil rights.

With the 2008 Beijing Games three months away, the echoes of 1968 are being heard.

Activists are drawing attention to Communist China's poor human rights record in Tibet and Darfur. On several occasions, the Olympic Torch Relay was halted and the flame extinguished because of protests along the route.

In 1968, the issue was race. Smith was right in the middle.

"I don't think I was a different kind of athlete," said Smith, who plans to attend the 2008 Games as a spectator, not an activist. "I just grew up in a different time."

Smith was the seventh of 12 children born to Texas sharecroppers in 1944. Smith grew up farming, playing sports and reading about men like baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson and singer/actor Paul Robeson, both of whom fought for racial equality.

"The trenches they fought in lifted me," Smith said. "God gave me the ability to run fast. They gave me the opportunity to fight for my freedom."

At San Jose State University, he broke 13 world records — usually wearing his trademark black shades — and was a lock for the Olympics.

"He was one of the best athletes in the world," said Mel Pender, an Atlanta native and a gold medalist on the 1968 Olympic 4x100 relay team.

The climate in America was hot. King's nonviolent message was falling out of favor among young blacks.

"The society and the context had changed," said Johnathan Rodgers, CEO of TV One, a black-oriented network. At the time he was a student at UC-Berkeley, where black students boycotted a King speech. "It was our belief that current society wasn't worth integrating into."

Black sports icons such as Joe Louis, Jesse Owens and Robinson seemed irrelevant with the emergence of Lew Alcindor and Jim Brown. Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to join the Army. Ali argued: Why fight for someone else's rights in Asia when blacks didn't have them in America?

Protesting injustice

In 1967 Smith joined the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which advocated boycotting the 1968 games.

But while Alcindor — who would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — could skip the Olympics and still play in the NBA, there was no professional track circuit or sneaker deals for Smith to fall back on.

"For the track guys, this was their life, so they couldn't boycott," said Rodgers, who covered the games for Newsweek. "So they decided to go win and then make a statement."

Smith arrived at the Mexico City Games with no idea how he would protest, but he had a pair of black leather gloves.

For the first 100 meters of the sprint, Smith, Carlos and Australian Peter Norman tried to break away from the pack. During the final straightaway, Carlos was in the lead until Smith emerged in a blur over his left shoulder. Smith became the first person to run the Olympic 200 in under 20 seconds. Norman finished second, Carlos third.

As they waited for the medal ceremony, Smith told Carlos he was going to raise his "fist to the sky."

"I told him that he was not obligated to do anything," Smith said. "I offered the other glove to him." As the ceremony began, Carlos put it on, along with a knotted black scarf around his neck.

Smith rolled up the legs of his warm-up suit to show his black socks, representing poverty. Norman wore a patch for the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

When the National Anthem started, the American athletes bowed their heads. Then they raised their fists. Smith said the gesture wasn't meant to be strictly about Black Power; it represented resistance to injustice against African-Americans.

"It was the most immense pride I ever felt at any event in my life," said Rodgers, the then-Newsweek writer. "I was so proud to be a black American."

But to many Americans, Smith and Carlos' gesture was disrespectful, even treasonous. They were showered with boos.

"It was unbelievable how loud the booing was," Rodgers said. "But they stood so solemn and proud."

Some athletes followed their lead. African-American track and field star Bob Beamon wore black socks during his long jumps, and the men's 4x400 meter relay team wore black berets and raised their fists — without gloves — on the medal stand.

In contrast was a young George Foreman, who won the gold in heavyweight boxing. His hand wrapped in white tape, Foreman walked around the ring after his gold medal victory waving an American flag.

Pender said some athletes who protested suffered later. He was in the Army and instead of going to flight school, he was shipped to Vietnam.

When Smith arrived home to California, no endorsements or appearances were waiting. Jobs were so hard to find that he had to borrow money to feed his kids, he said.

Rodgers said, "It always seemed unfair — because his poster was in every college kid's dorm room — that society did not reward him, but punished him."

Smith played a few seasons as a wide receiver for the Bengals making $300 a week on the taxi squad.

Telling his story

By 1971, he hung up his spikes to teach sociology and coach at Oberlin College before moving to a teaching job at Santa Monica College in 1978.

In 1998, he met his third wife, Delois Jordan, a sales rep and the mother of R&B star Montell Jordan.

After their first date, her boss told her she was dating the Tommie Smith. When she got home, she asked her daughters to look him up on the Internet.

Yes, she was dating the Tommie Smith.

The two were married in 2000 and their blended family consists of nine kids and 11 grandchildren.

Smith retired from Santa Monica College in 2005.

"I knew I wanted to retire somewhere, so we looked at Texas, Northern California and Arizona," Smith said. "Our daughter wanted to go to Clark Atlanta. So when we brought her here, we saw this as a place for us and we stayed."

Smith spends much of his time touring the world and promoting his 2007 autobiography, "Silent Gesture."

"I made a statement that I was not going to write an autobiography," Smith said. "I dreaded it, but in the end people were accusing me of stuff, so I wanted to tell my story."

Just months from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Smith said he is far removed from the Olympics. He stopped by the 1996 Games in Atlanta, but didn't see any events.

His wife said she regularly gets messages from groups urging Smith to speak out against China on human rights. He understands, but declines.

"Beijing is a prime example of a need for human involvement," Smith said. "I know what is happening, but they don't need a Tommie Smith. People know what I did in Mexico City. I am not going to get in that. I have already made my stand."